Brian Meert's Blog, page 107

What to Do After Accidentally Liking an Old Instagram Post

September 11, 2018
By Anne Felicitas, editor at AdvertseMint, Facebook advertising company

Deny it as vehemently as you want, but you, like many of us with social media accounts and smartphones, are guilty of hardcore Instagram stalking. How could you not when it is so easy?  Thanks to social media apps and the Internet, we can broadcast our lives to hundreds by simply posting an image or video to Instagram, a task that is hardly a task at all, considering it takes three seconds to do (more, if your data is slow. Damn you, Sprint).

Like many of us seasoned stalkers with hypersensitive touchscreen phones, you, after scrolling through a decade’s worth of content, accidentally liked an old post by someone whose Instagram account you shouldn’t be stalking, like an ex flame, a current flame’s ex flame, or a crush. What do you do other than wish to pass away? Should you abandon society and run to the mountains, living among your animal friends like a millennial Snow White? From one seasoned stalker to another, here’s what you should do.

Unlike the Post

This is the obvious and easiest solution to your mortifying dilemma. As soon as your finger slips, double tapping the image from five years ago, you must immediately unlike the post to remove the like from the image and the notification from the activity feed. The keyword here is immediately. If you dawdle, you give the person the chance to view Activity, click on your profile, and stalk you. How the tables have turned. Keep in mind, unliking the post does not turn back time and undo the push notification that popped up on the person’s screen once you liked the image.

This solution may not satisfy you. If you want a more drastic approach that doesn’t involve passing away or becoming a mountain man or mountain woman, consider option number two.

Block the Account

It’s sad to part with a beloved account that you can’t help obsessively stalking, but alas, desperate times call for desperate measures.

When you block the account, the like disappears from the image, the notification disappears from Activity, and the person you’re stalking can’t find your account on Search. This solution is the answer to your prayers because it not only erases your mistake, but it also erases you from Instagram. Poof! It’s like the dreadful event never happened. But—and yes, there is a but—this solution is only foolproof if the person didn’t turn on push notifications. Even if you blocked the person, the notification still would have appeared on the person’s phone screen. It’s an unfortunate flaw in the solution, but take comfort in the knowledge that, once clicked, the notification won’t appear in the activity feed.

Take Responsibility

Although not the ideal solution, this is the mature and responsible action of the three. If you accidentally liked a person’s post, you can do nothing. Bravely own up to your mistakes. Humiliation is an uncomfortable emotion, but it isn’t lethal, and it certainly isn’t permanent. In fact, you might forget about the incident a week or two later.

Besides, depending on who you’re stalking, the accidental like may not be such an embarrassing mistake after all. If the person is a crush, then consider it divine intervention. Because you couldn’t make the first move, the universe did it for you. Hopefully the accidental like will blossom into a steamy romance.

If the person you’re stalking is a stranger, then it’s no big deal. In fact, Instagram is a social discovery platform, existing to help you connect with people whose content resonates with you. Why else do people include an excessive number of hashtags on their posts? You guessed it—they want to be discovered. What you see as an embarrassing error may be a show of appreciation and recognition to the person you’re stalking.

Now, if you accidentally liked the post of an ex or your partner’s ex, and you will only take responsibility when LA rent lowers to an affordable price, that’s fine. Unlike the post, block the account, or do both for good measure. You’re only human.

Anne Felicitas is the editor of AdvertiseMint, Faebook advertising company . You can follow her (@littlebananie) on Instagram.

The post What to Do After Accidentally Liking an Old Instagram Post appeared first on AdvertiseMint.

The New Amazon Attribution Tool Will Show You Why Amazon Ads Are Better

September 7, 2018
Anna Hubbel
AdvertiseMint, Faceebook ad agency

Photo courtesy of stores.org

Amazon is so confident in the success of its ads that it is now testing an attribution pixel that will show advertisers how ads on its sites measure up against those on rival sites. According to Digiday, it is called the Amazon Attribution tool. The test invites only advertisers that sell on Amazon, not through it, according to Digiday.

