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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 3” edition brings us:

  • Oracle to win TikTok’s US “Trusted Partner” Deal? 
  • Say Hello to Bing Webmaster Tools URL Inspection Tool
  • Fundo – Google’s Option for Monetizing Video Events
  • YouTube Shorts – Another Shot at TikTok?
  • Google’s Announcing Better Conversion Measurements on YouTube Video Ads – Even Without Clicking Through

Alrighty then, let’s dive right in! 

 

Oracle to win TikTok’s US “Trusted Partner” Deal? 

It looks like Oracle won the deal with TikTok to become a “Trusted tech partner”, instead of a direct purchase, as planned earlier. 

This came just one hour after ByteDance rejected Microsoft’s bid for operations in the US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. As you probably know, on August 6th president Trump gave an executive order blocking all transactions with ByteDance on account of possible data security risk. 

Since Oracle has a history of collaboration with the Government, this partnership looks like a masterful strategic move by the US. 

 

Say Hello to Bing Webmaster Tools URL Inspection Tool 

Bing’s fresh new URL inspection tool is here to help your pages rank better. After numerous questions and frustrations SEOs and webmasters had over the years, the search engine decided to address said issues and thus the URL Inspection Tool was born! 

“The Bing Webmaster Tools URL inspection tool is a powerful tool that allows you to check and take necessary actions on URLs under the domain selected; this includes crawling, indexing, SEO and MarkUp details and errors. Not only will this tool show crawling issues, index status, SEO errors and MarkUp info to webmasters in detail but also will include appropriate messages in case URL is not shown or can’t be shown in Bing search results and suggestions on required actions to resolve the same.”

It looks like Bing is working really hard to fully collaborate with the online marketing community since this is one of the many useful tools they rolled out to help them understand their algorithm better and thus provide a more friendly and functional online search ecosystem.

 

Fundo – Google’s Option for Monetizing Video Events 

As the COVID-19 pandemic still continues to hinder almost all public events, Fundo comes none too soon. Basically, it’s an online ticketing service that provides you with a seamless option of selling tickets for your online events. 

It is seamless since it doesn’t use any external websites or apps. 

Fundo - Google’s Option for Monetizing Video Events | Four Dots

(Image Source: Google Blog)

Currently, there are three types of events included in Fundo’s options:

  •  1:1 Chat + Photos
  • Meet and Greets
  • Workshops

1:1 Chat + Photos

This is an option for one-on-one events where people can meet with their fans and even take a photo together through the virtual photo booth. 

Meet and Greets 

Unlike the previous one, this option is designed for a creator to reach multiple fans. Oddly enough, the option is available only to YouTubers. As Google claims:

“As a fan, you’ll have a variety of experiences to choose from. Join the Q&A with… channel members in a group Meet & Greet…”

Workshops

Although it might seem as trivial at first, Workshops is probably the most important option that Fundo offers. For example, some of the industries that have been hit the hardest by the pandemic can cut some of their losses by offering courses and workshops within their scope of business which can be turn out to be quite helpful to small businesses around the globe.

Monetization is available for virtually anyone, but it certainly isn’t built for concerts and similar large events since, as the people from Fundo claim:

“…please note each event has a limited number of tickets…”

More information about Fundo available in this SEJ article

 

YouTube Shorts – Another Shot at TikTok?

Following Instagram’s Reels which rolled out last month, YouTube is hopping on the TikTok crisis bandwagon with its new YouTube Shorts.  YouTube Shorts is a new platform for creating and sharing short-form videos up to 15 seconds in length, a style that TikTok has popularised in 2020. 

YouTube Shorts - Another Shot at TikTok | Four Dots

(Image Source: SEJ)

It debuts in India (conveniently so, since TikTok is banned from the country), with a “handful of new creation tools,” according to Chris Jaffe, YouTube VP of product management, with a promise to add new options and tools very soon. 

The company claims the following:

“This is an early version of the product, but we’re releasing it now to bring you — our global community of users, creators and artists — on our journey with us as we build and improve Shorts.”

The YouTube Shorts app, just like TikTok, uses a multi-segment camera to edit multiple video clips together and will include a music library to use as video backup tracks. YouTube Shorts also imitates TikTok through speed controls, as well as a timer and countdown for recording your shorts quickly, hands-free. 

 

Google’s Announcing Better Conversion Measurements on YouTube Video Ads – Even Without Clicking Through

Google has announced that, by the end of the year, they will be unrolling a new metric for measuring conversions for TrueView skippable in-stream ads, Local campaigns and App campaigns. 

The new metric is called Engaged-View Conversions (EVC).

“EVCs measure the conversions that take place after someone views 10 seconds or more of your skippable ad, but doesn’t click, and then converts within a set amount of days. EVCs are a more robust way to measure conversions than view-through conversions (VTCs), an industry-standard that measures the conversions that take place after a person views an impression of your ad, but doesn’t click.”

Basically, EVC will keep an eye on those who have watched your video advertisements based on the tracking of their IP or smartphone and give you insight as to whether they have actually made a purchase after seeing your ad. 

This will give you more transparency in your campaigns as well as a fresh insight into the results of your video advertising efforts.

 

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!

 

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