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Greetings, fellow digital marketer. We truly hope this edition of Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots finds you well, amid the current COVID-19 pandemic. In this “March 2020: Week 4” episode, you can read about the following industry-related events: 

  • Google My Business Temporarily Limits Functionality and Features Due to COVID-19
  • YouTube & Google Aid Teachers and Families with Online Education 
  • It’s Now Easier to Appeal Disapproved/Limited Ads in Google Ads
  • LinkedIn Rolls Out a New Message-Based Ad Format “Conversation Ads”
  • New WordPress Version to Feature Auto-Updates for Themes and Plugins

Let’s get down to it. 

 

Google My Business Temporarily Limits Functionality and Features Due to COVID-19

In light of the current coronavirus outbreak, Google is removing certain features and limits the functionality of Google My Business for the time being. 

“During the unprecedented COVID-19 situation, we are taking steps to protect the health of our team members and reduce the need for people to come into our offices,” was said in the official GMB statement. “As a result, there may be some temporary limitations and delays in support as we prioritize critical services.”

Here’s a quick overview of the changes: 

  • They will stop publishing new reviews, review replies, and new Q&A until further notice
  • Their support team will focus on reviewing new listings, claims, and verifications for critical health-related businesses
  • The prioritization will also include reviewing business information edits
  • Google Posts functionality will not be restricted

More info available in this SEJ article

 

YouTube & Google Aid Teachers and Families with Online Education 

Tech giants, Google and YouTube, have recognized their immense potential in helping teachers do their jobs remotely and have recently launched a brand new platform offering various resources that should be of great help in the current teach-from-home environment.  

Here’s an excerpt from their blog post titled Helping Educators and Students Stay Connected:

“Teach From Home is a central hub of information, tips, training and tools from across Google for Education to help teachers keep teaching, even when they aren’t in the classroom. To start, we’re providing an overview of how to get started with distance learning—for example how to teach online, make lessons accessible to students, and collaborate with other educators.”

At this moment, the platform Teach From Home is only available in English, but there are downloadable toolkits in Danish, German, Spanish, French, Italian, and Polish available as well. More languages will soon be available, says Google. 

 

It’s Now Easier to Appeal Disapproved/Limited Ads in Google Ads

Google Ads is making easier for its users to get ad approval and appeal any policy changes via the launch of a brand new feature. 

The disapproving of ads can happen to any advertiser out there, regardless of the nature of their intentions and quality of their ads, so this is a great way for users to set the record straight quickly and easily whenever they need to. 

“Our advertising policies exist in order to protect users, advertisers and publishers from bad actors and ensure only high-quality ads are served across our platforms,” say over at google. “But we understand that sometimes well-intentioned advertisers make honest mistakes, and we want to empower every business to get their ads up as soon as possible.”

Appeal Disapproved/Limited Ads in Google Ads

(Source: Google)

More detailed information about this update available here

 

LinkedIn Rolls Out a New Message-Based Ad Format “Conversation Ads”

In an attempt to further customize the user experience, LinkedIn is introducing a brand new form of ads. Conversation Ads are message-based ads that have been designed to provide a more personal and engaging ad experience.

“Conversation Ads build on our current Message Ads offering (formerly Sponsored InMail), and feature a “choose your own path” experience that lets you create full-funnel campaigns with multiple customized calls-to-action, like product education, webinar sign-ups, and ebook downloads.”

This basically means that businesses and advertisers can now deploy the new ad format to create campaigns with numerous conversion and multiple CTAs. 

 

New WordPress Version to Feature Auto-Updates for Themes and Plugins

WordPress 5.5 is introducing auto-updating of themes and plugins to its content management system.

The auto-updating feature is currently available only for the WordPress CMS core, while the new and updated version will also include auto-updates for plugins and themes, without removing the standard manual update option. 

There are certain speculations that this comes after the news revealing that numerous popular WordPress plugins had been exploited by hackers who managed to use plugins’ vulnerability to gain control websites. It appears that the main problem occurred when site owners installed a certain plugin and then failed to update it.  

The new update should, in theory, mend this issue. 

 

That’s it for this edition of Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots. See you next week, until then – feel free to check out our previous edition!

And remember – stay at home and stay safe. 

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