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Any fan of 90s pop culture will remember the show “Clarissa Explains It All,” a series about a precocious adolescent whose adventures most of us could only dream about. In one episode, Clarissa was required to write a poem for school, but lacked the skills or motivation to carry it out. But she was in luck — her computer wrote the poem for her, and it was a hit.

Today, I realize that her computer was an early form of a bot. It was the first pop culture reference to AI I ever saw.

But AI and bots both existed long before the days of Clarissa. In fact, some even claim that the idea of them is rooted in ancient Greek mythology. For the purposes of this post, we’ll focus on when machines really began interacting with humans, beginning around 1950.

Fictional references aside, let’s explore what exactly constitutes a bot, and how we arrived at an era in which — whether you want to admit it or not — bots have become essential to some of our most routine tasks.

What Are Bots?

A bot is a type of automated technology that’s programmed to execute certain tasks without human intervention. That is, it might be prompted by a human to perform an action, but it can carry it out on its own.

Bots are one form of artificial intelligence (AI), which my colleague Mimi An explains brilliantly — it’s “technology that can do things humans can uniquely do, whether it’s talk, see, learn, socialize, and reason.” So many of the bots with which we’re most familiar today, like Siri and Google Assistant, are artificially intelligent enough to answer questions like a human being would. Have a look at the latter:

Most of us use bots regularly — 55% of us use voice assistant technology, for example, on a daily or weekly basis. They’ve become common solutions for a number of needs, like customer service, or you might have seen one used as a promotion that you didn’t even realize was a bot. How does it work? We’ll get to that. First, let’s see where this all began.

A Brief History of Where Bots Come From

The 1950s

The Turing Test

In 1950, computer scientist and mathematician Alan Turing developed the Turing Test, also known as the Imitation Game. Its most primitive format required three players — A, B, and C.

• Player A was a machine and player B was a human.
• Player C, also a human, was the interrogator, and would enter questions into a computer.
• Player C received responses from both Players A and B.
• The trick was, Player C had to determine which one was human.

But there was a problem. At the time, databases were highly limited, and could therefore only store a certain amount of human phrases. That meant that the computer would eventually run out of answers to give Player C, eliminating the challenge and prematurely ending the test.

The Test Is Still Around — and Cause for Controversy

In 2014, the University of Reading hosted Turing Test 2014, in which an entire panel of 30 judges filled the position of Player C. If all of the judges were convinced that the machine’s answers were actually from a human over 30% of the time, the machine would be considered to have “beaten” the test — which is exactly what happened. An AI program named Eugene Goostman, developed to simulate a 13-year-old boy in Ukraine, had 33% of the judges convinced that he was human.

According to the university, it was the first occasion on which any AI technology was said to have passed the Turing Test. But those results were met with praise and criticism alike — the contention was even a topic on NPR’s popular “All Things Considered”. Many were skeptical of Eugene Gootsman’s capabilities and asking if they were really any more advanced than the most primitive forms of AI technology.

Regardless, Turing is rightfully considered a pioneer in this space, as he may have set into motion a series of events that led to AI as we know it today. Only five years later, the 1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence was run by mathematics professor John McCarthy — who is said to have invented the term “artificial intelligence” — which led to AI becoming a research discipline at the university.

In 1958, while at MIT, McCarthy went on to develop LISP — a programming language that became the one most preferred for AI and, for some, remains so today. Many major players in this space, including computer scientist Alan Kay, credit LISP as the “greatest single programming language ever designed.”

The 1960s

ELIZA

One of the most significant AI developments of the 1960s was the development of ELIZA — a bot, named in part for the Pygmalion character, whose purpose was to simulate a psychotherapist. Created in 1966 by MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum, the technology was limited, to say the least, as was ELIZA’s vocabulary. That much was hilariously evidenced when I took it for a spin — which you can do, too, thanks to the CSU Fullerton Department of Psychology.

But Weizenbaum knew that there was room for growth, and even likened ELIZA himself to someone “with only a limited knowledge of English but a very good ear”.