The Amazon Attribution tool will allegedly help advertisers see just how effective their Amazon campaign is compared to their campaigns on other sites. Since it’s so challenging to achieve high search rankings on Amazon due to the massive competition for top spots, Amazon recognizes that advertisers may give up and take their businesses elsewhere. The company wants to prove that the effort is well worth it by supplying undeniable metrics.

Digiday says some of the conversion metrics advertisers can choose from with the new tool include page views, purchase rate, and sales.

“This move will encourage brands to drive more ads to Amazon because they’ll have attribution parity,” Connor Folley, former Amazon executive and founder of search ad platform Downstream, told Digiday. “Brands will see how much better their Amazon product detail pages convert compared to their own site. From an ROI perspective, they’ll be hard pressed to justify driving traffic elsewhere as a result.”

Digiday points out that Google, up until now, had an advantage over Amazon because it offers attribution for measuring both Google and Amazon campaigns. Amazon releasing its own attribution tool will help build advertiser loyalty.

“Owning your own attribution lets you grade your own homework,” Ben Tregoe, senior vice president of revenue at ad tech company Nanigans, told Digiday. “The reason each platform is intent on having its own attribution system is that they know the other platforms cannot be trusted to properly credit ads outside their own platform. Google is always going to say [its] ads were more effective in driving the conversion just as Facebook and Amazon will.”

Earlier this summer, Amazon also began testing Sponsored Products placement to external sites.

Written by Anna Hubbel, writer at AdvertiseMint, Faceebook ad agency.

The post The New Amazon Attribution Tool Will Show You Why Amazon Ads Are Better appeared first on AdvertiseMint.

A Standalone App for Instagram Shopping Is in the Works

September 7, 2018
Anna Hubbel
AdvertiseMint, Facebook ads company

Brooke Cagle / Unsplash

You may soon be able to sell your products in a standalone Instagram app currently in the works. According to The Verge, Instagram is building an app, under the assumed name of IG Shopping, made exclusively for buying products from merchants users follow on Instagram. The app allows customers to buy items directly through it.

Presently, it is unknown when Instagram plans to launch the new app. There’s also the possibility that Instagram may decide not to launch it at all. But The Verge reports it’s very likely that in either case, we will definitely see Instagram “make a major expansion into e-commerce.”

News of this new app should get you excited. As The Verge points out, more than 25 million businesses use Instagram, two million of which are paying advertisers. Additionally, four in every five Instagrammers follow at least one business. With such promising opportunities and successes on an increasingly popular platform, a standalone app dedicated to shopping could be a major breakthrough for businesses.

Instagram and E-Commerce

In October last year, Instagram rolled out the feature Shopping (previously called Shoppable Photo Tags) to thousands of sellers. The feature allows businesses to add tags to products on posts. Shoppers can click the tag and buy the featured product without leaving Instagram. Additionally, Instagram made it possible to sell products in Stories using a similar shopping tag feature.

The new standalone app currently in the works could make it easier for businesses to turn shoppers into loyal customers.

Written by Anna Hubbel, staff writer at AdvertiseMint, Facebook ads company 

The post A Standalone App for Instagram Shopping Is in the Works appeared first on AdvertiseMint.

This Brand’s Instagram Marketing Strategies Turned Me into a Loyal Customer

September 7, 2018
Anna Hubbel
AdvertiseMint, Facebook advertising company 

Charles Deluvio / Unsplash

I’m not going to lie: shopping for a new bra excites me. I could spend hours browsing different styles and materials online. Most of the time, however, I end my search without ever buying anything. Because I suffer from serious buyer’s remorse, I usually talk myself out of purchasing. However, one brand got through to me. I bought my favorite bra from Lively after watching a captivating Instagram ad.

There were a few key reasons I responded to the Lively ad I saw on Instagram. First, the sophisticated color palette caught my eye. As I stopped mid-scroll to examine the ad, the casual tone of voice appealed to me. Reading the caption, the highlighted benefits, testimonials, and offers sealed the deal.

The Sophisticated Color Palette

Every woman has her own color preference when it comes to intimate wear. I for one have never been a huge fan of hot pinks or garishly bright colors. I like the subtle, muted tones of peaches, pinks, greys, and blacks. If you visit Lively’s Instagram profile, you’ll see that the brand not only has products that primarily consist of those colors, but all of its ads and photographs match the colors for one cohesive, stylish palette. Rather than featuring one of the brand’s light pink bras in a photo, Lively also features a model wearing a similarly toned peach robe while holding a glass of pink wine. The photo matches the brand’s style and color palette to reinforce branding.

