Campaign Middle East rounds up the latest platform updates on social media, content and streaming platforms from June.
Here are the key highlights:
YouTube:
YouTube announced several new features for advertisers at Google Marketing Live, focusing on enhanced shopping experiences and creator collaborations.
The Masthead placement on mobile is now shoppable, allowing brands to drive discovery, website traffic, and conversions by showcasing new products or key moments in YouTube’s most prominent ad slot.
YouTube is also helping brands with managing creator partnerships within Google Ads. The new central hub allows advertisers to manage existing relationships, discover new creators, and integrate authentic creator content into their ad strategies via “partnership ads.” This feature is rolling out in over 20 markets.
Moreover, brands can also generatively extend videos into all aspect ratios. This AI-powered feature automatically resizes existing video content to fit any missing aspect ratio, ensuring optimal performance across various placements globally.
TikTok:
TikTok hosted a Family Academy initiative in the UAE. The event showcased TikTok’s latest safety feature enhancements designed to support family wellbeing. Many of these enhancements build on Family Pairing, a feature launched five years ago, which continues to evolve with input from families and digital safety experts.
Key enhancements include:
- Time Away: Allows parents to decide when it’s best for their teens to take a break (e.g. during dinner, study time, or bedtime). Teens can request extra time, but parents make the final decision.
- Privacy Controls: Parents can view who their teen follows and who follows them on TikTok, along with accounts their teen has blocked. They can also manage who sees their teens’ content, who can interact with them, and who can send them direct messages.
- Wind Down Mode: Teens under 18 who use the app after 10 PM will receive a full-screen reminder accompanied by calming music to help them unwind. A second reminder follows, harder-to-dismiss, full-screen prompt will appear if they continue scrolling.
- Screen Time Management: Parents can set personalised reminders for teens to limit app usage throughout the day.
Snapchat
Snapchat has relaunched its Family Safety Hub, a refreshed and more inclusive platform designed to help families navigate the app confidently and safely. The updated Hub offers clearer guidance, accessible resources, and new tools that reflect the evolving needs of both parents and teens.
The revamped Family Centre section includes updated guidance on how to use in-app features that enable parents to see who their teen is communicating with – without viewing the content of conversations – helping to strike a balance between safety and autonomy.
New additions to the Hub include a dedicated FAQ section and a reorganised overview of Snapchat’s features, providing a tab-by-tab explanation of the platform and offering practical tips for families. The site also hosts downloadable tools and resources that were previously only available at in-person Snap events. These will be continuously updated as Snapchat’s product features and safety offerings evolve. In addition, relevant videos from Snap’s YouTube channel have been integrated across the platform and will be refreshed quarterly, ensuring the content remains engaging and up to date.
In an effort to educate parents, creators and press, Snapchat hosted an educational session in collaboration with the Abu Dhabi Early Childhood Authority and life educational coach, Hala Kazim.
Google launched Audio Overviews on NotebookLM in more than 50 languages including Arabic, starting this week. Audio Overviews, which turn uploaded sources into engaging, podcast-like conversations, were launched late last year in English.
With Gemini’s native audio support, people can use Audio Overviews in their preferred language, and more updates will come to the feature based on users’ feedback. Audio Overviews are generated in the preferred language of the user’s account. This update also introduces a new “Output Language” option in NotebookLM’s settings. People can change the language at any time, making it easy to create multilingual content or study materials as needed.
For example, a teacher preparing a lesson on – climate change in the region can share resources in various languages – like an Arabic documentary, an English research paper and Spanish study reports – with students. The students can upload these and can generate an Audio Overview of key insights in their preferred language. This capability breaks down language barriers and makes the information more accessible to everyone.
The feature now generates podcasts in Modern Standard Arabic, and Egyptian colloquial Arabic, and the tool will add more dialects soon. NotebookLM is an AI-powered collaborator and is accessible on the web
Pinterest introduced AI-powered auto-collages and new shopping trend forecasting ahead of Cannes Lions 2025.
As part of Pinterest Ad Labs, the platform is piloting auto-collages –a new AI feature that allows advertisers to turn their existing Pinterest product catalogue into thousands of new shoppable collages in minutes.
Collages are already one of the most popular and engaging content types among Gen Z Pinterest users; as early tests indicate that users saved auto-collages at twice the rate of regular product Pins.
Auto-collages will enable advertisers to reach their customers more easily by providing a multitude of creative options for their campaigns on Pinterest – all while saving them time and creative resources.
So, how does it work? Auto-collages intuitively curates, cuts out and groups product images together into new shoppable visual content based on:
- User engagement: Creates new collages that emulate existing collages with strong user engagement.
- Similar products: Selects similar products and groups them together in a grid-style collage.
- User saves: Creates new personalised collages featuring products similar to what users have saved on their boards.
In the coming months, Pinterest is planning gradually expand access to more advertisers.
For more monthly platform updates, check here.
