YouTube is taking a massive step towards linking traditional TV ad buying with digital targeting.
Using the Google Preferred ad buying programme, search-based targeting is now open, meaning users' Google search history and preferences can be overlayed alongside specific YouTube channels.
This is being seen as a pre-emptive move by YouTube to get ahead of the traditional TV networks, who are having to rethink advertising as audiences move away from linear programming towards digital alternatives.
To increase the number of live interactions on the social platform and reinforce its credentials as the place to be for real-time events, twitter has introduced a 'breaking news' module at the top of user timelines.
Showing the top current news story that is generating engagement and interaction, this test feature will jump users to a curated round up of the best tweets about that particular story.
Twitter introduced a similar feature last year under the heading 'happening now' to cover live sports events happening in real time.
Facebook is improving its augmented reality capabilities with a new target tracking feature that allows AR objects to be placed in a multitude of situations.
Using a device's camera to identify what is in a room or landscape, through image cues, the tech in Facebook's AR Studio now allows a relevant AR image to be triggered.
So for brands this opens the possibility of an AR graphic popping up, for instance, when its logo is recognised.
Snapchat is also working on a similar feature, as the AR race hots up among the leading social platforms.
Snapchat's controversy with Rihanna last week doesn't look to have adversely affected the social platform as its UK ad revenues continue to rise.
Advertising income in the UK is on track to overtake that of twitter next year and – perhaps more significantly – that of consumer magazine and cinema advertising in two years.
According to eMarketer, Snapchat's projected £181m ad revenues in Britain next year will see it rush past twitter. While if it stays on track, the following year will see advertising income grow to £310m, above cinema (£200m) and print and digital magazine spend (£300m).
All this is set against the backdrop of Snapchat's continuing volatility as a social platform. It took a massive hit on its share price and popularity earlier in the year when reality TV star Kylie Jenner publicly distanced herself from it. While last week, Rihanna publicly posted an anti-Snapchat post following use of her image in an offensive ad that played on themes of domestic violence.
The simplest questions asked on Google are now being answered without a full list of clickable sites.
Requests such as calculator functions, time or weather questions or unit conversion all return the single answer, together with a button offering to 'show all results'.
Google says it is speeding up the process of dealing with questions by removing all organic results, however, those who rely on search visibility for their business are less optimistic that this is as far as Google will go.