Maintaining a single color scheme isn’t a tactic unique to Lively. In fact, it is a practice many Instagram influencers employ. Among those influencers is fashion and lifestyle blogger Noelle Downing (@noelledowning) who says in an article by Huffington Post that she uses orange and rust tones as her consistent color scheme because they perform better.

“I always really liked warm tones,” Downing said in the article. “For a long time I really loved the color red, and that actually used to be the main focus. Now I’ve moved away from that because I started noticing that, weirdly, when bright red was in a photo, it wasn’t performing as well as the ones that had an overall warm tone instead of one red thing.”

Toronto lifestyle blogger Joelle Anello (@lapetitenoob) also expressed the impact of a consistent color scheme and aesthetic in her success on Instagram in a Page Cloud article. She maintains pink hues and complementary colors across all of her images.

“I make sure to have a similar color palette in all of my photos,” Anello said in the article. “But as well, I take all of my shots in similar lighting conditions.” She added, “Using the same apps and filters to edit all of your photos is important.”

The Highlighted Benefits

I like a nice push-up bra that doesn’t over enhance but gives me just enough umph. Lively’s Instagram ads stood out to me because they highlighted the comfort of their push-up bras without the underwire.  To support its claims, Lively’s video ads showed models exhibiting the bra’s astounding results. By clearly highlighting the benefits of the product and demonstrating it in use, the Lively ad got me to stop mid-scroll and visit the online store.

The strategy Lively employed that compelled me to purchase is called value proposition, the benefit Lively’s products give to customers. This strategy appears nearly everywhere. For example, Google uses value proposition when marketing Google Drive to its audience. Its ads state simply “A safe place for all your files,” communicating to customers that they get secure and large storage space when they use Google Drive.

Workplace productivity and messaging app Slack also uses effective value proposition, promising to make “working lives simpler, more pleasant, and more productive.” This kind of marketing message helped the company generate a $3.8 billion valuation. These are only some examples of brands using value proposition to reach its audience.

The Testimonials

Many of Lively’s Instagram ads and posts have captions that include testimonials from real customers that made me feel like I could trust the brand to deliver quality products. After all, people like me bought, tried, and tested the product. If they loved it, so will I. Normally I would research the brand for reviews, but since they are included in the ads and posts, I didn’t need to spend more time doing that. Lively brought that information to me.

Using testimonials to build trust with potential customers has historically proven to be effective. According to Big Commerce, 92 percent of consumers read online reviews and testimonials to inform their purchase decisions, with 88 percent trusting online reviews just as much as personal recommendations. Big Commerce also provides the following statistics regarding the effects of online testimonials:

Increasing review volume leads to higher conversion rates.
Product-specific review content drives search traffic and keyword rankings, specifically when a business earns 10 or more reviews, resulting in 15 to 20 percent increase in search traffic.
Three- and four-star reviews contain two times as many product suggestions as others.


Image Courtesy of Big Commerce

Testimonials are so effective because consumers desire social proof, says Content Marketing Institute.

“Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people conform to the actions of others under the assumption that those actions are reflective of the correct behavior,” writes Mary Fernandez on Optin Monster’s Conversion Rate Optimization blog. She adds, “In other words, consumers want proof from their peers and unbiased third parties, not the brands selling the products.”

The Promotional Offers

Nothing says “thank you for buying” better than promotional perks. Lively consistently does so through its Instagram ads, making the temptation to purchase even stronger. The brand often offers a free tote bag with every purchase made during a promotional time period. This not only gives buyers extra incentive, but it also creates a sense of urgency.

Promotional offers are a hit with customers. Zee Dog, a company that connects dogs and people through its pet products, used Instagram Stories and video ads last year to reach customers during Black Friday. During the second stage of the campaign, the company announced the products that were running out and reminded customers that the Black Friday deals were expiring soon. As a result, Zee Dog more than doubled sales compared to the previous Black Friday season.

