State of Digital: June 2020 Edition
- Stephanie Danckert
- Jul 6, 2020
- 8 min read
Digital is constantly changing and June 2020 saw some pretty big updates. This post contains brief updates for all channels.
Data & Trends Updates
Snapchat: Snapchat releases a new report highlighting key topics and trends on the rise
As we enter the second half of 2020, Snapchatters are looking ahead. The months of quarantine have led to gardening, self care, nostalgia and summer flavors gaining traction among Snapchatters.
The report is a follow-up to the trend prediction overview that Snapchat released in December 2019, which listed various topics that had been gaining traction at the end of 2019. It’s interesting to see how interests have shifted with the impacts of COVID-19 and global lockdown mandates. The change is significant as it signals what the younger audience is gravitating towards (CEO Evan Spiegel noted that Snapchat reaches now more 13-34 year-olds in the US than Facebook or Instagram).
YouTube: YouTube showcases Top Ad Campaigns as Part of its 2020 NewFronts Presentation
YouTube announced on June 25th the winners of its 2020 YouTube Works awards, which "celebrate and champion the brilliant minds producing the most innovative and effective campaigns on YouTube in the past year".
Presented as part of YouTube's NewFront event, the awards were in nine categories. In addition to the NewFront awards, YouTube has also announced a range of new originals coming to the platform, including content focusing on Demi Lovato and magician David Blaine.
YouTube also showcased its recently announced YouTube Select brand advertising packages, and its new Video Action Campaigns to maximize ad reach.
YouTube also noted that over 100 million Americans now watch YouTube on their home TV screens each month. This is a major shift from YouTube being focused on computer, tablet and mobile device. This new shift will give your video campaigns TV-like reach and resonance. With this and the increase in viewers due to COVID lockdowns, it’s time to reconsider your YouTube Strategy.
Pinterest Reports Significant Increases in Christmas Searches as Users Seek Escape from COVID-19
Pinterest reported seeing a large increase in Christmas related interest year over year. Holiday searches on Pinterest jumped 77% YoY in April. That includes a 3x increase in searches for “Christmas gift ideas”, while other queries like “holiday recipes” and “Christmas” were up more than 90% and 80% respectively.
Pinners are looking for brands to help them maximize their holiday plans and create special moments with family. Feels a bit early to be hopping on the holiday train, but Pinners are clearly looking towards a time when COVID (hopefully) will be a thing of the past. Pinterest has released a holiday hub to help brands start to prep for the 2020 holiday season.
"In the face of COVID-19 and stay-at-home orders, people are looking forward to looking forward. 2020 has been a hard year, and consumers are craving the comfort of the holidays. They want this season to feel more festive than ever before, and they’re asking for brands to help them get there.” - Pinterest
Channel Updates: Organic & Performance Marketing
Google: SEO Organic Unconfirmed Algorithm Updates
Compared to May, June 2020 was a calm month regarding organic algorithm updatess. Unlike May, there was no official update from Google but some SEOs experts reported changes on their organic traffic with changes being big enough to signal a big update. The majority of the fluctuations reached a peak on June 23rd.
Some SEO experts are sharing negative opinions of the change due to outdated and not mobile friendly sites seeing an improvement in Google’s rankings while some local results got worse.
Google has created a checklist giving performance marketers and businesses face the unique challenge COVID presents. The guide covers various channels as well as provides resources by industry.
Last year, Google announced that Target Search Page Location and Target Outranking Share bid strategies would no longer be available for new campaigns. Over the next few weeks, your existing campaigns using these strategies will automatically be switched over to Target Impression Share strategy based on previous target locations and historical impression share. Keep an eye on your performance and how this could impact your campaigns.
Keyword Planner makes it easy to find relevant keywords to your product, service, website or landing. Determining where those keyword ideas actually fit into the campaigns is a very manual and time-consuming process. Google Ads’ new beta allows performance markets to refine keywords in Keyword Planner. With new possible refinement suggestions, related keywords suggestions will be grouped together based on the attributes of your product or service (size, color, etc). While this Beta aims to give performance marketers their time back to focus on optimizing the campaigns, make sure to double check the refined keyword groupings Google Ads provides to ensure it makes sense and works with the account structure.
Since so many factors come into play, understanding the changes in conversion volumes can take time and be difficult. Performance Marketers will now be able to request explanations in Search campaigns. This will give marketers more time to optimize performance and build strategy and spend less of their time focusing on issues. While this is a great tool, this does not replace the good old fashion investigation, but should make life easier.
