Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots (October 2019, Week 2)

Welcome to Four Dots Digital Marketing Week in Review digest where you can find the most relevant and cherry-picked news, events and developments that happened across the ever-changing digital marketing landscape and took place over the past 7 days or so. 

This time around we have an interesting batch of engaging pieces of industry-related news including: new developments concerning video ads within Google Ads and Google Search Console; Facebook’s new Holiday-focused marketing tools; Google’s updates on Structured Data Requirements and Managing Ad Frequency; Quora updating its ad targeting options, and so on.  

Let’s get crackin’!

 

Video Ads Optimization at the Campaign Level now Available in Google Ads 

Online advertisers who utilize Google Ads can now set conversion actions for their respective video ads campaigns. Up until now, this option was available to Google Ads users only at the account level.

A conversion action is defined by Google as “a specified action after clicking an ad or viewing a Display Network ad, such as purchasing a product, installing a mobile app, or signing up for an email list.” 

Tracking of these conversion actions provides valuable insights into user behavior after viewing or clicking your ad, meaning it can help you better evaluate your campaign’s performance and optimize bids.

 

Video Enhancement & Video Appearances Performance Reports being added to Google Search Console

Google Search Console is to feature two new report types that are likely to prove rather helpful when it comes to understanding how good of a job your videos are doing in Google search, and therefore nudge you in the right direction with potential fixes. 

Videos have proven to be an extremely effective way of getting content into Google Search and Google Discover, which is why website owners and advertisers alike utilize this medium to help their visitors gain more insight into what your website and/or web page is all about. 

To learn more about these new video-related GSC reports, visit this Search Engine Land article. 

 

Google Encourages Following their Structured Data Requirements to Ensure Rich Result Eligibility

John Mueller of Google recently addressed the usage of Google’s official structured data and recommended abiding to their requirements, especially if you want to make sure your content is eligible to be displayed in the form of rich results.

The topic was tackled during the latest episode of the Ask Google Webmasters video series when Mueller said that, although it is perfectly fine to use structured data properties that aren’t included on their list, Google displays rich results according to the structured data that’s listed on their Developers site. 

Mueller said the following: 

“Independently, you’re always welcome to use structured data to provide better machine readable context for your pages. Which may not always result in visible changes, but can still help our systems to show your pages for relevant queries.”

Read more on this topic here: Google: Follow Our Structured Data Requirements to Ensure Rich Result Eligibility

 

Facebook Introduces New Marketing Tools in the Light of Upcoming Holiday Frenzy 

With another holiday season approaching fast, Facebook has decided to treat social media advertisers and release several new marketing tools that will help businesses boost their holiday ad campaigns. 

If you’re thinking: isn’t it kind of early to start planning holiday marketing campaigns; we can assure you that now is the perfect time. Facebook-commissioned Ipsos study recently revealed that almost 50% of US shoppers commence their holiday-focused shopping in November or earlier. 

The new Facebook features include: 

• Customizable Story Templates
• Enhancements to Messenger and Instagram Direct
• Holiday Marketing Tips

More info available in this Search Engine Journal article.  

 

Google Find a Solution for Managing Ad Frequency When 3rd Party Cookies Are Missing

Google recently announced their plan to start using machine learning to manage ad frequency for ads that feature no third-party cookies. The change will first affect Display & Video 360, however the company also announced it will deploy this solution to its display offerings in Google Ads as well.

Typically, in cases when 3rd party cookies are missing (blocked or restricted), advertisers no longer have the option to limit the number of times a person sees an ad, which means that a user blocking cookies can still see the same ad over and over again.

With the new update, Google will be able to improve user privacy, without hindering the effectiveness of ads run by publishers and marketers alike.

 

Quora Introduces 3 New Keyword-Based Targeting Options for Advertisers

Quora decided to treat online advertisers by adding new targeting options for those seeking their target audience on this extremely popular Q&A platform. The newly introduced  options involve audience targeting based on keyword history in order to retarget users who viewed questions containing the keywords you’re targeting within a specific timeframe.

The 3 new options include:

• Keyword history targeting
• Gender targeting
• Browser targeting

Quora has slowly but surely become a relevant platform harboring over 300 million monthly users, which (for certain niches) makes it just as potent ads wielding tool as Twitter, Reddit and Pinterest…

 

See you next week with more new and exciting news from the digital marketing industry! In the meantime, check out the previous edition: Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots (October 2019, Week 1)