Hello and welcome back to This Week in Digital. It was the week that the Queen made her Instagram debut and several brands honoured International Women’s Day.
HEADLINES
- Mark Zuckerberg announced users across Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram will now be able to send messages to each other, as Instagram develops a feature for co-watching for users in different locations
- Spotify earmarks podcasting as their new focus for generating ad revenue
- There are a number of changes from Google as they switch to first price auctions in their programmatic offering, introduce shoppable ads on Google Images and bring new AR effects to YouTube Stories
INSIGHTS
- Here are the key areas of focus for Facebook in 2019
- Amazon’s dominance continues, as it’s revealed nine in ten Brits are Amazon shoppers, whilst 15 million people in the UK are signed up to Prime
- Over 80% of sponsored Instagram posts are from micro-influencers
COOL
- Frank Health Insurance releases first voice app to simplify common private health industry questions
- New Balance introduces a ‘bricks and mobile’ marketing strategy, as it lets runners trade miles for beer via mobile wallet
- The preservation robot distributes images across the internet to counter balance the dominance of Western culture
DEEP READS
- A look at how Amazon is a new contender in the Influencer space
- Is the fact that digital assistants tend to be female, playing into gender stereotypes? Q is an initiative set up to tackle gender bias in AI
- In honour of National Women’s week, here are some of the influential figures in the world of science and tech
