Good morning Marketer, are you in the market to test a new tool? 

Small businesses, in particular – this one’s for you. The Microsoft Digital Marketing Center (DCM) – a free platform designed for SMBs to manage automated search and social campaigns – is now available in open beta in the U.S. The company had been piloting the free platform across Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram since June.

With the move to beta, Microsoft has added several new features, among which include on-site analytics that report whether users complete desired conversion actions on your website, AI-driven search term control, and ad review for auto-generated text ads based on business categories. 

In other news, today marks the final day of our three-day MarTech virtual conference. If you haven’t signed up yet, you can do so here – while also catching the on-demand replays of sessions from earlier this week. Scott Brinker’s Tuesday keynote stands out as one not to miss – he takes a look at the future of martech to discuss five key trends for the decade ahead

Check out the rest of the agenda here

Taylor Peterson,
Deputy Editor 

 
 
 

Compare 13 top marketing automation platforms

MarTech Today’s “B2B Marketing Automation Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide” examines the market for B2B marketing automation software platforms. This report includes profiles of 13 leading B2B marketing automation vendors, capabilities comparisons, pricing information, and recommended steps for evaluating and purchasing.

Get it now »

 
Social Shorts
 

Snapchat’s ‘First Commercial’ format hits

Snapchat’s non-skippable video takeover unit called First Commercial is now out of testing and available to US and UK advertisers in Ads Manager. The ad unit gets its name because it’s guaranteed to be the first ad a user sees that day on premium Shows. The ads run across all Shows for maximum audience reach. 

Snap is also opening the ability to buy Extended Play Commercials which can be up to 3 minutes long in Ads Manager. 

Snap also says it will be launching more Shows, including a Snap Originals docuseries, later this year and in 2021.

Why we care. Snapchat says daily Shows watching has increased 45% year-over-year. The company also says that when a Commercial is the first ad impression a user sees, it drives 2x higher brand awareness compared to a Snap Ad. Brands can now buy the video unit via the self-serve Ads Manager and enable conversion tracking.

 

Last chance to join us live for MarTech!

Log on for the final day of MarTech! Tactic-rich sessions, empowering keynotes, virtual networking, and more… all for free. Log on now!

Register now! »

 
 
 
What we're reading
 

We've curated our picks from across the web so you can retire your feed reader.

Slack is getting Instagram-like stories and push-to-talk audio calls for the pandemic era – The Verge 

‘Do Not Track’ Is Back, and This Time It Might Work – Wired 

How Kraft Heinz, MolsonCoors and L’Oréal make the most of CTV’s pandemic-related growth – Marketing Dive

Salesforce, Okta Partner to Help Firms With Contact Tracing – Bloomberg

‘Sleeping giant’: How Google stands to shake up the connected TV platform war – Digiday