New Report Looks at the Rise of Virtual Influencers on Instagram

Tuesday, 26 November 2019 / Published in digital Marketing

Social media was created to facilitate human connection, to amplify our interactive capability by providing new ways for us to share our lives and experiences, and relate to others around the same.

Social media gurus have been preaching along these lines for years – in order to succeed on social platforms, you need to ‘be more human’, you need to ‘humanize your brand’, ‘it’s human connection that matters’. And while there are many examples of such approaches leading to greater success for brands online, there is another, rising trend which largely goes against this, and brings into question the very future of the form.

That trend is the rising popularity of virtual influencers – computer-generated models which are gaining popularity, especially on Instagram.

Virtual influencers, as you can see here, run a broad spread of variation – from so close to real that you can’t tell, to cartoonish, Sim-like characters which seem completely out of place.

But they are, indeed, rising – recently, social analytics platform HypeAuditor put together an overview of some of the top virtual influencers, and their performance stats over the last year.

And the numbers speak for themselves:

According to HypeAuditor’s report:

“Virtual Influencers have almost three times more engagement than real influencers. That means that followers are more engaged with virtual influencers content.”

That’s an amazing trend, especially when you consider what it could mean for the future of influencer marketing. If these findings are correct, and virtual influencers are on such a significant rise, that will lead to more brands looking into the same. Virtual influencers are unpaid, unbiased, available 24/7 – and, evidently, very popular.

Is this the next wave set to flow through your Instagram streams?

In terms of who, specifically, is engaging with these computer-based characters, the profile shows that younger female users are more likely to engage with virtual influencers.

You can see that 18-24 year-old female users are significantly more likely to engage with these creations. Additionally, HypeAuditor’s data shows that US users are far more likely to engage with virtual personalities.

So who are they, and why are they on the rise? You can take a look for yourself – HypeAuditor has also provided a listing of the top virtual influencers worldwide, along with their rising follower counts.

As noted, the characters themselves range from hyper-realistic to cartoonish depictions. The leading virtual influencer is lilmiquela, with 1.7 million followers, followed by the Bratz-doll like noonoouri (332k followers), the mostly real looking imma (159k) and the hyper-real Shudu (193k).

Most of the Instagram profiles for these characters note that it’s a virtual or digital character within their bios, but as these types of models rise, it’ll be interesting to see if more try to disguise the fact that they’re not real – and whether regulations may need to be established on disclosure over such.

Right now, however, there are some limitations on virtual character use. Building realistic 3D models is expensive – maybe more expensive than simply using real people in some cases – but as technology advances, those costs will go down, and open the door to more businesses looking to utilize the same.

That could also, however, lead to new questions around depictions of realistic body types and their impacts on impressionable users. We already see such debates when looking at real models, and how young women, in particular, compare their bodies to them – but these characters aren’t even real. No diet tricks can help you obtain a virtual waistline.

LinkedIn Adds New Ad Targeting Options, Including Lookalike Audiences

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Tuesday, 02 April 2019 / Published in digital Marketing, Posts, Social Media Marketing

After recently launching a new Interest Targeting option for LinkedIn ads, which is based on the content people engage with on the platform, LinkedIn is now broadening its ad targeting toolset even further, with the addition of three new options to help hone in on your specific target audience.

The three new options being launched are ‘lookalike audiences’, ‘audience templates’, and the addition of Microsoft Bing search data to beef up interest targeting. Here’s how each will work.

Lookalike Audiences

Digiday reported back in January that LinkedIn was working on its own variation of Lookalike Audiences, and now, LinkedIn has officially confirmed the addition.

As per LinkedIn:

“LinkedIn’s lookalike audiences combine the traits of your ideal customer with our rich member and company data to help you market to new professional audiences similar to your existing customers, website visitors and target accounts. Since these members are already on LinkedIn, they’re in the right professional mindset to engage and respond to your brand.”

Similar to how the process works on other platforms, Lookalike Audiences will enable you to upload an email list from your CRM, for example, or a list of people who have visited your website, then LinkedIn’s system will match those details against its database to come up with a new audience of users who share similar traits.

Lookalike audiences have proven highly effective on other platforms, taking some of the effort out of identifying and focusing on the right audience. If the system is able to detect relevant, similar traits, this can be a great way of reaching new people who are likely to be interested in your offerings.