“We were able to exceed our revenue target and more than double sales compared to Black Friday 2016, with a lower investment than the previous year, focusing on segmentation and ad formats, which had good performance over the year,” the company stated in its Instagram success story. “This definitely made it the best Black Friday in Zee Dog’s history!”

A Casual Tone of Voice

A casual tone of voice doesn’t work for every brand, but it works for Lively. In many of its Instagram ads, Lively uses bold language that regular people like me can relate to. For example, in one ad, the caption says “Say hello to the series that’s made for doing what you want to and looking damn good doing it.” In addition to being relatable, this tone is empowering and confident, making a shopper like me want to buy a product that makes me feel that way.

Marketers have found more success in sounding conversational in their social media ads than sounding salesy. According to a Forbes article, being conversational, for example, being humorous, can help differentiate your brand.

“Humor breaks down walls, shows personality, a.k.a. shows a brand’s human side,” Forbes contributing writer Steve Olenski says. He also points out that “Funny brands are more relatable and are seen as more trustworthy and human.”

In other words, the more relatable the tone of voice, the more trustworthy your brand is perceived by your customers.

When my Lively box arrived in the mail, I was giddy with excitement. When I opened it, it didn’t disappoint. It felt carefully arranged just for me, and it exceeded my expectations for quality. Instagram helped Lively build up that excitement to make me a loyal customer from that point on. Through elegant, colorful visuals, clearly stated benefits, upfront testimonials, and a relatable tone of voice that empowers, Lively was able to add another name to its customer list. No buyer’s remorse here!

Written by Anna Hubbel, staff writer at AdvertiseMint, Facebook advertising company 

The post This Brand’s Instagram Marketing Strategies Turned Me into a Loyal Customer appeared first on AdvertiseMint.

After Investigation, Facebook Removes 652 Pages, Groups, and Accounts

September 6, 2018
Anne Hubbel
AdvertiseMint, company for Facebook ads

A network of accounts posted political content directed at the UK and the United States

To combat misuse, Facebook removed 652 pages, groups, and accounts. The removed violators exhibited “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” targeting internet users in the Middle East, Latin America, United Kingdom, and the United States. Facebook traced the activity back to Iran.

Cybersecurity firm FireEye gave Facebook a tip back in July about a network of Facebook pages and accounts through other online platforms under the name of Liberty Front Press. Facebook investigated the network and found it linked to Iranian state media using publicly available website registration information. The suspicious network used related IP addresses and Facebook pages with the same admins.

Liberty Front Press’ Suspicious Activities

Created in 2013, the Liberty Front Press accounts kept their location hidden, posting politically divisive content directed at the Middle East, the UK, Latin America, and the United States. The accounts acted as news or civil society organizations, neglecting to disclose their real identities while sharing instigative information. As with the Russian troll accounts that disseminated politically divisive content during the 2016 US presidential election, Facebook saw this type of behavior as misleading and violative.

In the first stage of the investigation, Facebook found that Liberty Front Press had 74 Facebook pages, 70 Facebook accounts, three Facebook groups, and 76 Instagram accounts. Approximately 155,000 accounts followed at least one of those pages, 2,300 accounts joined at least one of those groups, and more than 48,000 accounts followed at least one of the Instagram accounts. Facebook also found that, other than hosting three events, the network actively advertised on the platform. It spent more than $6,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads, paying in US and Australian dollars. The first ad ran in January 2015, the last in August 2018

The network posted content in English

In the second stage, Facebook discovered links between Liberty Front Press and a completely different set of accounts and pages, the first of which were created in 2016. As with the other accounts and pages, they acted as news organizations without disclosing their real identities. Unlike the first set of accounts and pages discovered, however, this set employed cybersecurity attacks and tried to hack users’ accounts.

During its investigation of the second set of accounts and pages, Facebook found 12 Facebook pages, 66 Facebook accounts, and 9 Instagram accounts. Approximately 15,000 accounts followed at least one of those suspicious pages, and more than 1,100 followed at least one of the Instagram accounts. Although Facebook did not find any ads and events by those accounts and pages, Facebook did find posts written in Arabic.

