The Brief: Vine in decline, new Facebook video ad formats, Twitter eases up on the 140

TL;DR

Vine is on the decline, Facebook is taking another swipe at Google when it comes to video ads, Twitter lets us get wordier

Is Vine dying?

A Markerly study on Vine reveals that “People are not posting as frequently and engagement is drastically going down.” The majority of influential Vine users (15,000 followers or more) have not posted since last year. Other indications Vine is not growing: views, reposts, and likes have been declining since 2014.

Rival Snapchat dwarfs Vine views by nearly 10x, with 10 billion videos each day.

Source: Adrienne LaFrance @ The Atlantic, May 25, 2016

New Facebook ad formats rolled out to directly compete with Google

Facebook is introducing pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll video ad options, giving advertisers the ability to be a part of another publisher’s content.

Video ads that play automatically will now also appear on in-article mobile pages of publishers. This will give advertisers heightened placement of video content.

Source: Maureen Morrison @ Advertising Age, May 16, 2016

Twitter relaxing 140-character limit

Twitter recently announced significant upcoming changes to its 140-character limit, among other changes. These updates, available in “the coming months,” include:

Replies: @names won’t count toward the 140-character count when replying to a Tweet.
Media attachments: Photos, GIFs, videos, polls, or Quote Tweets will no longer count as characters within Tweets.

Source: Todd Sherman @ Twitter, May 24, 2016