Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots: September 2020, Week 5

Hello and welcome to another edition of Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots – our weekly column where we comb through some of the most relevant news and events that took place within the digital marketing landscape over the last week or so.

Let’s see what “September 2020: Week 5” edition brings us:   

• Google Stories Plugin for WordPress is Ready for You
• Facebook’s 20% Ad Text Limit is (finally) History 
• Say Good-Bye to Facebook Ads 28-Day Attribution Model
• LinkedIn’s Getting Fresh Coat of Paint, LinkedIn Stories Now Available to all Users
• Ahrefs Webmaster Tools – Fast, Powerful and FREE? 

Alrighty then, let’s dive right in! 

Google Stories Plugin for WordPress is Ready for You

Freshly out of the GitHub’s beta-testing oven, Google Stories plugin is here to help you make beautiful web stories with incredible ease. Web Stories enables you to use existing content to create more digestible and more receptive short-form. 

With its drag-and-drop interface, your visually enhanced content is ready in seconds. And not just that – the plugin gives you a fair number of editing capabilities.

(Image source: blog.google)

“And for those who want to take full control of their stories, the plugin includes comprehensive visual editing capabilities, a re-envisioned visual media gallery, image masking, gradient editing, saved colors & styles and many more design features.”

Aside from an extensive number of templates to choose from, Google Stories has implemented Unsplash’s high-quality photo gallery as well as free stock videos from Coverr. 

Facebook’s 20% Ad Text Limit is (finally) History 

After a long and arduous battle, the 20% ad text limit has kicked the proverbial bucket, followed by a wave of joyfulness that spread throughout the marketing community.

Ad buyers all over the world recently started noticing that their ad images with more than previously ironclad 20% text were getting approved. Not long after, Facebook started sending notifications confirming that it wasn’t just a fluke:

(Image source: Search Engine Journal)

The first sign that something is going on was the fact that the overlay tool has disappeared. The official documentation has been changed as well – instead of demanding you use 20% or less in your image ads, now they are merely suggesting it as a best practice: 

(Image source: Search Engine Journal)

Until now, there was still no official statement on the matter, but the page About Text in Ad Images is updated with the aforementioned.

Say Good-Bye to Facebook Ads 28-Day Attribution Model

We don’t have to worry about the text in our ads, but are at the same time being downgraded to a 7-day attribution model, which will diminish action tracking periods significantly. 

“Attribution models determine how credit is given to touchpoints for a conversion. Attribution windows specify which touchpoints you want the attribution model to consider. The attribution window you select will be used to determine how long before a conversion the attribution model should look for touchpoints to give credit.”

You can find out more about attribution models here.

Facebook Ads team claims that this change comes due to changes in data tracking policy:

“Upcoming digital privacy initiatives affecting multiple browsers will limit business’s ability to measure people’s interactions across domains and devices. Among those limitations is the ability for businesses to attribute conversion events back to an ad over longer attribution windows.”

Your historical data will be available until October 12th when the change will take effect, so hurry up and get downloading. 

LinkedIn’s Getting Fresh Coat of Paint, LinkedIn Stories Now Available to all Users

LinkedIn has decided to treat its users with a new and more easy-on-the-eyes look (pastel colors are predominant). After testing them in five countries, it’s rolling out the “long-awaited” LinkedIn Stories. Already massively criticized about the decision since the community believed it will make the business social network seem less professional, LinkedIn seems to have other information on the subject since their stance has not changed. 

(Image source: LinkedIn)

In addition, LI is gonna pimp up their search process, including more functions into your search matches. It also makes searches more tightly tailored to your needs, and their added mobile keyword filters, which have only been accessible on the web version so far.

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools – Fast, Powerful and FREE?

What exactly is AWT? As its creators suggest:

“You can think of Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT) as Google Search Console…except made by Ahrefs.

We wanted to give all content creators the data they need to optimize their websites. So with AWT, we’re essentially opening up free access to Site Audit and Site Explorer for verified websites.

In other words, there aren’t any new features in AWT at all – we’re just making some parts of Ahrefs available for free.”

In other words, one of the most popular (and expensive) SEO software suites is not adding new features, but is instead giving some of the existing ones for free usage. 

Wrapping Up

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

Radomir Basta

CEO and lead SEO strategist at Four Dots and lecturer at Digital Marketing Institute Also an angry driver and huge tattoo fan. In love with growth hacking.

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