“What was made clear from these early inventions was that humans have a desire to communicate with technology in the same manner that we communicate with each other,” Nicolas Bayerque elaborated in VentureBeat, “but we simply lacked the technological knowledge for it to become a reality at that time.”

That wasn’t helped by the 1966 ALPAC report, which was rife with skepticism about machine learning and pushed for a virtual end to all government funding to AI research. Many blame this report for the loss of years’ worth of progress, with very few significant developments taking place in the bot realm until the 1970s — though the late 1960s did see a few, such as the Stanford Research Institute’s invention of Shakey, a somewhat self-directed robot with “limited language capability”.

The inaugural International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization was also held in 1969 — which still takes place annually — though any noticeably revitalized interest or attention paid to AI would be slow to follow.

The 1970s – 1980s

Freddy

In the early 1970s, there was much talk around Freddy, a non-verbal robot developed by researchers at the University of Edinburgh that, while incapable of communicating with humans, was able to assemble simple objects without intervention. The most revolutionary element of Freddy was its ability to use vision to carry out tasks — a camera allowed it to “see” and recognize the assembly parts. However, Freddy wasn’t built for speed, and it took 16 hours to complete these tasks.

Bots in Medicine

The 1970s also saw the earliest integrations of bots in medicine. MYCIN came about in 1972 at Stanford Medical School, using what was called an expert system — asking the same types of questions a doctor would to gather diagnostic information and referring to a knowledge base compiled by experts for answers — to help identify infectious disease in patients.

That was followed by the creation of the similar INTERNIST-1 in the mid-1970s at the University of Pittsburgh — which, it’s worth noting, relied on McCarthy’s LISP — which then evolved into Quick Medical Reference, a “decision support system” that could make multiple diagnoses. This technology has since been discontinued.

Larger Conversations Around Bots

The early 1980s saw a continuation of larger meetings on AI, with the first annual Conference of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence taking place at the start of the decade. That decade also saw the debut of AARON, a bot that could create original both abstract and representational artwork, which was exhibited — among other venues — at the Tate Gallery, Stedelijk Museum, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Despite all of the very recent talk of self-driving cars, the technology behind them actually dates back to the 1980s, as well. In 1989, Carnegie Mellon professor Dean Pomerleau created ALVINN — “Autonomous Land Vehicle In a Neural Network” — a military-funded vehicle that was powered to limitedly self-operate with computer control.

The 1990s – early 2000s

Consumer-Facing Bots

The following decade saw a major shift in bots in becoming increasingly consumer-facing. Some of the earliest computer games are often thought of as primitive consumer-facing bots, especially those in which players had to type in commands to progress — though no one can really seem to remember what any of them were called.

But one additional example was the 1996 Tamagotchi. Though not specifically labeled as a bot, the interaction was similar — it was a handheld, computerized “pet” that required digitized versions of care that a real dependent might require, like feeding, playtime, and bathroom breaks.

If nothing else, robots were becoming smarter and more capable in the 90s, to the extent that they were even able to independently compete in athletic matches — one of the most notable instances was the 1997 first official RoboCup games and conference, in which 40 teams comprised exclusively of robots competed in tabletop soccer matches.

SmarterChild and More

The year 2000 was somewhat pivotal in the realm of humans speaking to bots. That’s the year SmarterChild — “a robot that lived in the buddy list of millions of American Online Instant Messenger (AIM) users,” writes Ashwin Rodrigues for Motherboard — was released. It was pre-programmed with a backlog of responses to any number of queries, but on some level, was really a primitive version of voice search tools like Siri. 

“Google had already been out and Yahoo! was strong, but it still took a few minutes to get the kind of information you wanted to get to,” Peter Levitan, co-founder and CEO of ActiveBuddy — the company behind SmarterChild — told Motherboard. “You said, ‘what was the Yankee’s score last night,’ and as soon as you hit enter, the result popped up.” It was technology that he says, at the time, “blew people’s minds.”

