Hasta La Creative!

Retailers will soon find a wider selection of ads available to them on Pinterest. The visual search company is expanding its “Shopping Ads” feature, which was tested with a handful of retailers last year. The ads, which consumers see in their Pinterest search feeds, will now be available to hundreds of other brands after a successful pilot, Pinterest executives say.

“It goes back to the core mission of helping people find and discover new products that they would love to buy,” says Jon Alferness, who joined San Francisco-based Pinterest as senior VP of ads and commerce last year from Google. He says that as an automated advertising product, Pinterest’s “shopping ads” take away a lot of the legwork for brands used to managing their own campaigns and advertising based on performance. Retailers can upload their product catalogs and showcase products in contexta couch in a decorated living room, for example, which consumers can click through and purchase on the brand’s site.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Snapchat’s redesign has actually delivered some help to Self, which says the new look led to its best month on the app, with more than 10 million visitors.

“Our experience with redesign may be surprising,” says Carolyn Kylstra, Self’s editor in chief, acknowledging the popular take that Snapchat’s new layout hurt traffic for publishers, brands and web celebrities. That’s not the case at Self, a which typically saw about 8 million unique monthly views on its Snapchat channel before the update. February drew 10 million visitors, Kylstra says.

Average daily visitors increased 14 percent over the average pre-redesign, Kylstra says, declining to disclose the exact number of visitors.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

The United States Tennis Association (USTA) has a lot to celebrate this year–mainly, the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Open. While the tournament itself isn’t until Aug. 27, the USTA kicked off the celebration with a new brand campaign that includes a spot, “Built for Glory,” narrated by Alec Baldwin. “We wanted to really celebrate…

Facebook is under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission over the use of personal data of 50 million users by a data analytics firm to help elect President Donald Trump.

The FTC is probing whether Facebook violated terms of a 2011 consent decree of its handing of user data that was transferred to Cambridge Analytica without their knowledge, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Under the 2011 deal, part of a settlement of federal charges that it forced consumers to share more personal information than they intended, Facebook agreed to get user consent for certain changes to privacy settings.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

DTSG certification is lowest-common denominator stuff and does not prevent brand safety breaches, warns Videology’s EMEA vice-president, brand solutions.

(TrendHunter.com) Hermes boasts a new sports-inspired capsule that mixes athleisure and high fashion in a line-up of luxurious backpacks and small leather goods. The premium products’ detailing is informed by…

Despite the news about how one firm, Cambridge Analytica, improperly used Facebook to collect user data on about 50 million Facebook users, top executives have mostly remained silent on the topic. That was until Carolyn Everson, vp, global marketing solutions at Facebook took the stage Monday night at the retail conference Shoptalk. Everson addressed the…