Our curated list of the most important, relevant, and shared digital marketing stories from the month of July. To stay updated on the latest updates from the digital landscape, read our Digital Marketing Apple Page.

Social Media

• Facebook to start testing new ‘Highlights’ feature that lets users save Stories. 
• Instagram users to see “You’re all caught up” message once they all the new posts from the last two days. Read the full story here
• Instagram tests open-ended questions in Stories to boost its interactiveness. Read more here
• Twitter removes locked accounts from follower counts to improve the platform health. 
• Youtube announces the new Copyright Match tool, which is designed to find re-uploads of a creator's content on other channels. Read the full announcement here
• Twitter says it doesn't shadow ban; shares how it ranks search results. Read more here
• Twitter in a bid to improve the health of the platform tightens access to API platform & restricts number of daily actions an app can perform. 
• Facebook’s ‘Watch Party’ rolls out to all, letting Groups watch videos simultaneously. The announcement read

Based on community feedback from the test, we’re launching with two new features today:

First, we’re adding Co-hosting, which lets the host of a Watch Party designate other co-hosts who can add videos and keep the party going.
We’re also adding Crowdsourcing, which lets anyone in a Watch Party suggest videos for the host to add to the Watch Party.

• Snapchat to close Snapcash. Read the full story here
• YouTube on desktop plays vertical videos without black bars. Here's what the announcement said 

We launched an update to the YouTube video player on desktop – the player now automatically adapts to provide the best viewing experience based on the video’s size (aspect ratio) and your computer’s screen/browser size.

Highlighting the changes below and sharing more about the reasons behind the change:
Historically, for non wide-screen videos (not 16:9) like vertical and square videos, we would show black bars alongside the video, making the video really small. This update moves away from the need for black bars. We launched this update on mobile awhile back (both Android and iOS) so this change also aligns the desktop and mobile viewing experiences.

• With YouTube’s new ‘Explore’ tab users can discover videos based on viewing activity. Here's what the announcement said

One thing we’ll be testing on iOS over the new few weeks is a new “Explore” tab, which will help you discover more videos, topics and channels that you might not otherwise see. We also hope Explore will be a space where creators of all sizes, including emerging creators, can have their content discovered.

This is an experimental feature, so only a small group of people using the YouTube app on iPhones will see the Explore tab in the bottom navigation. If you’re part of the test group, you’ll see that all content from Trending now exists in a section of Explore (so Trending isn’t going away!). 

Digital Advertisement 

• Facebook tests AR ads in the News Feed. Here's what the official blog said 

Michael Kors was the first brand to test AR ads in News Feed, enabling people to try on a pair of sunglasses and make a purchase based on their experience. Later this summer, we will begin testing AR ads with some additional advertisers such as Sephora and others in fashion accessories, cosmetics, furniture, gaming and entertainment, and we plan to roll out AR ads more broadly to other industries over the course of the year. 

Facebook also launched Video Creation Kit to make it easier for all advertisers to create mobile-first video ads.  It also said that Instagram has opened its Collection ads & Shopping Bag icon for Stories to all brands. 

• Snapchat opens private ad marketplace for Discover partners. Read the full story here 
• Facebook updates Video Ad metrics to better match the ways people watch. The announcement read

We offer metrics such as 3-Second Video Views and 10-Second Video Views, and these metrics previously included the seconds people might rewind or rewatch a video when they see it in News Feed. Businesses have told us they'd prefer that these two metrics only count unrepeated seconds watched to more accurately measure consumption, so we’ll be updating how we calculate these two metrics across all video reporting in Ads Manager and Page Insights to no longer incorporate watch seconds from rewinding.

we’re also announcing a new Video Plays metric in Ads Manager and the Ads API. We know marketers want choice and third party verification in measuring their Facebook ads, so businesses will soon be able to work with Oracle Data Cloud's Moat Measurement products to measure the number of video ads that start to play. We'll continue working with other partners to enable more third-party verification.

In an effort to simplify ad metrics and make it easier to understand how your ad performed, we’re removing 30-Second Video View and Video Percentage Watched because they are redundant with other metrics we offer and are used infrequently. 

• LinkedIn introduces a new reporting experience in LinkedIn Campaign Manager. Read about the latest features here
• Google rolls out AMP Stories v1.0 with new features, including an ads beta for DFP users. Read the full story here
• Bing Ads rolls out Target CPA and Maximize Conversions. Read the full announcement here

Search

• Google's ‘Speed Update’ has minimal impact on search results. Read the full report here
• Google clarifies the upcoming Speed Update only impacts the ‘slowest sites’. Read more here
• Google removes its public URL submission tool. Read more here
• Google collaborates with schema.org on a new set of structured data that publishers can use to optimize content for Google Assistant. Read more here
• Bing shares important insights on Bing Search. Read here
• Google’s John Mueller says content length doesn't indicate its quality.