Source: Lukas Thoms

And while the technology was, at first, enough for Microsoft to acquire ActiveBuddy, it wasn’t long before it also discontinued to the technology.  

The early 2000s also saw further progress in the development of self-driving cars, when Stanley, a vehicular bot invented at Stanford, was the first to complete the DARPA challenge — a 142-mile-long course in the Mojave desert that had to be traversed in under 10 hours.

Bayerque, for his part, sees the 2000s as the real catalyst for major bot progression in the increasing popularity of smartphone use. It began, he claims, when developers had the “obstacle of truncating their websites to fit onto a much smaller screen,” which ultimately led to a conversation about usability and responsiveness. “Could we find a better interface?” he subsequently asked. As it turns out, we could — one with which we ultimately began interacting as if it were another person.

Enter voice search.

2011 and Beyond

With regard to Bayerque’s credit to smartphone use, it can be conjectured that voice search gave rise to the rapid growth of bots among consumers due to their introduction of AI personal assistance. Prior to that, one of the few household names in AI was iRobot, which actually began as a defense contractor and eventually evolved into the manufacturing of what the Washington Post calls a “household robot” — namely, the Roomba.

But people couldn’t communicate with Roomba on a verbal level. Sure, it could clean the floors, but it couldn’t really help with anything else. So when Siri was introduced in 2011 and could answer questions — on demand, right from your phone, and without having to visit a search engine — the game changed. There was new technology to improve upon and, therefore, a newly eager market for assistive voice technology.

Today, we have four major pillars of voice search:

It didn’t take long for manufacturers to combine voice search with the Internet of Things — in which things like home appliances, lighting, and security systems can be controlled remotely. Amazon released its Echo only three years after Siri debuted, using a bot named Alexa to not only answer your questions about the weather and measurement conversions, but also to handle home automation.

Google, of course, had to enter the space, and did so with its 2015 release of Google Home. (And if you’re curious to know more about how it differs from the Echo, check out our breakdown here.)

The key theme here has really become service. At this point, bots aren’t just being used for voice search and other forms of personal assistance — brands have also started implementing them for customer service. In April 2016, Facebook announced that its Messenger platform could be integrated with bots — which would “provide anything from automated subscription content like weather and traffic updates, to customized communications like receipts, shipping notifications, and live automated messages all by interacting directly with the people who want to get them.” Here’s an example of how two major brands — Louis Vuitton and Everlane — use the platform for customer service:

Source: Digiday

We’re even seeing a revamping of technology that was pioneered by MYCIN and INTERNIST-1 with bots like Healthtap, which uses — you guessed it — a database of medical information to automatically answer user questions about symptoms.

But even all of the developments listed here merely comprise the tip of the iceberg. Just look at this additional research on bots from An — there are currently so many uses for bots, that it’s virtually (if you’ll excuse the pun) impossible to list them all in one place.

…And It’s Not Over Yet

Just this month, an announcement was made about yet another personal assistant bot, Olly. As Engadget described it, it shares most of the same capabilities as the Echo and Google Home, but it has a better personality — yours.

Yes, that’s correct — we’re now working with bots that are trained to observe your behavioral patterns and can listen to the way you speak, and begin to imitate it. Whether it’s the food you order, the books you read, the jargon you use, Olly can figure it out and take it on. Cool, or creepy?

This latest development just goes to show that what used to be limited to science fiction is very quickly becoming reality. And no matter how you feel about it — scared, excited, or both — nobody can accuse it of being dull. We’ll be keeping an eye on the growth of bots, and look forward to sharing further developments.

What are your favorite facts about the evolution of bots? Let us know in the comments.

What was your most embarrassing office etiquette moment? For me, it was when I started to watch a hilarious video of a sheep screaming like a human and quickly realized my headphones weren’t plugged in. I frantically scrambled for the mute button on my keyboard while my distracted coworkers laughed at my mishap.

Sound familiar? Since then, I don’t watch videos at work unless they don’t require sound.

