Over the last week or so there have been numerous releases of new features on our favourite social media platforms. Some have outshone others for both creator and marketing purposes. From vertical TV to interactive videos, we’ve summed up all the latest news from Instagram, Facebook and Youtube so you’re ahead of the pack.

Facebook gives more to video

Something Facebook is looking to release soon is interactive videos where creators can post quizzes, polls or questions for live audiences to answer and if they answer incorrectly then they are out. This is a very interesting and exciting feature that Facebook is developing to make more of an active experience for users when they watch videos online. They say it aims to make videos more ‘healthy’ and less passive. Creators can even have the ability to offer a cash prize for winners. When this is available it will be done through the Creators App which is only available for iOS users but will soon be made available for Android. Facebook Creator is a community of video creators where you can create, track and grow your videos with more in depth tracking for success and ways to discover other likeminded people.  Now the next announcement made by Facebook would be of interest to brands. They have teased us with this for the last month in testing but it’s now officially launched. Brands Collabs Manager is a new platform to connect brands with influencers. This is good news for both creators and brands as it helps facilitate connections to get more creators using the platform but also allowing brands to get their message across effectively. It connects brands with relevant creators based on their promotional requirements. Creators thumbnails will then appear showing a percentage resembling how well matched they are to your brand requirements as well as their audience number and category. Creators can also make a Brands Collab profile once they have signed onto it to make intro videos and get a media kit to help them out. We think this is a great way to get more engagement from audiences seeing as this is what Facebook’s algorithm is favouring at the moment. It’s giving brands and creators a better way to connect and share audiences.

Instagram’s new vertical TV

If you’ve been wondering what that weird little colourful icon at the top of your Instagram, that’s IGTV. The new feature to be released on the Instagram app has had loads of people talking. IT’s basically a way to get longer stories. It puts long form vertical videos front and centre to make it much easier for users to watch videos on the app. Instagram has always been a mobile first app and this feature is no exception. It’s portrait mode and longer time limits make it a much better way to tell creative stories through video. It gives 10 minutes of video time for most accounts but if you are the lucky few that have quite a large following then you have the option of filming up to an hour of content. The IGTV app is a stand alone one just like boomerang was but it is completely integrated with Instagram. Unlike Instagram stories, your videos are on your account forever and can be accessed by going to your profile and looking at where your Highlights usually are. There you’ll see an IGTV tab to click on and watch all over again. We think this is very good for cross promotion and in some ways it forces people to be a bit more creative with their video content now they are restricted to portrait. It’s also high-quality video which opens the field for more creators and marketers to experiment seeing as this was an expensive privilege to have for vertical video like Snapchat.  We recommend producing content for IGTV as soon as possible to get ahead of the game before everyone starts posting.

Youtube’s new suite for marketers

This is Youtube’s answer to providing better insights for brands. If you want to do more storytelling in your ad campaigns then this is the one for you. A new creative suite for marketers is giving brands to reimagine how they use video to target their audience. They will be providing a new collection of resources to not only tell great stories but also measure their impact much better. If you have a Youtube account then you may have noticed a new tab for the dashboard which is in beta format at the moment. We are guessing that once they have completed the new layout then these resources will become available for brands. So what’s new? Firstly they talk about Video Experiments which is something you might like if you’re into your Google Adwords videos. Testing how creative and effective your videos are can be time consuming and expensive but this new little feature lets you test and measure key metrics like awareness, consideration, purchase intent and more to give you better results in less time. This means no focus groups, just real time feedback on your ads. Another new resource they are releasing in beta form later on this month is Director Mix. This is currently in alpha and it allows you to create many versions of the same base video and lets you swap and change certain things. This makes it better for viewers who might see your adverts more than once and gives a bit of context to your content. Video Ad Sequencing also comes into play when you want to tell great stories. It lets you ‘tell your brand story over a series of ads set in a specific order’ which has the potential to drive deeper engagement with audiences. Even though both of these are still in alpha testing, big companies like 20^th Century Fox have had some time to play around with this and use Video Ad Sequencing to promote the very popular motion picture, The Greatest Showman whilst Kellog’s is already tapping into Director Mix to make their adverts stand out.

We are expecting big things from these new updates in the future and are excited to see how creators and brands will take advantage of them to produce amazing content. Let us know what you think about these new features in the comments below. Are they a great way to give video the shining spotlight it deserves or will it just be another annoying way for brands to get to us