Weekly Digital Marketing Roundup

February 26, 2017 – By Aaron Hockel

Here are the biggest announcements, product updates, and news stories impacting the digital marketing industry last week:

Instagram Adds Multi-Photo Posting Function

Ready to post 10 photos or videos to Instagram at once? Last week the social media app announced a new feature allowing users to select up to 10 photos or videos from their mobile device to upload into a single “post”. Don’t worry, the update will not flood users feeds with 10 consecutive photos. Instead, these posts will display small dots at the bottom of the initial photo indicating to users that swiping left will reveal more content. Click here to read the official post from Instagram’s blog or watch this short video demonstration:
 

 

YouTube Eliminating Un-skippable Ad Format

The dreaded un-skippable 30 second video ad on YouTube will be officially retired in 2018. For heavy YouTube users, this is a major win. While this is a hit to advertisers, they will still be left with plenty of great options on YouTube including un-skippable 20 second ads and an option to only be charged for fully completed video ads. For more details on this story, click here to read Danny Godwin’s breakdown on Search Engine Journal.

Google Reduces Star Rating Threshold

This is an important update for every business. Google recently changed the threshold for the required number of reviews to have a star rating associated with your listing on Google from a minimum of 5 reviews to just 1. It is also being noted that they are now using a simple arithmetic average to determine overall star rating versus a previous system that gave more weight to specific reviews. For more on this change, checkout this write up by Adam Heitzman on Search Engine Journal.

Missed last week’s roundup? Click here for the biggest digital marketing stories from last week!

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Aaron Hockel

Aaron Hockel is a Partner and the VP of Digital Marketing at AltaVista Strategic Partners. A University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) alumnus, Aaron crafts digital marketing strategies that drive success for clients, leveraging his deep industry knowledge.