Video content is in high demand from your audience, and many viewers prefer watching videos that don’t require sound. In fact, 85% of videos on Facebook are watched without sound. Videos on Facebook autoplay without sound until users click to turn up volume, and Instagram videos only autoplay with sound if the phone’s ringer is turned on. 

Users are telling platforms their video streaming preferences, and they’re responding with features that make it easier to consume silently. Now, it’s up to content marketers to crack the code for making compelling videos that their audience will click and share, even without sound.

We’ve rounded up some of the best videos from around the internet that you don’t need volume to consume, along with reasons why they’re so great that you can use in your own video content strategy — no headphones required.

Creating Content for the Silent Screen 

Social media platforms have constraints that force marketers to get creative in order to attract attention. Think about it: Twitter has a 140-character limit, which makes you think very strategically about how to tell a story. Snapchat limits recordings to 10 seconds, forcing you to get to the point, and quickly.

What does all of this mean for marketers? It’s time to get creative to get noticed on social media. Due to the volume constraints popular social platforms set on what you’re posting, creating a video that doesn’t require sound is a smart strategy to drive video views and engagement. By making videos “volume-agnostic,” anyone can watch and understand them, whether they’re on a desktop computer or browsing their social feeds on their commute. These videos might feature background instrumental music, but the bulk of the information is presented with graphics and captions so your audience can effectively “read” a video when it’s muted.

Because nearly 80% of social media time is spent on mobile devices, making videos that are consumable with or without headphones is a great strategy to drive engagement on social media. We found several brands that are doing this well, so keep reading for tips for creating your own soundless video

11 Videos You Can Watch Without Volume

1) Tasty on BuzzFeed

Tasty on BuzzFeed shares recipe videos that don’t require volume — or a lot of time — to enjoy. Tasty videos reach 500 million people per month, and in December 2016, Tasty generated 1.4 billion video views — 1.2 billion of which came from Facebook. Tasty’s social media virality has something to do with the fact that the videos can be watched without sound, and a few key things make them so successful. 

They’re filmed in hyperlapse-style, which is immediately eye-catching and makes viewers want to stick around to learn how to make the rest of the recipe. What’s more, Tasty videos solve problems for the viewer. In the example above, Tasty demonstrates how to make spaghetti in four different ways in a video that earned more than 76 million views.

Its “Four Ways to Make Anything” series is among its most popular, with each of the videos accumulating tens of millions (and sometimes, hundreds of millions) of views. Tasty’s Producer, Alvin Zhou, told Adweek that recipe popularity and searches inform the videos they film — for example, vegetable swaps for starches and vegetarian options drive views, so they make new videos in response to its audience’s preferences.

If you’re thinking about making a soundless video for your brand, think about Tasty’s approach. Conduct buyer persona research to determine what challenges your audience is trying to solve — in Tasty’s case, it’s finding easy recipes — and adapting the story to a soundless social media landscape.

Tasty uses bold captions when needed, but the cooking demonstration is the video’s star to quickly deliver viewers the information they need to go home and make the recipe. Once you have your story, determine if graphics, animations, captions, or demonstrations (or a combination) are the best way to get the information across to your viewers quickly and silently.

2) Mode

Mode shares lifestyle videos on Facebook and YouTube, and their most popular videos are their “100 Years of” retrospectives that look at a century of changes to a popular trend. And while the decade-specific background music in this video is fun, you can press mute and still learn about the history of women’s workout wear.

Mode shared this video in early 2016, a time of year when millions of people resolve to start exercising more as part of their New Year’s resolution. This soundless video drove engagement on Facebook and YouTube because it was timely. Lots of people were reading and watching content about exercise at the beginning of 2016, but the unique and timely angle of this video made social media scrollers stop and click to learn more. Additionally, it features one star who draws focus and makes the story crystal-clear, even without sound. It also has a simple backdrop, which Wistia recommends in order to maintain focus on the video subject.

If you have a great idea for a soundless video, it doesn’t need to look extremely high-tech or busy. Stick to a clear and focused subject so the story is easy to understand without sound. Then, try to time its publication for a holiday or event when lots of people will be searching for information on the subject on social media and search engines.

