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Welcome to our latest digital marketing news update that we publish every two weeks. You can read the article below or, if you'd rather listen, click the player above. We'd love to know what you think of this format.
ChatGPT introduces Canvas
ChatGPT has recently introduced Canvas, a new interface for working with ChatGPT on writing and coding projects.
Canvas opens in a separate window, similar to that of creating custom GPTs, that allows you to have conversational chat on the left-hand side with outputs created, and updated, on the right-hand side. ChatGPT have stated that this creates a new way of working together, “not just through conversation, but by creating and refining ideas side by side.”
Canvas is built with the GPT-4o model and can be selected from the drop down when selecting which model you want to chat with.
YouTube Shorts expands video limit to three minutes
Starting from 15th October, square or vertical videos uploaded to YouTube up to 3 minutes long will automatically be uploaded as Shorts. This won’t affect any existing videos and will only apply to videos uploaded from this date.
YouTube have stated that this was a popular request and gives creators more time to tell stories through Shorts, captivate their audience and showcase their creativity.
Extra time to share content on Shorts means that creators can share more detailed content without feeling rushed, like mini vlogs and tutorials and offer more in-depth walk throughs or explanations. It also helps to bridge the gap between long-form content and YouTube’s previous 1 minute Shorts and allows for more seamless promotional content for those creators looking to monetize their content.
Learn more about YouTube Shorts updates here.
Snapchat introduces two new advertising spots
LinkedIn have started testing two new advertising placements on Snapchat, Sponsored Snaps and Promoted Places.
Sponsored Snaps enable businesses to engage their customers through visual messaging, by showing full-screen snaps directly with their customers. Viewers can reply by sending a message directly to the business or using a CTA to open links. They are removed from your inbox if left un-viewed and aren’t delivered with a push notification to your device.
Promoted Places highlights sponsored places of interest on Snap Map, helping the community discover places they want to visit. This feature allows businesses to highlight their locations and businesses directly on the map, encouraging snapchat users to visit those places. According to Snapchat, this has shown to increase visits by 17.6% already compared to those that aren’t promoted.
Learn more about Snapchat’s new advertising features here.
Threads is working on a new communities feature called Loops
Threads is working on a new feature called ‘Loops’, to make it easier for users to uncover topic-based communities.
In the screenshot shared by Alessandro Paluzzi, It looks like users will be able to add their individual threads into a ‘loop’ which will then feed it to that community, similar to that of X’s FKA Twitter) community groups. Loops will allow users to join or leave specific groups centred around shared interests, allowing for more organised discussions.
This could be a good way to finding more relevant discussions within the app and organising your Threads interactions, but whether it will catch on, we don’t know. The feature is very much still in development.
Read more about Thread’s new Loops feature here.