The digital download: Instagram ups video ads to 60 secs, Twitter customizes emojis

With the whole country in full Super Bowl swing, Instagram and Twitter get in on the fun. 

Super Bowl 50 is taking place between the Carolina Panthers and the Denver Broncos this Sunday, but the real marketing battle has already begun beyond the football field.

Hot on the heels of recent ad initiatives from YouTube, Facebook and Snapchat around the Super Bowl, Instagram and Twitter debuted their own version this week.   

Instagram expands video ads to one minute

Instagram doubled the duration of branded video content from 30 seconds to 60 seconds.

Warner Bros and T-mobile are among the first to experiment with this new ad format. For T-mobile, the Instagram video is an extended version of its 30-second Super Bowl TV commercial featuring rapper Drake.

Sadly we cannot find T-mobile’s Instagram video anymore but here’s the YouTube version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDIeNrcGxvQ

Twitter makes big money in sponsored emojis

Twitter debuted three branded emojis for Super Bowl 50 this week in collaboration with Pepsi, Bud Light and Budweiser. The customized icons – that are setting advertisers back a whopping seven figures (woah!) – come in different combinations of Promoted Trends (normally costing $200,000), Promoted Moments and Promoted Tweets, according to AdWeek.

Due to the high cost, it is presumed that Twitter is reserving these emoji deals exclusively for big ad spenders such as Coke, Starbucks, Spotify and Dove.

https://twitter.com/pepsi/status/694967041866989568

In other news ….. (There are other things going on outside of Super Bowl this week, we promise!)

Snapchat runs its first app-install ad in collaboration with Cookie Jam

Snapchat is now offering app-install ads. Its first app-install ad ran this week for mobile game Cookie Jam, within iHeartRadio’s Discover channel.

At the bottom of this video ad users can see the words “App Store” which directs them to swipe up to download the app. Users can then download the game directly from Apple’s App Store without leaving the Snapchat ecosystem.

It seems that Snapchat is looking to become a big advertising platform and ad buyers are quickly falling for its charm. Prior to this week’s debut of app-install ads, Snapchat is reportedly developing its own API so it can finally offer brands more metrics to measure their campaigns.

Alphabet’s Q4 earnings show that Google takes the lead

On Monday, Google’s parent company Alphabet released its first full earnings under the new structure.

Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2015 reached $21.3 billion, with $19.1 billion from advertising. That marks a five percent increase in net income and a 17 percent yearly increase in ad revenue, which are driven by Google’s growing mobile search business, YouTube and programmatic advertising.

Compared to Google advertising, Alphabet’s other businesses –  including Nest, Verily (Google Life Sciences), autonomous cars and Google Fiber –  failed to turn a profit.

Facebook makes “Friends Day” on its 12th birthday

February 4 marks Facebook’s 12th birthday and is recognized as “Friends Day” by the social network.

In celebration of its birthday, Facebook introduced Friends Day videos where the platform stitched together special moments with users’ friends in a short film. Users were then able to edit and share the video with ‘friends’ on the their News Feed.