The network also posted content in Arabic

In the third stage of the investigation, Facebook found more accounts and pages dating as far back as 2011. The accounts and pages shared content about politics in the Middle East using Arabic and Farsi and in the UK and United States using English. Facebook first learned about this particular set last year, prompting its expansion of the investigation this summer.

From its third discovery, Facebook found 168 Facebook pages, 140 Facebook accounts, and 31 Instagram accounts. Approximately 813,000 accounts followed at least one of the pages, and more than 10,000 followed of at least one of those Instagram accounts. Additionally, the accounts hosted 25 events.

Facebook also found that the account spent more than $6,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads using US dollars, Turkish lira, and Indian rupees. The first ad ran in July 2012, and the last in April 2018.

Facebook says it screens advertisers to identify their locations and to learn whether they are on the list of sanctioned individuals by the US government.

“Based on what we learn in this investigation and from government officials, we’ll make changes to better detect people who try to evade our sanctions compliance tools and prevent them from advertising,” Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy, wrote in the update.

Facebook also says investigations are still ongoing. The company has shared its findings with both the US and UK governments, as well as the US Treasury and State Departments.

“We’re working closely with US law enforcement on this investigation, and we appreciate their help,” wrote Gleicher. “These investigations are ongoing, and given the sensitivity, we aren’t sharing more information about what we removed.”

In addition to its efforts to crack down on fake pages and accounts, Facebook has removed pages, groups, and accounts with any links to Russian military intelligence services previously identified by the US government. This particular removal is not linked to the Iran-based activity Facebook uncovered in its investigations. It’s primarily focused on political behaviors in Syria and Ukraine.

Action Against Cyber Threats

In the last part of the update, Facebook emphasized that there is a lot the company has to consider when faced with a cyber threat. Some questions Facebook has to answer include

How active is the threat?
How sophisticated are the actors?
How much harm is being done?
How will the threat play into world events?

“Cyber threats don’t happen in a vacuum. Nor should investigations,” Chad Greene, director of security, shared in the update. “Really understanding the nature of a threat requires understanding how the actors communicate, how they acquire things like hosting and domain registration, and how the threat manifests across other services. To help gather this information, we often share intelligence with other companies once we have a basic grasp of what’s happening. This also lets them better protect their own users.”

Greene added that academic researchers and law enforcement are crucial players whenever Facebook encounters cyber threats. When Facebook discovers a suspicious campaign, Greene says it strives to learn all it can about the extent of the bad actors’ presence on Facebook’s services, their actions, and the actions Facebook can take to deter them.

“When we reach a point where our analysis is turning up little new information, we’ll take down a campaign, knowing that more time is unlikely to bring us more answers,” said Greene. However, Greene added that in some cases, Facebook will refrain from taking action if it feels it may tip off the violator, causing them to alter their behavior accordingly before Facebook can take legal measures.

“After all, the more we know about a threat, the better we’ll be at stopping the same actors from striking again in the future,” explained Greene.

But if Facebook suspects that there is an immediate risk, it will take action as quickly as necessary.

Written by Anna Hubbel, staff writer at AdvertiseMint, company for Facebook ads

The post After Investigation, Facebook Removes 652 Pages, Groups, and Accounts appeared first on AdvertiseMint.

Google Introduces New “Ad Strength” Tool for Measuring Effectiveness

September 5, 2018
Anna Hubbel
AdvertiseMint, company for Facebook ads

Photo Courtesy of Quartz

Google may have just made A/B testing a whole lot easier. Google’s new “Ad Strength” tool will allow advertisers to measure their ad’s effectiveness before publishing it. Specifically, the new indicator uses a poor to excellent scale to inform advertisers about the strength of their Responsive Search or Display ads.

When measuring your ad’s effectiveness, the Ad Strength tool considers relevance, quantity, and diversity within the ad copy. After detecting the areas where your ad is weak, the tool provides actionable feedback so you can improve your ad before publishing it.

Types of Ad Strength Advice

Google doesn’t do all the work for you and give you every piece of actionable advice possible to make your ad great. If you want the new Ad Strength tool to work well, follow Google’s advice:

Responsive search ads: Provide at least five headlines.
Responsive display ads: Provide up to 15 images and include five logos, headlines, and descriptions per ad.