3) Refinery29

Refinery29 publishes creative lifestyle inspiration videos, such as the hairstyle demonstration video here that garnered over 1 million views on Facebook. It uses bold and bright colors to attract attention. More than half of pageviews are less than 15 seconds long. Bright colors help this video pop out to viewers against the lighter-colored Facebook News Feed, YouTube homepage, and Twitter feed without sound to rely on.

It also shares pro tips to make a process easier, which cultivates a positive feeling among Refinery29’s audience that the brand is sharing insider knowledge to help them learn how to do something. Finally, the celebrity social proof makes people familiar with Ariana Grande understand what the video is about without need for sound so they’ll continue watching the video.

If you’re sharing a soundless video that’s as short and sweet as this one, make it visually eye-catching with color, and use social proof to compel people to keep watching, if you can. And if you can, amp up your topic’s social proof in the video’s title by mentioning a prominent figure like Ariana Grande, a short stat, or superlative words like “popular,” “best,” and “worst” to draw attention that way.

4) NowThis

NowThis News, a social media outlet, only produces video content — a neat way to get the news, if you ask me. NowThis publishes video news segments that work with or without sound, and the captions and video content work together to show and tell viewers what the story is all about.

In this example, NowThis uses shock factor to draw in viewers. Tylenol is one of the most popular painkillers in the U.S. alone, and the shock factor of learning your headache cure could impact your relationships makes viewers want to watch to learn more. Without sound, dramatic titles and headlines to draw viewers’ attention are necessary. Additionally, the video features a negative headline, which Outbrain get more clicks than positive headlines.

When making a soundless video, make sure to choose a compelling angle to play up in the headline, captioning, and the video itself on social media. Whether it’s humor, anger, or disgust, find a unique way to relate a subject to your audience’s story to get them to click.

5) Business Insider

Business Insider publishes video content about industry news on Facebook, and this video is one of their most popular at almost 3 million views. The video employs the curiosity gap, a psychological concept that awareness of information we don’t know yet makes us eager to learn it. Words like “hidden messages” trigger that curiosity and make viewers want to click to learn more and supplement the lack of sound. 

The topic is also highly visual. If you’re telling a story without sound, make sure the subject matter can be easily visualized so you don’t rely on captions too heavily. Instead, rely on numerical data, animations, and images to tell the story for you.

6) BuzzFeed Video

BuzzFeed publishes videos on a variety of different topics. This one is popular at nearly 2 million views for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, it’s funny. Emotion is a useful tool in advertising, and content that incites positive reactions, such as laughter, drives engagement. In order to communicate humor without sound, the content has to be highly visual, which Snapchat photos and videos already are.

Then, by using the word “best” in the video’s title, BuzzFeed has told viewers without using sound that the video will invoke a great reaction, like laughing or being inspired. It’s also a simple concept — a slideshow of funny Snapchat captions — which makes it work as a soundless video because it doesn’t require much additional context to understand.

7) The Dodo

The Dodo publishes stories about animals, which involved lots of videos of them being cute. Their soundless videos work because they mostly feature animal stars. It’s not an exact science, but animals are a great marketing tool. It’s probably because they’re cute and make us feel positive emotions when we see them. When making a soundless video, try choosing a topic or subject that incites strong positive or negative emotions to drive engagement.

Another perk of this video is that it’s unexpected. When you think about pigs, do you typically imagine them wearing jackets or enjoying belly rubs? Me either, and that made me want to click on it just by seeing it, without having to hear anything about it with sound on. 

If you’re filming a video that can be viewed without sound, think about the star of the content. Whether it’s a brilliant animation or an adorable piglet, try to elicit an emotional response and surprise viewers with something provocative to make them keep watching.

8) Tech Insider

Tech Insider is Business Insider’s technology news division, and they publish unique science and tech explainer videos that don’t require sound. This one uses cool visuals to break down a complicated concept. The animations used in this video draw attention in busy social media feeds and work with the captions illustrate the story, step-by-step.

It also answers a common question. Who else remembers spending the summer covered in mosquito bites? The title of this video made me instantly curious. If your organization has a product or expert who can inform on a common query, that could be a great subject for a soundless video.

9) 5-Minute Crafts

The name of their Facebook Page is self-explanatory: 5-Minute Crafts publishes easy craft explainer videos that use household items. Their soundless videos work well because they focus on ease. The name of the page already tells viewers that they’re going to learn how to do something quickly and easily. Then, the video’s title tells viewers that they’ll be able to repurpose things they already have to turn them into toys. This focus on time and money-saving immediately draws people in to watch the rest of the video. 

If you’re thinking about doing a soundless demonstration or DIY video, consider leveraging the fast-action filming style used in this video — as well as the Tasty videos — as it tends to stand out in busy news feeds where you’re fighting for attention.

10) Vox 

Vox publishes a ton of video content on social media channels where they do in-depth explainers of complicated topics in the news. This soundless video explains Deflategate, the pro football scandal that dominated the news for more than a year, in less than two minutes.

It’s a complicated story, but Vox communicates it succinctly and clearly in this video with the help of bold captions, animations, and humor. The captions visually tell the more complicated parts of the story, while the video relies on photographs and animated graphics to set the scene of the story: who was involved, where it happened, and why it matters.

The emojis and interactive highlighting and texting add humor to the story to provoke a response and, hopefully, get viewers to share the video.

11) HubSpot

Not to toot our own horn, but here’s our video review of how social media changed in 2016. The video uses captions and animations to build suspense, and promises to take viewers through a retrospective, which draws them in to watch until the end.

It’s also very meta: A video on social media, about social media is a unique story within a story. There’s a lot of variety among the videos included, but all of these videos have a few things in common:

• They’re under five minutes in length
• They use captions
• The stories are simple

Whether you work for a B2B software company or a news organization, you can use video to tell your brand’s story in a more engaging way. If your video doesn’t require sound, so much the better for sharing it on social media. When you’re ready to make your own, here are our tips for making a killer marketing video.

What are some of your favorite “soundless” videos? Share with us in the comments below.

Facebook Ads are going to drive more leads for your business in 2017 than any other paid channel. You’ll need to have the right strategy and execute with agility and precision, but right now there is a massive Facebook opportunity for inbound marketers. An opportunity that if you take advantage of now, will pay off for years.

Technology changes fast but that doesn’t stop us from missing big shifts. This is because they never happen all at once, but every once in awhile you can catch a glimpse of change in motion. Right now, this is the case with Facebook.

Facebook’s growth has been tremendous — and I don’t just mean the number of people who have a Facebook profile. Its most exciting growth has come from its network:

• Facebook (desktop/mobile): 1.18 billion daily active users, as of September 2016.
• Instagram: 600 million users, as of December 2016 — with 50% of all users following a business.
• Facebook Messenger: Over one billion monthly active users, as of July 2016.While those are a big numbers, it’s just the visible part of the iceberg. What’s fascinating is the amount of time people spend with this network. In May of 2016, Zuckerberg announced that globally users spend 50 minutes a day on average with Facebook properties. That is head and shoulders above any other tech property — and almost as much time as people spend eating and drinking each day.

But Facebook has always had reach. You know it can provide that. What’s new is a subtle shift towards solutions that benefit B2B, midmarket companies.

Why You Should Invest in Facebook Ads

Mobile Marketing Silver Bullet

According to research from Google B2B buyers have increased the amount of mobile research they do by 91% year over year throughout the B2B purchase path. Facebook has cracked the code on mobile marketing.

This is important because as consumers have shifted to mobile over desktop so have B2B buyers. They now do more research, reading, and work on their phones — and spend time on the Facebook app/Instagram/Messenger.

With Facebook you can now reach these people with slick ad units like Lead Ads that promote your event or white paper and allow users to sign up with just a few clicks.

Source: Facebook

Facebook’s Lead Ads eliminate the need for users to fill out a form by using pre-populated data and cut out the landing page step, both of which skyrocket conversion rates and actually make the mobile ads effective for B2B marketers.

