Snack Media Industry Predictions – Part 2

You may or may not have agreed with half of the Snack Staff on their predictions, but what about the other half? Here is part two of our industry predictions:

Niall Coen

Managing Director, Snack Media

I expect to see more event-based social media filters, with perhaps the views of influences and general users separated, thus giving a weight to quality content and content from those with more followers on a sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

I expect geo-location technology to produce some new social media networks, tech like Yik Yak – which allows you to talk with people within a 10-mile radius of where you are. These will become more widely used but perhaps it will move away from allowing its users to comment anonymously. I see real potential for this sort of technology in the sports and entertainment industries.

Taylor Williams

Account Manager

Mobile video advertising to take off…

According to eMarketer, a huge 77 per cent of total tablet users will engage in watching video programming at least once a month in 2015. With this predicted deviation away from watching series, soaps etc on television to mobile devices instead, mobile video advertising is also anticipated to become even more commonplace this year.

Daniel Blazer

Social Media Manager

Social media, with all the sensitive information and data we share and input, will always entice hackers.

2014 saw Snapchat users have a few restless nights that their ‘cheeky’ photos and videos, as they attempted to visually flirt with the person they deemed ‘the one’, were going to be leaked after the network was hacked. The truth is, whether knowingly or subconsciously, we all, naively, enter our details and share things that we wouldn’t necessarily want to broadcast to the whole world – I know that feels slightly contradictory.

We are starting to wise up, though, and calls for genuine social media privacy protection will increase tenfold during 2015. Whether you can achieve such a thing on the internet remains to be seen, however, steps closer to that utopia will be sought after over the next 12 months.

John McGinley

CelticLIVE Content Manager

I see even more of a move across interest types to personality-based content, supported by ‘endorsed advertising’ and premium/subscription models.

With the increase in access to information, the public don’t need you to tell them what happened or what a product is, they want your reaction to and opinion on what happened or what a product is.

As relationships between audience and creators grow along these lines, advertising and product placement becomes more valuable than brands being shoved in your face.

YouTube bloggers are dominating the social content landscape across gaming, beauty & technology sectors redefining how people consume content.

Mary Varney

Account Manager

Brands will continue to jump on the bandwagon on real-time events, but due to the errors made in the last twelve months these will start to be less “real-time” and more “right time” with less spontaneity and more planning. Will this make responses less witty and insightful? No, I think these responses will be cleverer and more engaging.

With Twitter opening up its analytics to the lay-person, the individual will be looking at their own personal analytics and Facebook will open engagement rates up to public profiles instead of brand pages.

 Sam Burdge

Head Web Developer

I predict that some of the bigger social networks will introduce payment APIs for one-click and peer-to-peer payments, based on Apple Pay or similar. By the end of the year Facebook will be covered in ‘Buy Now’ buttons.

Services like Yahoo! Answers, Stack Exchange, etc. will move on from using a kudos / plus one / thumbs up system and move towards a micropayment system of ‘tipping’ users a small amount for good answers / problem solving. This is highly likely to be based around crypto currencies like litecoin / bitcoin.

Many new services similar to Uber (taxis) and Air BnB will emerge and base themselves on social media platforms in a similar way that Tinder uses facebook profiles.

 

James Jones

Assistant Online Editor

The hashtag will continue to develop. Twitter especially will look to turn hashtags in to specific forums, with sub-hashtags, etc, to further exclusivise the social conversation surrounding a specific event. This could even develop in to ‘Super Exclusive’ hashtags that require a password before being able to view the conversation.

TV advertising will become more socially interactive. The main sponsors of a specific soap opera, for example, will push viewers to vote for something in particular relating to the programme during the ad break in order to determine the outcome/ending of the show. All using a specific hashtag or keyword

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Joshua Clarke

Account Manager: Live & Social

The emergence, growing popularity and across-the-board-more-favourable engagement rates of more visual platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest means that brands will continue to develop a clearer visual strategy that can be implemented across multiple accounts.

YouTube and Vine also come under this umbrella – underlining the importance of a coherent video strategy for brands. Plummeting organic reach on Facebook was arguably social media’s biggest talking point in 2014 and with the platform rewarding prolific adopters of its native video player, more and more publishers will turn to video to revive their status on the world’s biggest social media channel.