The rollout of the Ad Strength tool will happen in stages, with a soft introduction when any advertiser writes copy for Responsive Search ads over the next several weeks. You will see Ad Strength as its own column in Google Ads starting early this month. However, you will not yet have access to support help for the new tool until sometime several months from now.

Responsive Search Updates

In addition to the rollout of the Ad Strength tool, Google introduced several updates for Responsive Search ads. First, you can now view ad combination previews as you build an ad. These previews let you see what your ad might look like in various forms, allowing you to browse the top possible combinations. Also, you can now view data for headlines, descriptions, and top combinations in Responsive Search reports, which will help inform you about the type of content that performs best in search results.

Written by Anna Hubbel, staff writer at AdvertiseMint, company for Facebook ads

The post Google Introduces New “Ad Strength” Tool for Measuring Effectiveness appeared first on AdvertiseMint.

New Personalized Pandora Ads Give Listeners Unique Audio Experiences

September 4, 2018

Anna Hubbel

AdvertiseMint, Facebook ad agency

Mark Cruz / Unsplash

Pandora is recognizing the importance of personalization in advertising. Tech Crunch reported this week that Pandora is introducing shorter, more personalized audio ads to deliver unique experiences to its diverse listener base. Additionally, advertisers will be able to sequentially target ads as part of a bigger, cohesive strategy and create shorter ads with lengths of 4 to 10 seconds.

These new personalized audio ads can include the day of the week and the call-to-actions linked to the location of each listener, Tech Crunch reports. Advertisers can also deliver ads in a sequential manner, sharing a larger version of their message at first then progressing with shorter spots to supplement the main message.

“We believe that an advertiser’s personalized audio strategy will not only be unique to that advertiser but also unique to each campaign,” Claire Fanning, Pandora’s vice president of ad strategy, told Tech Crunch. “In some cases, leveraging one capability may be best (short form, dynamic, sequential), and in other cases, leveraging two or three may be most powerful. It’s really dependent on the advertiser’s creative strategy and which solution, or solutions, will support that strategy best.”

Pandora asserts that it is the first music company to release these capabilities in large scale. It has had 20 advertisers testing the features. Among those advertisers represented Lay’s, which produced short-form audio ads that generated 56 percent higher return on ad spend.

Pandora introduced its own on-demand music service last year, but it still relies on ad revenue to offer its service to music lovers. The more effective the ad options, the more sustained the company.

With all the controversy Facebook is facing surrounding privacy, the public may negatively react to the personalized ads, but according to Tech Crunch, Pandora ads do not allow advertisers to collect private user data beyond email addresses.

“We use industry-standard security practices to protect our data and have developed internal tools and processes to ensure compliance with our privacy commitment,” Fanning told Tech Crunch. “We’ll continue to fortify this by tightening certain contractual language, auditing existing third-party data partners, and evaluating future partnerships with enhanced rigor.”

Written by Anna Hubbel, staff writer at AdvertiseMint, Facebook ad agency

The post New Personalized Pandora Ads Give Listeners Unique Audio Experiences appeared first on AdvertiseMint.

What “Skip Ad” Option? Now Anyone Can Use YouTube’s Non-Skippable Ads

September 4, 2018

Anna Hubbel

AdvertiseMint,  company for Facebook ads

You don’t want to skip this post. YouTube recently announced that all content creators monetizing their channels can soon run non-skippable ads, resulting in video content with fewer ad skipping options. YouTube announced the change in a video by its Creator Insider channel.

Previously, only a select number of YouTube creators had access to the non-skippable ad option. Now, all content creators who earn money through their videos can also use the non-skippable ads.

According to the video announcement, YouTube is rolling out the non-skippable ad option to all video creators so they can earn more from ads. Advertisers already pay more for non-skippable ads because viewers will watch the ad from start to finish. As a result, video creators earn more money from the advertisers.

What to Expect

According to Mashable, with this latest update, videos with skippable ads will automatically default to non-skippable. However, video creators can still manually change the setting back to skippable.