This may actually be even more potent on LinkedIn, as it will be able to detect new user segments based on job title and position information, which could help ensure you get your ads in front of the exact right decision makers, and capitalize on industry trends and shifts.

LinkedIn says that the option has proven effective in its initial trials:

“Customers in our pilot were able to improve their campaign reach by 5-10x while still reaching the kind of high-quality audiences that matter most to their organizations.”

This could become a key consideration for all LinkedIn ad campaigns.

Audience Templates

Audience Templates, meanwhile, aim to make it easier for people who are less certain about their target market, or have less training data to go on, to reach relevant users on the platform.

As you can see here, the Audience Templates option – shown on the right of the screenshot – will enable advertisers to search for a market segment that relates to their offering. You just enter in the type of people you’re trying to reach and LinkedIn will provide a match based on its system detail.

At this stage, there are around 20 predefined B2B audiences to choose from, though LinkedIn notes that is expanding.

Facebook Begins Rolling Out New Dashboards Tracking Time Spent in App

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Saturday, 24 November 2018 / Published in digital Marketing, Posts, Social Media Marketing

It’s taken a while, but Facebook is now rolling out its promised ‘time spent’ dashboard within its main app, enabling users to track the time they’re active on Facebook each day, and set prompts to limit their use.

As you can see from the above screenshots, the new dashboard is available within the functions listing, and through it, you can see your total time spent, set daily reminders, and change your settings to make better use of your time.

The options are very similar to what Instagram launched last week, which are part of the broader ‘digital wellbeing’ push within tech circles that’s been initiated in response to a range of reports about the potential negatives of overuse of digital platforms.

Facebook itself commissioned a report which found that passive engagement on social can lead to negative mental health impacts. That finding puts Facebook, as a business, in a tough position – on one hand, it needs to make you come back to the platform and use it as much as possible to boost its usage stats (and attract more ad dollars), but on the other, there are user welfare concerns with the same.

In this respect, Facebook’s new tracking tools seem somewhat like a red flag being waved by a matador – yes, they seek to address the core issue, but not really.

As noted by Techcrunch:

“Facebook and Instagram’s versions are particularly toothless. There are no options to force you to ease off your usage, just a quick daily limit notification to dismiss. iOS 12’s Screen Time at least delivery’s a weekly usage report by default so the feature finds you even if you don’t go looking for it. And Android’s new Digital Wellbeing dashboard is by far the most powerful, graying out app icons and requiring you to dig into your settings to unlock apps once you hit your daily limit.”

Really, the apps themselves are not responsible for how you use your time – if you choose to spend your free hours mindlessly scrolling through Facebook, that’s up to you. The providers can give you access to tools to highlight the potential problems with this, but they can’t necessarily enforce any ‘rules’ around use. It is possible that they could do more, as TechCrunch notes, and Facebook could also provide more insight into how, specifically, you’re spending your time in its apps, which may help to guide your usage. But the tracking dashboards are, looking at the other side of the argument, at least a first step.

So long as people go looking for them. Will you check out your Facebook usage stats?

I’m willing to bet the majority of users of both apps won’t bother – because who wants to know how much time you’ve wasted? Who wants to be shown the hours they could have spent doing something more productive? Hence, the red flag analogy – yes, Facebook is providing tools to help, but really, they’re somewhat meaningless in the broader scheme. You’ll keep on using Facebook and Instagram the same way regardless.

That’s not to denigrate Facebook for making the effort – and who knows, maybe they will prove beneficial, and will limit our time spent, and the negative impacts. But I wouldn’t count on it.

Facebook’s Bringing Ads to Facebook Stories, Expanding Reach Options

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Thursday, 26 July 2018 / Published in digital Marketing, Networking, Posts, Social Media Marketing

As you’re no doubt aware, Facebook Stories aren’t as popular as Instagram Stories, the most successful version of the format which Facebook copied from Snapchat (at least in western markets). But, even so, Facebook itself remains convinced that Stories is the format of the future, including on their main platform.

At their F8 developer conference earlier this year, several Facebook executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, noted that the Stories format is on track to overtake the News Feed as the most popular social sharing option, and that that will happen sometime this year.

