Media Monday

Instagram Makes Share Counts Public

By Ashley Roberts , Media Supervisor

Instagram has made public the number of times a post is shared—a metric that was previously only visible on the platform’s backend. For marketers, the newly public metric signifies the growing importance of shares in social strategy.

While this newly-public feature is being rolled out, many facets are still unclear, such as what specifically constitutes a share (posting to Stories, direct message, or other platforms). Regardless, the change signifies a continually-evolving shift in social strategy away from likes and comments and toward sharing and building community.

With marketers ability to buy reach through the integration of boosted influencer content, likes and comments have gone by the wayside. As share counts become public, an effective social strategy will rely further on whether the content resonates with target audiences, putting more pressure on brands to have a solid organic and influencer strategy that sparks connection. Rather than follower counts, marketers should consider share counts as a more valuable KPI.

The growing importance of shareability is also reflective of changing user behavior and preferences as everyday people become integral to the marketing strategy. Brands that successfully leverage ambassadors will continue to win as the line between customer and influencer blurs.

Getting in Touch with Gen Alpha?

By Ali Mancinelli , Senior Media Planner

As the first group of Gen Alpha (born from 2010) enters their teenage years, advertisers are facing a new group of consumers who are extremely digitally savvy. As the buying power and influence of younger family members continues to be a topic of conversation, it is important to understand how to reach this generation. Ad Age provides the following insights:

• As a means to cope with social isolation during the pandemic, Gen Alpha fostered online communities and built their own internet identities. Today, they are continuing to seek opportunities for creation and leisure online, which is where marketers should meet them digitally.
• Despite heavy tech usage, several years of online schooling and social isolation have led Gen Alpha to seek social interaction out in the real world. Providing opportunities to connect or reach Gen Alpha during these off screen moments can be beneficial.
• Comedy and social progress are two pillars that resonate with Gen Alpha in terms of messaging. They seek joy online and are looking for these mainly on TikTok, their social platform of choice.

As this generation becomes more prominent amongst ad viewers, we look forward to seeing how reaching Gen Alpha shifts campaign strategies moving forward.

The Cookie Phase Out Has Begun

By Arlene Espino , Director, Search & Analytics

Google has begun testing changes to the way users are tracked online. As of January 4th, Google has officially started to phase out third-party cookies with a new browser feature called Tracking Protection, impacting 1% of Chrome users globally. This feature restricts third-party cookies by default. Those impacted will receive a notification with an option to ‘Browse with more privacy’ when opening Chrome on either desktop or Android devices.?

This latest change is to facilitate testing and a crucial move in its Privacy Sandbox initiative. During the testing phase, if a site cannot function properly, Chrome will prompt you to temporarily re-enable third-party cookies and disable Tracking Protection. Beyond the 1%, roughly 30 million people, this will eventually ramp up to 100% of users in the second half of the year.

This first step towards cookie deprecation is a huge change for the web as Chrome is the dominant browser, accounting for 63% of internet usage according to StatCounter. Now is the time for marketers who heavily depend on targeted advertising with third-party cookies to reconsider tactics. However, full deprecation by the end of the year still depends on testing and resolving competition concerns from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority.