There’s a lot to be said about the Irish weather in April. One day you’re running down Portmarnock beach, feeling like Mitch Buchannon from Baywatch. Another day, you wake up to a downpour that would drown a Titanic. And then, the sun is out again and we’re all enjoying our lunch in Merrion Square, basking in the early summer sunshine, ice cream in hand.
‘It has been another busy month here at VROOM Digital, we have been working away in the background developing out our service offering and optimising internal efficiencies within our teams.
Our focus has been on integrated campaigns in April, allowing us to work on our own business to ensure we reach the lofty goals set for 2019 and beyond. We did sign two humdinger ac’s to match, however, Non-Disclosure prevents sharing on these two!! Await the case study!
Still hiring for 2 more full-time roles at the moment on PPC and SEO. So take a look if you’re in market today to work for our Award winning team!’ – Shane Curtin, Managing Director said.
Now that we are back to our usual routine, it’s time to get back on track with the latest digital breaking news.
Google Messed Up. Again
On April 7th many web pages were removed from Google’s index for apparently no reason. At a later stage, Google officially acknowledged there was a technical issue causing pages to be deindexed that they were trying to fix.
Sites that were affected by it saw a drop in data in Google Analytics and Search Console from April 4 to April 10, but according to John Mueller, there’s nothing for site owners to do in response to this issue, everything would settle back down all on its own.
While Google did not provide any details about the cause of the issue, it ended up being resolved only on April 10th.
More Keywords, More Opportunities
Good news for our fellow keyword users. You can now enter up to ten seed keywords in the planner when searching for new ideas. More seeds mean more flowers and we expect to see a greenhouse of more relevant keyword ideas exploding in the SERPs near you.
Other interesting novelties are:
- The monthly keyword trends report. Hovering over the ideas table, you’ll see trends for each individual keyword.
- Grouped ideas. You can filter keywords by theme and remove or add them to an ad set according to their relevance.
- The possibility to add keywords to an already existing campaign.
Google Ads Editor “Improved”
A new version of Google Editor has been released with a new feature named Cross-account management. The design and usability has been changed slightly, even if Google is selling it as a major turn point.
Editor now supports cross-account management, allowing advertisers to use Editor seamlessly across different Google Ads accounts from a single window. This includes adding “the same set of keywords across different accounts, update campaign settings across your entire book of business or download relevant stats across any grouping of your accounts.”
Google also writes that they improved the interface to ease up and speed up task execution. Whether or not this is an “improvement” could be argued.
Moreover, the search engine giant rolled out additional custom rules, additional call-to-action for all video ads, recommended daily budgets and full support for message extension.
Google Analytics: Cross-device Activity on Attribution Reports
Following feedback from many advertisers about inconsistent conversion counts across different reports, Google added cross-device activity to all attribution reports (previously, only the Devices, Assisting Devices, and Device Paths attribution reports included cross-device activity).
This update allows advertisers to see paths customers take to complete a conversion action and attributes credit to different ad clicks along the way. So if a user clicked an ad while on Mobile and then came back through an ad on Desktop and completed a conversion action, we can see this in the attribution reports.
Premium Version of Google My Business
“Is there something else we can monetise?” someone in Google must have asked. And they came up with Google My Business Premium.
At the moment it’s just a project. Google is sending out surveys to test people’s’ interest in paying for access to premium Google My Business featuring the following benefits:
- Google customer support
- “Book” button on your business profile
- Promote your “Book” button
- Verified reviews
- Promoted map pin
- Call reports and recordings
- Verified bookings
- Automated message responses
- Automated response for reviews
- Google search results placement
- Get leads from competitor profiles
- Background check
- Instant quote
- Request quote
- Offers
- Featured review
- Google Guarantee
- Remove ads from your business profile
- Verified licenses
- Video on your business profile
From as little as $25 a month, local businesses could easily gain advantage over their competitors. Sounds like a smart move, Google.
Bing Ads Become Microsoft Advertising
The future generations of marketers will look bewildered if you mention Bing Ads, just like you would look at someone saying they advertise on BackRub (the old name of Google).
‘These days, marketers have more power than ever to identify and reach customers. With data, AI and automation at your fingertips, it’s no longer just reaching more people that matters to growing your brand. It’s about making each connection feel one-to-one, at just the right time and place. More meaningful, more timely, and more valuable — this is how we see advertising evolving. We’re evolving, too. We’re changing our name from Bing Ads to Microsoft Advertising.’ – Rik van der Kooi, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Search Advertising wrote in their official blog.