Given that Instagram Stories is now at 400 million users, and WhatsApp ‘Status’ is up to 450 million, the growth of the option is clearly evident – but Facebook Stories, at 150 million daily actives, is still lagging behind.

But that slower rate of growth doesn’t appear to have dampened any enthusiasm for the potential of Facebook Stories in Menlo Park, with The Social Network releasing a new blog post promoting the potential of the format for businesses.

As noted by Facebook:

“The rise of stories is clear: people want fast, immersive and fun ways to share photos, videos and text with their friends and family – and stories offer just that. People use stories to share and discover content they’re interested in for movements as big as Pride and moments as small as the coffee they’re drinking. We designed stories on our platforms to fulfill people’s need to interact and share in engaging and playful ways on the vertical screen.”

I did laugh a little at the ‘we designed’ note – though probably not as funny to those at Snap Inc.

In the post, Facebook outlines the potential of Stories for brands, and their capacity to help marketers connect with their audiences, noting that a third of the most viewed stories on Instagram are from businesses.

But ads in Stories are where Facebook suggests there’s the most brand potential.

“Businesses are already seeing results using ads in Instagram Stories. For example, Tropicana ran video ads in Instagram Stories for its summertime product promotion campaign, achieving an 18-point lift in ad recall and 15-point lift in purchase intent among males. OpenTable used ads in Instagram Stories to drive online restaurant reservations, resulting in a 33% lower cost per reservation compared to other ad formats. And Overstock ran video ads in Instagram Stories to acquire new customers and increase sales, and generated an 18% higher return on ad spend and a 20% decrease in cost per acquisition.”

Right now, however, you can’t run ads on Facebo

Instagram Adds Video Chat, New Explore Section, Topic Channels: Here’s How To Use Them

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Thursday, 28 June 2018 / Published in digital Marketing, Mobile, Posts, Technology

Just a week ago, Instagram launched its new video sharing platform ‘IGTV.’ Now the company is rolling out new features like group video chat, new camera effects with custom AR filters, and redesigned explore section. So, let’s tell you about them brief:

Instagram’s Video Chat: How to use it?

The video chat option is available in the Direct Messaging section. To start a one-on-one video call, open an existing message or start a new thread. Then tap the new camera icon at the top right.

You can also make a group video call with up to four persons by creating a group that includes the recipients you would like to chat with. While chatting, you can minimize the window to multitask on Instagram by viewing photos, sending texts on DM, or post stories.

The camera icon turns blue when a video chat goes active and for joining an ongoing conversation, just tap the blue camera icon. Tapping on the red phone icon will end the calls.

In case you want to prevent a user from video calling you, blocking them would do the trick. You can also choose to mute users if you do not wish to receive notifications from them.

Explore Section: What’s new? What’s changed?

Instagram gets millions of visitors each day who check out the Explore tab to discover interesting picture and motion content. Now the platform has made it easier to find out specific content by creating topic channels.

On opening the Explore tab, you will see a list of channels which will show contents of a specific genre. The first one is “For You” that offers curated posts based on your personal interests.

There are other topic channels such as Food, Humor, Fashion, Beauty, Art, etc., and a list of hashtags to explore more specific and trending content topics.

In case you want to remove a channel from the list, just tap and hold the channel and select ‘Mute’ from the popup menu. It will stop showing content from that specific channel, and you can unmute it at any time by visiting the end of the list.

New Camera Effects

Another interesting update is the custom AR filters for Stories. For the first time, Instagram allowed third parties to create filters and they have been launched by celebrities Ariana Grande, Baby Ariel, YouTuber Liza Koshy, and famous channels like BuzzFeed and NBA.

These new Instagram filters can be used to augment a picture or selfie with objects and virtual effects. In case you come across a new AR filter being used on an image or video in other users’ stories, you will be offered an option to add it to your effects toolkit and try it out.

Instagram is also addressing the issue of online harassing and bullying on the platform by launching a new “bullying filter.” Based on machine learning tech, this filter will hide language that may seem offensive in nature.

CREDIT : FOSSBYTES

Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Launches Kimbho Messaging App To Challenge WhatsApp: Download Here

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Thursday, 31 May 2018 / Published in digital Marketing, Posts, Technology

After shocking the Indian smartphone owners by launching the “swadeshi” SIM card in partnership with BSNL, Yoga guru Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali has launched a messaging app named Kimbho.

