Social Shorts: Twitter adds frequency caps, Reddit’s audience grows, Facebook buys Kustomer

Twitter enables frequency capping for all campaign types

Advertisers can now control the number of times ads are shown to users with campaign frequency caps. The feature is available in ad group details for Reach, Engagement, Video Views, and Pre-Roll Views objectives by default.

Why we care. Frequency capping will allow advertisers to tailor their ad exposures based on their campaign goals. Twitter says its testing shows better performance for driving upper-funnel metrics like ad recall and brand awareness when weekly exposures are relatively light — impact tapers after the first two impressions per week — and higher frequency as users move down the funnel.

Reddit claims audience size of 52 million daily users

Reddit has shared its daily users for the first time, claiming an averaged 52 million daily active users in October, an increase of 44% year-over-year. The social networks’ Chief Operating Officer Jen Wong, told the Wall Street Journal, “We’re focused on daily usership and increasing this number as we continue to grow our community and scale our advertising business” Wong also said Reddit’s ad revenue topped $100 million in 2019 and is expected to increase by 70% in 2020.

Why we care. In comparison to the other major social media networks, Reddit remains minor. Twitter claims 187 million daily users, for example. We’ve talked about Reddit for years as seeming to be just on the cusp of scaling its ad business. That time may finally be here. Wong told the WSJ it is looking to expand its business internationally and build its sales team. If you’re looking for new channels or ways to diversify, it might be time to look at Reddit for 2021.

Facebook to buy customer service platform Kustomer

Facebook said it intends to buy Kustomer, a five year-old startup that specializes in customer relationship management and has a platform that unifies customer conversations across channels, including messaging, into one view. The deal is valued at roughly $1 billion, the Wall Street Journal, which broke the news, reported.

“Our goal with Kustomer is simple: to give businesses access to best-in-class tools that deliver excellent service and support.” wrote Dan Levy, VP of Ads and Business Products, and Matt Idema, COO, WhatsApp in a post Monday.

Why we care. Messaging has continued to grow as a significant customer service channel. The acquisition will help bolster Facebook’s business operations and social commerce offerings through its messaging services. Kustomer already integrates with Facebook Messenger and is working on an integration with Instagram messaging. Facebook said it plans to help Kustomer scale but also signaled to the antitrust watchers that it will “continue to support the numerous options that businesses have to integrate their CRM platform of choice with our messaging services.”

Media buyers continue to struggle with Facebook reporting glitches

Many media buyers and advertisers are continuing to experience problems with Facebook Ads reporting. Ad approvals have been a challenge since COVID due to ad review being done nearly entirely via automation, but the glitchy reporting problems could cause advertisers to pause ads that are actually performing well and vice versa, as media buyer David Herrmann noted on Twitter yesterday.

Why we care. Reporting glitches are nothing new for Facebook Ads. as we reported last month, but the persistence of the problems through Black Friday, Cyber Monday and beyond are particularly problematic for advertisers. That said, will these challenges actually make a dent in Facebook’s business. Its scale and targeting capabilities keep advertisers coming back in spite of the ad platform’s bugs and unpredictability, and it’s ad business has benefited from the shift to digital during the pandemic.