Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots: January 2020, week 4

Greetings, readers! Welcome to another installment of Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots. Today, we continue where we left off last week by providing you with the most important topics and events that took place during the previous seven days in the digital marketing industry.

For our January 2020 week 4 edition, we have prepared some of the most relevant stories from the world of digital marketing.

Here’s what we the industry has in store for us this week:

• Google Displays a New Design of Paid and Organic Search Results on Desktop
• Instagram Brings Direct Messages to the Web
• Instagram Is Hiding Photoshopped Images and This Might Hurt Digital Artists
• Facebook Backs Away From Their Plans to Place Ads on WhatsApp
• LinkedIn Introduces 3 New Features to LinkedIn Pages…

…and more.

Let’s get to business!

 

Google Displays a New Design of Paid and Organic Search Results on Desktop

Google is introducing an updated look for paid and organic search results on desktop. Their goal is to make them look more like mobile search results.

The new design includes a more distinguished “Ad” label for paid results and favicons next to organic results.

Main Changes to Paid Search Results

Google has painted the “Ad” label in black. Up until now, the “Ad” label was green. The company says the label is now easy to see, but based on early feedback, users disagree. People find it difficult to identify the paid results after the new changes to the design. Also, Google has moved the URL above the headline text and painted it black.

Main Changes to Organic Search Results

When it comes to organic snippets, Google has moved the URL above the page title and changed its color from green to black. Same as they did with the paid results.

The most important change, however, is the introduction of favicons.  This is now one more thing website owners have to optimize when preparing their site for the desktop search.

Last year, our search results on mobile gained a new look. That’s now rolling out to desktop results this week, presenting site domain names and brand icons prominently, along with a bolded “Ad” label for ads. Here’s a mockup: pic.twitter.com/aM9UAbSKtv

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) January 13, 2020

 

Google Plans on Slowly Eliminating Third-Party Cookies in Chrome During the Next Two Years

Google plans on joining Safari and Firefox in blocking third-party cookies in its Chrome web browser. However, unlike the mentioned browsers, Google will take things slow. Justin Schuh, the director at engineering at Chrome, wrote that Google’s intention is to achieve this goal during the next two years.

Instead of using cookies, Google wants to introduce new technical solutions for the things that cookies are now doing. They want to come up with solutions that are less invasive and annoying than cookies.

The new technology should make it easier for advertisers to target specific audiences, without invading the privacy of users. It also has a goal to ensure that the infrastructure some websites use for logins works properly and provide advertisers with a certain level of anonymous tracking, so they can know if their ads are bringing money.

This would drastically change the way ad tracking and privacy work on the web.

 

Instagram Is Hiding Photoshopped Images and This Might Hurt Digital Artists

Back in December, Instagram announced that it was introducing a false information warning feature that uses third-party fact-checkers to reduce the spread of misinformation on this social network. Nothing wrong there, of course, but the users are reporting that the feature is now labeling digitally edited art as false information. This means it is hiding photos made by digital artists and photographers from the Explore and hashtag pages.

Artists shouldn’t be worried because this feature is targeting just the photos that have been identified by fact-checking websites as false. Even though the feature may be useful for eliminating misinformation, it might cause problems for digital artists who want to promote their work.

This means there’s a chance that an artist’s account could be labeled as a profile that spreads false information, even if that’s not the case. Naturally, this could have a negative effect on their visibility on Instagram.

 

Instagram Brings Direct Messages to the Web

Instagram finally decided to bring direct messages to the web. About a week ago, some users had a chance to access their DMs from Instagram’s website. It was only a test, of course, but this could be useful for businesses, influencers, and users who send a lot of direct messages regularly.

Sending messages on the browser will be the same as it is on mobile. You can start a chat with someone from the DM screen or a profile page. There will be an option to like a message by double-clicking on it, share photos from your desktop, and see the total number of unread messages. Users will have the option of receiving desktop DM notifications if they choose to enable notifications for the entire Instagram site in their browser.

 

Facebook Backs Away From Their Plans to Place Ads on WhatsApp

Facebook decided to back away from its plans to sell ads for placement inside WhatsApp. Allegedly, the crew that had been working on this was disbanded over the last couple of months.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Facebook is still looking for ways to integrate ads into WhatsApp’s Status feature, but for the time being, the app will remain ad-free. This plan to introduce ads to WhatsApp is the main reason why the app’s co-founder, Jan Koum, left Facebook back in 2018.

 

LinkedIn Introduces 3 New Features to LinkedIn Pages

LinkedIn Pages is introducing three new features designed to engage and form stronger relationships with followers.

According to LinkedIn, more than 50 million organizations around the world are using pages to connect with customers and employees. To help these businesses, LinkedIn updates its features every quarter.

This time, LinkedIn decided to bless its users with three new features:

• Invite to Follow
• Stream With LinkedIn Live
• Post as a Page or Member

Invite to Follow

To make it easier for pages to grow their following, LinkedIn is allowing page managers to invite first-degree profile connections to follow their page. Individual users can choose not to receive these invites.

Stream With LinkedIn Live

From now on, LinkedIn pages have the ability to broadcast live streams. This feature was previously reserved for personal profiles only. This is an upgrade since live streams generate more reactions and more comments than standard video posts.

Post as a Page or Member

The new switch on the homepage allows users to toggle between posting content as an individual or an organization. Before this update, users had to visit their page in order to publish a post as their page. This is definitely more convenient.

 

That’s it for this edition of Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots. Until we meet next time, check out our previous edition!