Campaign Middle East rounds up the latest platform updates on social media and content and streaming platforms from October. Here are the key highlights:
Google: Google started rolling out AI Mode in Google Search in 36 new languages including Arabic, and across 200 countries and territories in total. Google also introduced other platform updates this month.
It also announced a free, one-year subscription to Gemini Pro, Google’s most advanced AI model, for university students (above the age of 18) across the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Jordan, after launching the offer in Saudi Arabia and Egypt last month.
In addition, Google introduced the AI Film Award, an open call for local and global creators to submit short films made using Google’s AI models and tools, including Gemini. The winner will receive a $1m prize, presented at the 1 Billion Followers Summit in Dubai.
Snapchat: Snap announced the launch of the App Power Pack, an innovative suite of advertising tools and solutions designed to support app marketers to enhance performance and achieve measurable results on Snapchat.
The App Power Pack integrates seamlessly into both new and existing campaigns and has already demonstrated the ability to increase app install rates by at least 25 per cent. The pack supports both Apple’s SKAdNetwork (SKAN) campaigns as well as non-SKAN campaigns.
Spotify: Spotify released its first Saudi edition of the Loud & Clear report, an annual global music economics report designed to bring greater transparency to the industry by sharing data on royalty payments and breaking down the streaming economy. More than 90 per cent of royalties generated for Saudi artists came from outside the Kingdom, underscoring the export potential of Saudi music.
The number of Saudi artists generating more than SAR100,000 annually on Spotify has also doubled since 2023, showing how streaming is translating discovery into financial opportunity and enabling more artists to build sustainable careers.
LinkedIn: LinkedIn has launched Career Hub, the world’s first platform that helps organisations guide employee growth using their own talent data and LinkedIn’s real-time skills insights.
Designed to help organisations stay ahead of evolving workforce needs, Career Hub brings together LinkedIn Learning and the power of data from more than a billion career journeys to give talent and learning leaders the intelligence they need to act before skills gaps appear.
With data-driven career pathways, employees can see the skills and roles their company needs most, along with tailored learning content to help them get there. And with opportunity matching at scale, Career Hub connects people to internal roles and projects that align with their skills, increasing mobility and visibility across the organisation.
Meta: On October 1, Instagram launched Maps globally – a new, lightweight way to connect with friends and see what’s happening around you.
Users can now opt in to share their last active location with selected friends, explore content posted by friends and creators nearby, and customise privacy controls by choosing who can see their location or turning sharing off any time. Parents with supervision enabled can also manage their teen’s location-sharing settings for safer use. Any content with a location tagged can show up on the map, including, reels, posts and stories, from people followed and notes from people mutually followed, available for 24 hours.
Instagram has also introduced Friends; a new tab in Reels where you can see public content friends have interacted with. Friends will help users see which reels the people they care about the most are creating and engaging with.
