While you may have been keeping up with the first presidential debate on social media, or Instagramming the first few days of fall, you may have missed some key updates that could influence the way marketers and advertisers strategize. Whether it be a general application update, or a new advertising feature release, social media platforms have been stepping it up and we have the updates you can’t afford to miss.

Advertising

Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel said in 2015 that he didn’t want the advertising on his app to get too “creepy” but he is finally letting that go of that notion with three new ad targeting options that are slowly being tested on users. The first update is called Snap Audience Match, which allows marketers to take existing contact information and match it with Snapchat’s data to improve ad targeting. Snapchat will also be helping advertisers by providing the ability to target “lookalikes” to the brand’s current consumers, as well as allowing advertisers to direct ads at users who consume certain types of video such as sports or lifestyle content. In other social media news, Instagram is also rising as a powerful advertising force. The application announced that they now have half a million advertisers on their platform after only one year.

In addition to the “big four” social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, advertisers are going to want to start paying more attention to Pinterest. The platform reported that 72 percent of users said they discovered a new brand while using Pinterest. That is great news for advertisers looking to get their brand onto the screens of potential new customers, but that’s not the only update… Pinterest also launched video ads last month on their desktop platform and will expand those ads to their mobile app in the near future. Pinterest rolled out buyable pins in 2015, but now has more buyable pins than ever with over 60 million, to be exact. The “buy” button on pins is allowing users to buy new products directly through Pinterest which experts say promoted the application from a fun social media network to a full-fledged e-commerce website.

Application Updates

Instagram is getting rid of the need to be instantaneous, as its name suggests, by rolling out a new feature that allows users to save a photo as a draft. This is definitely a step in the right direction for brands and social media moguls who are in desperate need of a post scheduling option on the app.

In another new feature, Snapchat is attempting to reinvent the old QR Codes we knew but never used. The platform announced a new feature called Snap to Unlock, where users will snap photos of Snapcodes on advertisements that will appear on billboards, products and even in stores to view a link the company chooses.

Snapchat is also stepping into the Internet of Things world with their new wearable product, Spectacles. The wearable glasses, which will be retailing for $130 this fall, record 10 second snaps of videos, just like the original app. However, with a quick tap of a button on the frames, the glasses offer users a new kind of video to post because they record from a first-person vantage point and use a 115-degree-angle lens.

Partnerships

In regards to social media partnerships, platforms took advantage of the most-watched presidential debate in American history by offering their users live streaming of the first presidential debate. Facebook teamed up with ABC News to live stream the first of three presidential debates. ABC News broadcasted live coverage of the debate on Facebook Live and also used the network to closely follow user comments and integrate them in their coverage of the event. Additionally, Facebook assisted ABC News by providing them insights such as trending topics throughout the evening.

Twitter also got involved in the debate that shattered audience records by partnering with Bloomberg Media to livestream the event through Twitter’s new video streaming feature. But Twitter didn’t only showcase the debate, it helped run the debate as well. Twitter fed the debate moderator, Lester Holt, live tweets and questions that he could draw from during the debate in order to keep the debate centered around what the electorate thinks while watching.