Episode 56 – Advertising in The Age of Voice Search and Twitter Doubles its Character Count

This week our hosts Matt, Kyle, and Rai discuss a couple subjects that deal with the uncertain future of social media and paid advertising. What will paid advertising look like with the growing popularity of voice search, and will the new 280 character limit on Twitter (currently in beta testing) be a blessing or a curse? Let us know your opinion in the comments!

Advertising in The Age of Voice Search [9:00]
Twitter Doubles its Character Count [18:35]

Advertising in The Age of Voice Search

Voice search is becoming quite popular because of its convenience and increasing accuracy. With an estimate of 20% of queries now coming from voice search, it’s only a matter of time before we start seeing paid advertising integrated into that medium. Rai breaks down the issues surrounding including paid advertising in voice search and explains what marketers can do in the meantime to make sure they’re visible in those voice search results!

“When you’re using voice search, you’re looking for one relevant answer right away.” -Rai
“Most voice searches are going to be local inquiries.” -Rai
“I have this mental image of laying in bed at night and getting really thirsty and Alexa goes ‘Thirsty? How about some vitamin water?!’.” -Matt
“It’s got to be more like intuitive ads based on more display than search.” -Matt
“I agree that it’s going to be more display based. I don’t think that there’s any room in voice search for it to actually be telling you an ad. It’s going to be annoying no matter what.” -Rai

Twitter Doubles its Character Count

Kyle and Matt brought the same subject to the table today, and for good reason! The possible 280-character limit for tweets is one of the biggest changes in the social media sphere in quite a while. Is this change going to be helpful for marketers or annoy users with unnecessary length?

“Personally, on my end, I don’t really care. I was never too frustrated with only 140 characters.” -Kyle
“Twitter came out and said that the 140-character limit might be preventing people from tweeting. In my opinion I think Twitter is starting to lose its mustard.”  -Kyle
“When you put Facebook and Instagram up as two huge social channels, they kind of do together what Twitter did.” -Kyle
“Right now, 9% of all tweets are hitting the character limit which isn’t a huge number, but it’s significant.” -Matt
“I think the 280-character limit will make a big difference in the long run. I think It could mess up the platform a little, so things could get a bit cluttered.” -Matt

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