Although more non-skippable ads may be good news to advertisers (they no longer have to cram as much of their message into the first few seconds of the ads to have any impact), it may not be such a hit with YouTube viewers. If unwilling to watch the entirety of a non-skippable ad, viewers may leave the video, leading to a loss of revenue for the advertiser and the content creator. Nonetheless, YouTube advertising still offers many potential benefits, including

Real-time insights about views
The ability to show an ad before a viral video
Creative freedom for a video ad
Various ad format options
The ability to identify purchase intent
Increased ad exposure through social media sharing
Various audience targeting options

All video creators should see non-skippable ads this week.

Written by Anna Hubbel, staff writer at AdvertiseMint, company for Facebook ads

The post What “Skip Ad” Option? Now Anyone Can Use YouTube’s Non-Skippable Ads appeared first on AdvertiseMint.

Facebook Banned the myPersonality App for Misuse

September 4, 2018

Anna Hubbel

AdvertiseMint, Facebook ads company

Facebook announced that it banned the myPersonality app “for failing to agree to [Facebook’s] request to audit and because it’s clear that they shared information with researchers, as well as companies with only limited protections in place.”

Facebook’s investigation into the app revealed that myPersonality misused the information of about four million users. Facebook says it will notify each potentially affected user. However, if the app could not access the information of any of the affected users’ friends, and if Facebook has no evidence that the app accessed those friends’ information, Facebook will not notify the friends of the affected users.

“Should that change, we will notify them,” Facebook says.

On March 2018, Facebook started an investigation of all apps used after learning that the data firm Cambridge Analytica harvested data from 87 million users. The firm bought the information from academic Aleksandr Kogan who acquired the data through his app, thisisyourdigitallife. Cambridge used the information to send campaign messages to users during the 2016 US presidential election to sway people’s votes. After the discovery, Facebook notified users whether their information had been affected by the breach.

Since the investigation began, Facebook has suspended more than 400 apps that presented potential misuse. Additionally, Facebook has made many policy and tool changes. For example, the company recently revamped its App Review process and gave users better control over the apps that have access to their data.

“We will continue to investigate apps and make the changes needed to our platform to ensure that we are doing all we can to protect people’s information,” the update concludes.

Written by Anna Hubbel, staff writer at AdvertiseMint, Facebook ads company

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Instagram Finally Allows All Users to Request Verification. Here’s How

August 30, 2018
Anna Hubbel

The time businesses and influencers everywhere have been waiting for has finally arrived! Mashable recently reported that Instagram is now allowing users to request the blue verification badge.

Instagram’s blue verification check mark, previously only available to public figures with large followings, appears next to the approved user’s profile, indicating that the profile is authentic. Instagram created the verification badge to differentiate copycat accounts from the authentic accounts by public figures, celebrities, famous brands, and other household names.

Until now, it was unclear how to attain such a badge of honor. It was especially frustrating for growing influencers and businesses who felt that they earned the right to be verified. According to Mashable, Instagram first tested the new verification accessibility in Australia back in July.

How to Request Verification

To officially request verification, users can access the verification option in the settings tab of their Instagram profiles. When users select it, they will be prompted to submit a form, which requires uploading a photo of an ID card.

Step 1: Log into your account and navigate to your profile settings.

Step 2: Select “Request Verification.”

Step 3: In the specified fields, enter your full name and upload a photo of the appropriate form of ID.

Step 4: Select “Send.”

Once Instagram reviews the request, it will send a notification to the user about whether it approved or denied the request. Keep in mind that although Instagram is rolling out the verification process to everyone, it doesn’t mean anyone can receive the coveted blue badge. Only well-known public figures, celebrities, and global brands and entities will be considered.

Although Instagram hasn’t released details about the criteria it uses to determine whether a user receives verification, the number of followers is a major factor. Profiles with large followings will be taken the most seriously. Keep in mind the verification badge exists to prevent copycat accounts from claiming to be the authentic account of a public figure, celebrity, or famous brand.

In addition to the expansion of the verification badge, Instagram recently announced two other security features. One allows users to see information like date joined, country, past usernames, accounts with shared followers, and ads the account is running for all accounts with large audiences. The other provides support for third-party apps like Google Authenticator and DUO Mobile.

It’s a great day to be an influencer!

Written by Anna Hubbel, staff writer at AdvertiseMint, Facebook advertising company 

The post Instagram Finally Allows All Users to Request Verification. Here’s How appeared first on AdvertiseMint.