The rebrand is not just a change of name. In the next year, more advertising products with built-in AI, more connected to customers’ data and business will be introduced. Thus, this rebranding decision reflected the platform’s tendency towards supporting many different ad formats, rather than just search ads.
The most interesting innovation is the introduction of Sponsored Products, which will allow manufacturers to promote their products in shopping campaigns with their retailer partners. Currently available in beta in the U.S. only, Sponsored Products manufacturers will be able to “gain access to new reporting and optimization capabilities, and retailers get additional product marketing support with a fair cost split.”
In-App Local Business Profile Pages on Instagram
Do you have a small business and are looking for new ways to showcase it? Here is one: Instagram is testing in-app profile pages resembling Google My Business profiles. These mini websites feature address, website, contact information, pricing, opening hours and the most recent Instagram posts.
At the time of writing, this is a quiet test and only a few people got to see a small preview of this feature. However, keep an eye out. After the shopping feature introduced last month and this new in-app business profile, it looks like Instagram is striving to become something more than a lifestyle platform.
New Facebook Ads Manager Design
Facebook bestowed us with a fresh Facebook Ads Manager design that will become available throughout the month of April. However, it’s not only about aesthetics, there is a bunch of new features that are worth your attention:
- An auto-naming feature to customize campaigns, ad set and ad names.
- Copy and paste functionality in one step when building ads.
- More intuitive ad-level creative and placement editing tools.
- The Campaign, Ad Set and Ad tabs will move to the left of the table to a navigation sidebar.
- The collapsible reporting tray will be replaced by a side-by-side view that allows you to simultaneously interact with the main table and view charts or edit.
Facebook Business Manager Permissions Update
Business Manager permissions have been modified slightly to give more control to business admins. It is now possible to give access to users by task, so that people in your Business account will be able to see and modify only specific assignments.
New navigation buttons are also found anywhere in the business dashboard to swiftly add people and assets whenever you need.
Facebook Pixel Event Setup Tool
A couple of weeks ago we made a pleasant discovery: you can now set up pixel events without the need of putting your hands on the code!
You still need to add the base pixel code to your website, but the new Event Setup Tool is a codeless, flawless method to integrate pixel events. It’s such a great option for non-technical marketers to add events based on pageviews or button clicks. By following a simple step-by-step set up, you can track newsletter subscriptions, contact form submissions, clicks on phone numbers and actions related to e-commerce.
Snapchat Stories & Ads in Other Apps
Snapchat might have found a solution to its revenue problem: it’s launching Snapchat Ad Kit and Snapchat Audience Network. These new features will let third-party apps host Snapchat Stories and ads (something that Google Display Network, Facebook Audience Network and LinkedIn Audience Network were taking advantage of for a long time already).
Marketers will be able to reach Snapchat users and also non-users by displaying ads in other apps (like Tinder, Patreon and Postmates).
They also announced the launch of a new augmented reality utility platform called Scan, and its new multiplayer games platform, based on Snap’s acquisition of PrettyGreat, an Australian game studio with talent from HalfBrick (which built Fruit Ninja).
Dedicated Section in Google Search Results for AMP Stories
AMP Stories now appear in a dedicated section in search results for general queries such as “things to do in Dublin”. For those who don’t know what AMP stories are, they are features allowing users to capture and post related images and video content in a slideshow format, just like Instagram stories. The main differences are that AMP stories can be linked to a web page and they last as long as the creator wants.
It’s a new opportunity to attract users in a more engaging and social media-like way. The question is if there is a reserved section for paid results, one for AMP stories, one for featured snippets, who’s going able to show up in Google’s first SERP anymore?
Also, did you know you can find AMP Stories Data added to Google Search Console from now? You can find this new feature under the performance report in Search Appearance – simply filter ‘AMP non-rich results’ to see the engagement. However, this options is not visible for everyone in GSC yet.
Compared to March, this was a very quiet month. It seems that even the Silicon Valley’s giants were busy sipping a freshly made mojito under the Californian sun. After all, it’s good to take a break from digital every once in a while. If you ever feel overwhelmed by the complexity of digital marketing, remember that VROOM is here to help. Contact us to ask for our advice or simply to have a chat. Last but not least, try googling Thanos!
If you want to stay updated with all the digital marketing news, don’t forget to check our previous VROOM Digijuice post as well!