Kimbho has been created by Patanjali to compete with Facebook-owned WhatsApp. This desi app’s tagline is “Ab Bharat Bolega,” which translates into “Now India Will Speak” in English.

Launching the app, Patanjali’s spokesperson SK Tijarawala called it India’s #SwadeshiMessagingplatform. “Now Bharat will speak. After launching SIM cards, Baba Ramdev has launched a new messaging application called Kimbho. Now Whats App will be given competition,” he added.

tijarawala sk@tijarawala

अब भारत बोलेगा…!
पूज्य @yogrishiramdev @Ach_Balkrishna के मार्गदर्शन में उनके शिष्य नवदीक्षित साधुओं और राष्ट्रनिष्ठ विशेषज्ञों ने #स्वदेशी तकनीक से इजाद कर बनाया यह #KIMBHO एप#भारत #स्वाभिमान
Patanjali’s new app to challenge WhatsApp @bst_official https://www.aninews.in/news/national/general-news/patanjalis-new-app-to-challenge-whatsapp201805301944510002/ …

9:21 PM – May 30, 2018

Patanjali’s new app to challenge WhatsApp

New Delhi [India], May 30 (ANI): Yoga guru Ramdev on Wednesday launched a new messaging application called Kimbho under his flagship company Patanjali.

aninews.in

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Baba Ramdev’s messaging app contains all the necessary features one will expect from a modern chatting application.

One can use it to chat privately as well as create groups. There’s a functionality of making phone and video calls as well. Other features include audio, photo, video, location, GIF, doodle, and sticker sharing.

Kimbho is available both on Google Play Store and Apple App Store. The app’s description further mentions that it’s “100 % FREE, SECURE and No Ads.” It also says that every message is encrypted by AES and “we save no data on our servers or cloud.”

What is WebUSB? How It Helps Connecting USB Devices To The Web

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Monday, 26 February 2018 / Published in digital Marketing

Now, when most of our computing needs require the use of the internet, why not USB devices? Mostly, the word USB triggers in our mind, stuff like flash drives, mice, keyboards, gamepads, etc.Browser support for these traditional devices is available through various high-level API’s. But the USB interface supports a broader variety of devices that most of us are unaware, ranging across industrial, scientific, and educational fields.

Also Read: What Is A “Certified Android Device”? Google Tells How Can You Spot One

Allowing the USB devices to connect to web apps directly is a big step towards simplifying and doing things faster. And WebUSB can play a significant role here. It’s a specification that describes how USB devices can be accessed from web pages.

We can add support for WebUSB in browsers via the WebUSB API. The recently released Chrome 61 includes the same as one of the important developer features.

With WebUSB API, the process for a web app to access a USB storage device or other peripheral is as simple as attaching it to a computer and making a few clicks after a notification shows up automatically.

The system would be able to decipher on its own which website to go for the device. Once you visit the website, you would be able to select the devices from the list.

Google says the bridging is done without compromising on security. Relevant measures are implemented to prevent the exposed USB devices from attacks as WebUSB opens up a new array of risks related to safety and privacy.

WebUSB API also solves a problem that occurs for the manufacturers of non-standard USB devices. The API eliminates the need for writing native drivers and SDK’s to enable support for such hardware, and allow manufacturers to build cross-platform JavaScript SDK’s for developers.

The applications with WebUSB API are diverse that one could assume; they’re more than a website accessing your pen drive’s data through your browser. For instance, WebUSB can act as a medium for students using development boards (like Arduino) to directly connect to the developer tools available online, instead of using some specially created interface between the browser and the hardware.

More and more academic institutions are shifting towards digital modes of education. Various computerized measurement and data logging devices used in Science courses require a separate piece of software to be installed, putting an extra burden on the shoulders of the IT department. Becuase there could be tens of computers on which software needs to be installed.

WebUSB API can also allow hardware makers to issue software updates and perform diagnostics on the connected USB devices, directly through their support site.

Another example can be given of a website that features 3D print designs. Wouldn’t it be great if the site could command your 3D printer to throw out the 3D models you like?

WebUSB is still growing. And if not immediately but in the coming future, websites would start integrating your USB devices.

Category: digital Marketing