Feeds is already a feature used by many marketers in Display, Shopping and Local campaigns. Now the Feeds feature is available in apps. This is still in beta but according should be rolled out within the next few months. The update comes with new and improved formats, expanded query eligibility and deferred deep linking for a more integrated onboarding experience.
Coming later this year, Google announced it will be paying some publishers for their content. Where available, Google is also offering to pay for free access for users to read paywalled articles on a publisher’s site. This will enable paywalled publishers to grow their audiences and give users access to more content they might not ordinarily see.
Microsoft Ads has expanded the scope of copying and pasting. This will make it easier for performance marketers to copy and paste entire campaigns and ad groups instead of creating new ones from scratch.
After a devastating boycott by major advertisers including Coca Cola, Ben and Jerry's, Eddie Bauer and Dove for Facebook's lack of crack-down on hate speech and misinformation, Facebook shares dropped by $56 billion (USD). In response, Zuckerberg announced changes that will be made to the platform in preparation for the 2020 election. The changes will add warnings to disturbing, racist or hate speech content, before the content is removed from the platform. There will be more transparency on where information is coming from and whether or not that source is legitimate.
Back in March 2020, Facebook announced a range of coming updates to its Live Producer platform for desktop streams, including graphic overlays and featured comments during the broadcast.
In June, Facebook rolled out more features for creators. Although not currently available to creators, some creators are seeing new tools available to them.
Some users are now seeing a dedicated “Graphics” tab which will allow you to add different graphic overlays to your live stream including:
Add a news ticker that scrolls along the bottom of the broadcast
Highlight viewer comments on top of the stream
Run polls, and display viewer results in real-time
You can access Facebook Live Producer here.
Facebook has announced a new News Feed algorithm update to help boost original news reporting, and improve the flow of quality information through its network. This update will impact how news stories are ranked in News Feed and will prioritize original reporting and stories with transparent authorship.
In an effort to help boost businesses transitioning to selling online, Facebook is offering 6 weeks of free digital marketing courses from guest speakers to how to navigate Facebook business insights. Browse upcoming webinars, speakers and sessions here.
Facebook’s Messenger app has a new toggle functionality that will allow page managers to easily switch between personal and business accounts. Since many business pages admins also use the app for personal use, two separate apps would be redundant. With the increased popularity of messaging platforms, this simple but useful feature caters to the new marketing environment. While this update aims to make the lives of marketers easier, this new update might not be for everybody considering the very fine separation between work and personal life.
In June, Instagram announced updates to their Commerce Eligibility Requirements that will expand access to Instagram Shopping to more types of businesses.
Any eligible business or creator account with at least one eligible product can use shopping tags to drive users to their website to make a purchase.
The updated requirements go into effect on July 9 in all countries where Instagram Shopping is supported. The updates will provide greater transparency for people and businesses, and a more trusted shopping experience.
Rolled out to iOS only (sorry Android-ers) on June 17th, users can now record up to 140 seconds of audio and post it as a tweet. Like Instagram Stories, if you go past 140 seconds, a new voice tweet automatically creates a thread.
Voice Tweets will appear in Newsfeeds along with other Tweets. On iOS only, playback will start in a new window docked at the bottom of a user’s timeline and the user can listen while scrolling.
As one of the most downloaded apps at this moment, more ecommerce opportunities arise. TikTok has launched a website for businesses, essentially a manual for marketers on the platform. Insightful tips, links and case studies for the optimization of the performance. In the near future, a new feature for data collection will be introduced.
This June, Snap streamed the 2020 Partner Summit. Execs from across the company showcased new product features and announced new partnerships. This summit was initially set for April, but was postponed due to COVID. Deep-dive video breakout sessions will be publically available. So What was covered? Everything from Augmented reality to New Snap Originals to Wellbeing. Check out Snap’s blog for full details of the summit.
Snapchat has launched the first campaign using its new 'Shoppable AR' technology. This technology was recently announced at the 2020 Snap Partner Summit. The initial campaign will be an AR shoe 'try-on' filter, created in conjunction with Gucci.
This is not the first time Snapchat has used its AR Lens feature to showcase products, but it's the first use of Snapchat's Shoppable AR option, which will enable users to purchase the shoes they like directly from the Lens via a “Shop Now” button.
Whether you're looking to hire yourself or in the market for new work, you can now add new colourful badge on your profile photo that shows you're open to work opportunities. In addition, LinkedIn added a new reaction called "Support" to use when interacting with posts.
Any other interesting updates from June catch your eye? Share links below!
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