Snapchat?s new sponsored geofilters count McDonald?s as an early adopter and enable brands to reach the platform?s users in a more organic way. Messaging app Line introduced an emoji and stickers keyboard app for iOS as a way to build its presence in the United States, pointing to the importance of this content for younger mobile users. 

?Keyboard stickers and emojis are big business,? said Jeremy Sigel, director of mobile for North America at Essence. ?Bitmoji Keyboard for iOS, Android and Facebook Messenger is surging in popularity. 

?If they are not already, brands should be thinking about branded stickers on all messenger platforms, not just Line,? he said. 

Here are the biggest platform developments from the past week for mobile marketers and their implications:

Snapchat enables consumers to personalize their photos sent to friends and family with a slew of geofiltering stickers to indicate their location, content that can now be sponsored by marketers.  

Snapchat's geofilter stickers offer brands the potential to reach the app's huge user database at a granular level. Users will be able to choose a sponsored geofilter to personalize their content. As the receiving end of the sponsored Snapchats will be on an opt-in-basis, this means that users who open them will view them as non-promotional. 

McDonald?s is using the geofilters to enable customers at any U.S. location to personalize their Snapchat posts with an illustration of a double cheeseburger and an overflowing pouch of fries, for example. 

 

?Mobile marketers looking to leverage Snapchat as a platform should take notice,? he said. ?More-so, it?s a great reminder how brands must communicate with millennial consumers.?

Free messaging app Line launched Emoji Line, a sticker and emoji keyboard app for iOS as part of its burgeoning strategy to attract users outside of Japan, Thailand and Taiwan, where it already has a strong presence. Stickers and emoji are a big part of the Line experience and while it is not clear if the Emoji Line app will hold branded content, it is still a reflection of the importance of this kind of content for reaching millennials. 

Mobile programmatic is an extension of a program introduced last year on desktop and includes upgrades from this year enabling advertisers to target ads based on a variety of data including age, gender, ZIP code and multiple customer segments. 

While competition in the streaming music space continues to grow, Pandora remains a popular platform for reaching mobile users, with programmatic buying likely to deliver a boost. 

Essence was an early tester of programmatic buying for mobile display ads. 

While the microblogging site continues to try to boost its services as it tries to attract users and retain its relevancy in the quickly evolving mobile space, it remains to be seen how effective these efforts will be. 

Two weeks ago, the company lifted the 140-character limited on Direct Messages in an effort to become more of a messaging platform. 

Last week, Twitter announced Project Lightning, which is another attempt by the company to make it easier for users to follow live events ? which is where Twitter?s biggest value to users has been to date ? by curating and aggregating relevant content in one place. Users will no longer need to scroll through an endless stream of tweets, potentially decreasing the relevancy of the Twitter timeline. 

At the same time, Twitter continues to tweak the timeline experience, introducing last week the ability for native videos, Vines and GIFs to play back automatically. 

In a sign of the potential limitations of live-streaming apps such as Periscope, the US Open last week warned attendees not to use the app to stream matches or they will be kicked out. This points to how live-streaming apps could potentially disrupt a key monetization strategy of such events ? broadcast rights. 

Periscope and its rival Meerkat burst on the scene earlier this year, with numerous brands quickly embracing the opportunity to stream live content and connect with mobile users in a more authentic manner. 

However, as the US Open and similar bans imposed by other live events points out, there is still much to figured out in terms of when and how they will be used. 

As with other example of mobile disrupting an industry, there may be little that events organizers can do. 

?Logistically, I?m interested to see how live-streaming bans will be implemented,? Mr. Sigel said. ?I have a hard time understanding how enforcement officers strolling aisles will be able to distinguish between patrons innocently taking pictures, or streaming live video. 

?I think Periscope offers brands a unique opportunity to align with live events and key cultural moments, not unlike Twitter,? he said. 

?However, being associated with a banned platform will be frowned on. I would wait it out.