The TwoSix team is back and ready to share what’s On Our Radar for February so that you can stay ahead of the always-evolving digital marketing landscape. This month, the TwoSix team discusses short-form content, Meta Threads ads, email marketing trends, and more! Keep reading to find out what we’re keeping On Our Radar for February 2025.

In October, YouTube announced that their Shorts format would expand to a maximum of 3 minutes for a video. Now, Instagram has done the exact same thing! Instagram Reels can now be 3 minutes! It’s important to remember that just because you have 3 minutes doesn’t mean you have to use all of the allotted time! Shorter, splashier videos tend to do better, but with this change, is long-form going to be coming back into play?

When change comes, it’s usually a good idea to lean into the change. We have often seen that when new formats and options roll out, they receive some priority in the algorithm. It’s typically a good thing to start testing!

Most DMOs have a slew of long-form content in their war chest that could be adapted and recycled for longer-form vertical content. Think about those commercials on your YouTube Channel that are getting zero views. This content might not be performing currently, but what about breathing some new life into it? Sounds easy enough, but the issue usually comes down to time. Luckily, there are a number of tools out there that can help you streamline these processes.

A couple that come to mind that are worth checking out are Invideo.io and Klap.

Invideo.io:  website that offers an online video creation tool that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to make videos. Invideo.io can create videos from text prompts, scripts, blog links, or YouTube links. 

Klap: Klap is an AI-powered video editing tool that creates short, viral video clips from long videos. It’s designed to help content creators repurpose their content for social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. 

Give them a test drive! What’s the worst that can happen? Now that short form is now becoming long form, start thinking about how you can leverage your assets to lean into these new opportunities when it comes to vertical video.

After working on our new blog, “7 Optimizations Your DMO Website’s Homepage Needs to Succeed — With Examples”, one thing became incredibly apparent. There are so many DMO websites out there with introductory paragraphs and other text on the page missing hyperlinks to some of the easiest pages to link to. I’m talking mentions of “outdoor recreation”, “hotels”, and “restaurants”. Those are just begging for hyperlinks. Adding those can do your SEO a world of good, let alone the user experience, allowing them to easily dive deeper.

Of course, linking to any attractions or events is also a no brainer. Taking it one step further, there are likely a few opportunities to link to some blog themes on your home page as well. Do “hidden gems”, “pet-friendly”, “winter activities”, “indoor adventures”, or “reasons to visit” ring any bells?

So, if you’re reading this — please go check on your home page. It’s arguably the most important page on your website, and I would estimate that about 50% of those reading this are missing those simple, but crucial, hyperlinks. It’s quick and painless to do, but it still feels so productive afterwards. You got this.

It seems like every time I get into Meta Ads Manager something is new or different, especially when it comes their AI ad targeting tools. Some of these updates are helping to simplify the process and reach more relevant audiences and others take additional time to work around because it’s just not quite there yet.

When it comes to what’s working, advantage campaign budget at the campaign level seems to be working just fine, spending really hasn’t been an issue and setting the budget at the campaign level isn’t possible without using advantage+ now, you can still set the budget at the ad set level as a work around, however.

Advantage custom audience at the ad set level does seem to give the campaign a bit of a boost working with your custom audiences. There is an option to run an A/B test to see what works best for your ads if you’re not entirely ready to trust it just yet.

Now on to what’s not quite working yet, the ad set up process has gotten a little clunky, time consuming and the creative text image generation and enhancements just isn’t quite there yet. I’ve seen quite a few changes to this process over the last couple months that have increased the time it takes to create an ad in order to turn off the enhancements. By leaving the enhancements on, images appear incorrectly cropped, text can appear on the photo and most of the AI generated photos don’t look very believable.

There’s no doubt that advantage+ will continue to change, it seems like every day there’s something new, sometimes it’s good and sometimes not so good but hopefully there will be new ways in which advantage+ can make our lives a little easier, deliver ads to more relevant audiences and produce better results.

2024 was a huge year for email marketing- with email usage consistently on the rise, new security measures, and the introduction of AI-assisted email design. If you haven’t started harnessing the power of email marketing for your DMO, now is the time! 2025 is looking even more promising for email, let’s dive into the top 3 trends experts are keeping an eye on this year:

AI-Powered Email Inboxes: Apple’s new AI-powered “Priority Messages” is shaking up email marketing in 2025, changing how emails are read and prioritized. This will mean that email users can rely less on preheaders and even skip opening emails that don’t stand out. With these new AI tools, marketers will need to craft stronger subject lines, preheader text, and clear headers within your messages to grab user’s attention and optimize your emails for AI.

Stricter Authentication & More Privacy Measures: Email marketing is tightening up with stricter authentication and stronger privacy measures! Gmail and Yahoo require SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, but many email platforms still need to enforce DMARC to prevent phishing. In 2025, locking down authentication and using BIMI for verified logos will boost trust and deliverability. On the privacy side, brands are experimenting with zero-party data collection and re-permission campaigns to stay ahead of these evolving privacy regulations. 

More AI-Powered Content Creation Tools: AI is expected to continue making its way into email marketing platforms in 2025. AI tools can help with making content creation faster and more personalized. We’ve seen AI-assistance with email copy and subject times but look out for new segmentation tools along with AI template creation. Continue to use caution when trying out these new AI features in 2025 and always proofread any content written by AI, as it may contain errors and often doesn’t have the human sound that we need to appeal to our audiences. In other words, make sure your content doesn’t sound like a robot wrote it. 

As always, I will keep you informed as new email tools and trends arise! Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date on email marketing throughout 2025. 

Beginning on January 24, 2025, advertising in Threads, the text-based social media app built by Instagram, became available to a select number of advertisers.

According to Meta, advertisers will be able to extend their Meta ad campaigns to Thread placements with the simple check of a box in Ads Manager.

The current test primarily features image ads that appear between text posts.

In this example that Meta shared, it appears that Threads placements will require a unique image aspect ratio.

As ads are still being tested, a timeline for an official roll out continues to be unclear. Meta only shared that it would “learn from this test,” and have yet to announce an official date as to when Threads advertising would become more largely available.

Since the platforms launch in 2023, The Threads community now has over 320-million monthly, active users, and is Meta’s newest, and fastest growing social media platform. It’s on a trajectory to become a leading discussion platform, and Zuckerberg says he expects the platform to reach one billion users over the next several years, giving it the potential to become an extremely valuable platform for social media marketing

With the ever-changing digital marketing world, we are here to keep you informed of new digital trends and what we are keeping on our radar each month. Have any questions? Contact us! We’re here to help.

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