The news and information site theSkimm used Facebook Lead Ads to attract new subscribers for its daily newsletter, seeing a 22% increase in lead quality at a cost per acquisition of just $1-2.

If you have a longer sales cycle, you need to influence decision makers wherever and whenever they do research. That means you need a strong mobile strategy. Right now that strategy can simply be Facebook paid and organic.

The Best Ad Technology Available

Facebook offers some of the most powerful, innovative and advanced ad units and targeting. But they present it in a way that makes it easy for marketers to execute. Ads are built around your goals, which makes getting started simple for inbound marketers. Let’s dive into some of their best tech for B2B.

Targeting: Facebook puts heavy duty technology to work to help you reach and connect with the most valuable people for your business. Most marketers start by targeting Friends of your existing users, visitors of your website, or people in your CRM lists. These options can be very powerful but what may be most effective is Facebook’s audience expansion tool Lookalike Audiences.

Lookalike Audiences uses machine learning to help find you valuable potential customers who are similar to those who visit your site or are already in your CRM. So you can upload a list of your most valued customers from your CRM and have Facebook hunt down similar users based on their rich data.

Ad Units: Facebook is also rolling out better B2B ads, like Lead Ads and Canvas. I mentioned them earlier but Lead Ads are worth a look from any B2B or lead focused marketers.

Canvas ads can also be great for B2B and are a storyteller’s dream. They expand into beautiful pieces of creative that allow you to deliver a great marketing via mobile. If you’ve got a more complex product or one that really shines through video consider Canvas.

Instagram Ads: Similar to Canvas the Instagram Ad format is a big, beautiful ad unit. These ads lend themselves to powerful ad creative with strong CTAs. While Instagram may feel more B2C, B2B brands are already having success on the platform.

In the big picture, Facebook is focusing more on solutions that help smaller, B2B companies. This is great news for inbound marketers.

(HubSpot customers: Facebook Ads now integrate with HubSpot, providing you automatic and precise ROI reporting on all your Facebook and Instagram Ads.)

The Future of Facebook Ads

Facebook ad solutions will help you grow today. But investing in Facebook now also sets you up to succeed in the future. By all measures, Facebook has been extremely successful over the last few years but don’t expect it to rest on its laurels. When people all over the world go online today, they go to social, and spend the majority of their time with a Facebook property, but that’s just the start.

Video Ads: Facebook is also investing heavily in video, looking to steal time and attention away from TV and movies. It’s easy to imagine a future where Facebook is the most watched video channel, larger than cable, YouTube, or Netflix.

It already has some powerful video solutions but expect Facebook to grow video ads and get more creative. If video and video ads aren’t yet a part of your B2B marketing strategy now is a good time to consider it.

Source: HubSpot

Messaging Ads: Globally, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp (owned by Facebook) dominate the mobile messaging app space. Messaging is an area that is growing like wildfire and quickly replacing email, text and voice calls for millions of people every day.

As this trend continues, Facebook (Messenger/WhatsApp) could become the main way we all chat with our friends and family on our phones. This is larger an untapped resource for Facebook in terms of ads. It’s a little further out but paying to have your Facebook Messenger B2B bot placed prominently as an option for your target audience could happen.

Virtual Reality Ads: In 2014, the company bought Oculus Rift — the leader in virtual reality technology. This along with its play into video puts Facebook in a better position than any other tech company to lead this format if it becomes the default way to watch movies or play video games. It also opens up a new ad powered revenue stream.

Source: ABC News

Ads Powered by Artificial Intelligence: In the last few years ad targeting, bidding and buying has become much more automated and machine powered.

Programmatic ad buying companies are growing fast and Google, Facebook and others are putting more and more machine learning into the targeting and bidding process. This trend should continue and it is something most marketers should take advantage of. When it works, this automation means less work for you with better results.

