Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots: December 2019, Week 2

Welcome to another edition of Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots, a column where we talk about the most relevant and exciting topics and events that took place in the digital marketing industry during the last seven days (or so).

So, for our “December 2019: Week 2” installment we have prepared some of the most intriguing and important stories from the world of digital marketing.

Here are some of the news we have prepared for you this week:

• Google Search Console Introduces New Feature: Messages
• Two of Google Co-Founders Resign
• Facebook Blesses Advertisers With 3 New Ad Reporting Tools
• Google to Address the Changes in Google Ads Performance 
• Canva Will Introduce a New Video Editing Solution in 2020

…and more. 

 

Google Search Console Introduces New Feature: Messages

Google recently revealed that they will be adding the messaging feature to Google Search Console. GSC messaging will provide publishers an option to access a panel and see messages from Google. The whole idea is to make the process of delivering communications from Google to publishers easier and more streamlined.

An announcement from Google:

“As of today, messages will be available through a panel accessed easily by clicking the bell icon at the top of any page in Search Console. The main difference from the old interface is that now you’ll have access to your messages throughout the product, no need to leave your reports.”

The GSC messages will be divided into the following categories:

• Mobile Usability
• Performance
• Coverage
• Breadcrumbs
• Datasets
• Unparsable Structured Data
• Products

Read more about GSC messaging here. 

 

Two of Google Co-Founders Resign

Recently, Google announced that two of its co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, will be stepping down from their respective roles as CEO and President of Alphabet (holding company); but will still remain active as Google board members and shareholders. 

Sundar Pichai, the current CEO of Google, is said to be moving to the position of Alphabet CEO as well, meaning he will be the CEO of both Alphabet and its daughter company – Google.

Brin and Page wrote a letter in which they explained that it was time for the company to move forward without co-founders daily influence: 

“Sundar brings humility and a deep passion for technology to our users, partners and our employees every day. He’s worked closely with us for 15 years, through the formation of Alphabet, as CEO of Google, and a member of the Alphabet Board of Directors. He shares our confidence in the value of the Alphabet structure, and the ability it provides us to tackle big challenges through technology. There is no one that we have relied on more since the Alphabet was founded, and no better person to lead Google and Alphabet into the future.”

Brin and Page haven’t been involved in the company’s day to day activities and operations for a long time. Pichai now assumes the position of the sole leader of Google. 

 

Facebook Blesses Advertisers With 3 New Ad Reporting Tools

Facebook is introducing new tools to assist advertisers with analyzing campaign performance.

These tools are allowing advertisers to measure ad performance across accounts, channels, and publishers with ease.

This way, advertisers are able to better understand how certain ads are performing, what audience they’re reaching, and where the conversions are coming from.

The 3 tools are:

Cross-Account Reporting

Cross-account reporting provides advertisers with an option to see metrics from multiple ad accounts in one place. These metrics include – data such as reach, impressions, and conversions.

Custom Metrics

This option allows advertisers to build their own custom metrics in order to track more of the relevant data. These metrics can be created once and used across all reports.

Conversion Path Reporting

By using Conversion path reporting, advertisers are now able to view the publishers in the most frequent conversion paths across channels and devices. This information allows advertisers to identify the most impactful conversion paths.

 

Google to Address the Changes in Google Ads Performance 

Google Ads recently announced it will offer specific explanations about the occurrence of performance changes and metrics fluctuations for your campaigns. Google Ads user will be able to request this data by clicking on the newly added “See Explanations” button located within the campaign and ad group tables while in time comparison mode.

“Understanding why your performance changes is critical when optimizing a campaign,” says Google. “However, it can be time-consuming to diagnose why your metrics can fluctuate. To help you understand some performance changes in your campaigns and ad groups faster, you can now request explanations.”

The user can now get the coveted why on changes in the following metrics:

• Impressions
• Clicks
• Cost

The new feature will likely allow advertisers to gain better insight into the performance of their ad campaign, but also reduce the time spent figuring out why the performance changes happened. 

More info here. 

 

Google Plans on Adding Package Tracking to Search Results

Google is currently working on integrating package tracking into search results. This would allow users to get relevant data without having to visit the carrier’s site.

By using this feature, customers will be able to simply enter a tracking number into the Google search bar and find out the status of their order.

You might ask yourself – will this feature take traffic away from the carrier’s websites? Even though it looks like it might do something like that, it’s important to point out that inclusion is completely voluntary. This means shipping companies have the option to allow or disallow Google to surface their tracking information.

 

Canva Will Introduce a New Video Editing Solution in 2020

The graphic design platform Canva stated that it will be launching Canva Video, a new video editing solution, in 2020. The video editing tool will supposedly have the similar and intuitive interface as Canva’s photo editing solutions.

Here’s the official statement:

“Our mission is to empower everyone to design anything without any complex software or having to go to different sources for different elements,” said Chief Product Officer Cameron Adams in a statement, “We’re bringing the same experience to our video editing tool.”

If Canva Video is similar to the company’s easy-to-use photo-editing software, marketers will be blessed with an affordable and intuitive tool for making professional video marketing assets.

We are at the end of this week’s edition of Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots. Be sure to come back next week for more interesting stories. Until next time, you can check out the previous installment.