This curated list includes important digital marketing updates and insights from the month of August. To stay updated on the latest updates from the digital landscape, read our Digital Marketing Apple Page.

Digital Advertisement 

• Facebook rolls out lead generation in Messenger globally. The announcement read

Today, August 29, we are announcing the global roll out of lead generation in Messenger, which enables businesses to set up an automated question experience. Ads that click-to-Messenger, created in the messages objective, opens a Messenger conversation between a person and business and kicks off a set of questions that can be answered through pre-filled or free form text. Businesses can then integrate with their CRM provider and continue the conversation with qualified leads through Pages Inbox, Pages Manager App or a third-party live chat provider. 

• Facebook rolls out updates on ads about social issues, elections or politics in the US. Read more 
• Instagram tests increased ad loads in Stories. Read more
• YouTube plans to stop targeting ads that show up on kid-related videos. Read more
• YouTube releases a leaderboard of the top ten performing six-second Bumper Ads in the U.S. that were rolled out last year. Read more
• Facebook rolls out Playable Preview Tool to validate playable assets. The announcement read

The Playable Preview Tool helps ensure your playable ad assets are free of errors by:

Checking if your file meets all specifications for Playable Ads.
Displaying errors, if there are any.
Displaying a preview of the asset, if the file meets all requirements.
Validating if your Click to Action is correctly implemented.

• Twitter rolls out 6-second viewable video ad bids. The announcement read

With this, advertisers have the security of transacting on a longer view, while still providing the optimal experience of a short-form, mobile video to their audience. Advertisers will be charged only once their ad is viewed for 6 seconds, with pixels at 50% in view (6s/50%). This bid unit is globally available on Promoted Video, In-stream Video Sponsorships, and In-stream Video Ads for assets 15 seconds or less in length.

• Facebook rolls out two new ad units for movie studios: movie reminder ads and movie showtime ads—to help film studios increase ticket sales and to help people find the movies they want to see. Read more
• Google rolls out system updates for preventing ad spend on invalid traffic. Read more here
• Facebook Marketing API to get ‘Special Ad Category’ field for all ads that offer housing, employment and credit opportunities. Read more here
• Pinterest rolls out personalized ideas at the top of home feed and browsable catalogs alongside Pins. Read more here

Search

• A survey of 5 million Google search results to better understand organic click through rate by Backlinko. Key insights from the study are - 

The #1 result in Google’s organic search results has an average CTR of 31.7%.

Title tags that contain a question have a 14.1% higher CTR vs. pages that don’t have a question in their title.

Adding “Power Words” to your title tag may decrease your CTR. 

Titles with positive or negative sentiment improved CTR by approximately 7%.

Social Media

• Brands can’t rely on “social media listening” as a proxy for broader consumer sentiment or to evaluate the complete impact of any decision or campaign: Report. Read More
• 67% of digital marketers and creatives anticipate video marketing as their first priority. Download the report here

The types of video marketing that respondents expect to invest in most include Instagram stories (66%) and newsfeed videos (62%).

• YouTube Originals available for all. Read more here
• YouTube to gradually roll out abbreviated public subscriber counts throughout September. Read more here 
• Instagram to let users report 'False Information'. Read more here
• Facebook lets users see and control the data that apps and websites share with the platform. The announcement read

With Off-Facebook Activity, you can see and control the data that other apps and websites share with Facebook. You can:

See a summary of the information other apps and websites have sent Facebook through our online business tools, like Facebook Pixel or Facebook Login;
Disconnect this information from your account if you want to; and
Choose to disconnect future off-Facebook activity from your account. You can do this for all of your off-Facebook activity, or just for specific apps and websites.

• LinkedIn Sales Navigator released product updates including 

Save Leads While Connecting — two great steps in one
List Sorting — less time, more action

Read the full announcement here