Facebook already does this and will look to get more sophisticated with the application of AI for ads. It’s hard to say exactly how ads will fit into all of these bigger best for Facebook but it’s been a very successful model for them. And while it all may feel a little foreign or uncomfortable, the rules of inbound will still hold up as Facebook changes the landscape of marketing.

This is true for ads. Ads haven’t always been part of the inbound playbook, but due to the innovation from Facebook and other ads can be very help and not interruptive. We also know the combination of ads and inbound works.

Source: HubSpot State of Inbound 2016

Have you seen success with Facebook Ads? Are you planning to invest in this area in 2017? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Finding stylish fonts for your design projects can be a major time sink — especially when you have to wade through seemingly endless pages of typefaces that don’t suit the vision you have in your head.

Finding a free font can be even more of a hassle.

So what’s a budget-strapped designer to do?

We’ve scoured the depths of the internet so you don’t have to, coming up with 20 of the best free scripts, serifs, and sans-serifs to use in your next design project.

Many of the free fonts featured here were developed by designers, for designers, so they understand the need for versatile, polished, free typefaces firsthand. Check out the fonts below and keep them in mind for your next design project.

20 of the Best Free Fonts for Designers

Free Script Fonts

1) Hello Stockholm

What happens when you combine Scandinavian minimalism with classic brushstrokes? You get Hello Stockholm, a casual script that plays well with sans-serif fonts.

2) Wildera Regular

We think this whimsical, light-weight script would look right at home in a fairy tale (or in your next project).

3) Mightype

Subtle hand-drawn details set this script apart from the pack. Mightype is sophisticated without being stuffy.

4) Selima

Selima’s breezy brushstrokes are perfect proof that script typefaces don’t have to look old-fashioned or uptight — they can be casual and modern. 

Free Serif Fonts

5) Oranienbaum Regular

From small print to bold headlines, multi-tasking Oranienbaum is up to the challenge.

6) Butler

A decidedly modern serif typeface, Butler comes in 14 different weights to suit a wide variety of different uses.

7) Arctic

If you’re looking for a slab serif font with a modern edge, give Arctic a try. It’s a great way to give your headlines some character.

8) Bitter ht

We love the versatility of Bitter ht, a contemporary serif typeface that looks stylish at any size or weight. 

9) Agne Regular

With bold lines and contrasting stems, this elegant font is a fresh take on old-fashioned serif typefaces. 

10) Yeseva One Regular

If you’re concerned that serif typefaces come across as too uptight or formal, consider Yeseva, a laid-back option for headlines and subtitles. 

Free Sans-serif Fonts

11) Atami

Atami’s numerous weights and display options make it the Swiss Army Knife of modern sans-serifs — it can really do it all. 

12) Mohave

This all-caps font was designed with bold headlines and big type settings in mind.

13) Alcubierre Regular

Clean, minimal, and geometric, Alcubierre is well-suited to projects that require subtle headlines and a clear focus on the content.

14) Bourbon Grotesque

Inspired by — you guessed it — classic bourbon labels, this sans-serif has a big personality that demands attention. 

15) Frontage Outline

Frontage Outline is reminiscent of handcrafted facade signs, making it a suitable pick for logotypes. 

16) Arciform Sans Regular

Arciform might be simple, but this sleek sans-serif is far from boring. Consider including this easy-to-read typeface in your next web design project. 

17) De La Fuente

This cool typeface is decorative without being over-the-top, making it ideal for headlines, logotypes, and other design projects that focus primarily on the text. 

18) Westfalia

Give your next project an outdoorsy, authentic feel with this hand-painted brush sans. 

19) Moon

Have you exhausted your library of simple sans typefaces? Add Moon to the mix. We love this font’s clean simplicity and round edges. 

20) Anders

Anders just might be the avant-garde font of your dreams. It’s unique geometic lines make it an excellent choice for logotypes. 

Editor’s Note: We hope you find these fonts helpful — but because they are offered by other parties on their sites, we can’t make any guarantees or promises about them (like that they will be available or free to use). Also, we want to mention that the designers who offer these fonts might have rules about how you can or can’t use them, so there might be limitations that are applicable to use of the font.