Foursquare Announces Advertising for All

Today, Foursquare announced that all businesses can now advertise on the platform using the self-service page.

Businesses, large and small, will share their needs and projected budget for these efforts on Foursquare’s self-service page – Foursquare will do the rest.

What are the benefits of partnering with Foursquare?

• Foursquare can become a resourceful tool for reaching consumers who actively ‘check-in’ using the platform via paid advertising.
• Metrics will be provided by Foursquare including number of views, actions, action rate and cost per action.
• Geographically targeted advertisements, which help increase local traffic to businesses who run ads that target people near their locations.
• Advertisers can now employ Foursquare ‘tips’ left by users about the companies as user-generated content in future creative.

Advertising on platforms like Foursquare helps brands connect with consumers within a select community of users – becoming a part of the user experience on such platforms increases brand awareness and reach in the digital sphere.

For more information see:

Mashable article: here

AdWeek article: here

Foursquare announcement: here

For Brands: Now is the time for Holiday Communications

According to a study by Crimson Hexagon, 2012 saw a 30% lift in holiday shopping communications on Twitter over 2011. Surprisingly, those conversations are starting before October.

An infographic from Crimson further reveals:

·         Holiday shopping conversations on Twitter start early.

o    30% of Twitter users begin thinking- and tweeting- about holiday shopping before October

·         Twitter influences product consideration, discovery and purchases.

o    55% of users discussed gift ideas on Twitter

o   64% of users have purchased a product because of Twitter

·         Twitter plays a key role in how and where people shop.

o    57% of shoppers use Twitter to determine what stores to visit

o    62% of shoppers tweet about the purchases they’ve made

o    45% of shoppers would rather take Twitter shopping with them than their husband or wife

Most brands will begin trickling in their holiday messaging now, but for B2B customers, time is of essence. 

For more information, please see the full study below:

Study: Twitter’s influence on holiday shopping

Instagram Announces Ads

Instagram finally announced plans to roll-out advertising to US users over the next few months.

The Ads Will:

• Focus on delivering a small number of beautiful, high-quality photos and videos from a handful of brands that are already great members of the Instagram community
• Appear in users’ feeds that do not currently follow that brand on the platform
• Give users will have the option to hide the post as well (similar to Facebook)
• As a user, you will still own your photos and videos (only brands' content can leverage paid promotions)
•  Create the need for brands to develop even more beautiful, compelling custom content that feels consumer-centric

Ads here present a big opportunity for real-time marketing for brands.  It will be interesting to see how the analytics tracking, and user behavior will evolve around this new initiative as well.  Stay tuned!

For More Info

Business Insider Article

Instagram's Official Announcement