It’s been a minute since we had a chance to post the State of Digital! We’ve been over here catching our breath after the holidays and a busy Q1.
Digital media saw a lot of marketing updates this quarter, with some noticeable ones happening in March 2021. Are you ready for business news and digital marketing news updates?
Business News
In March, the chief executives of Facebook, Google, and Twitter were questioned by US lawmakers in their companies' alleged role in the proliferation of disinformation and misinformation on their platforms.
Misinformation on the election/vaccines and the deadly riot on 6 Jan 2021 in the US capital played roles in the hearing.
Some of the representatives pushed “yes” or “no” questions when asking the executives if their platforms played bore some responsibility in spreading misinformation that eventually led to the 6 Jan 2021 riot.
The questioning went further to some representatives identifying accounts considered “super spreader” of misinformation and asking the executives if they were committed to closing those accounts.
The execs did not just take heat from the Democrats but also received criticism from the Republicans as well. Republicans allege that big tech is focused on censoring conservative viewpoints.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was discussed as well. What is Section 230? Section 230 essentially provides internet companies legal safety from the content users post on their sites. If a user posts something libelous about someone else on Facebook or Twitter, Section 230 means that neither tech company could be sued for this (unlike how a newspaper could be).
Regulation is (eventually) coming, but we’re still waiting to see how this pans out.
Paid Search News & Marketing Updates
Ad suggestions will be variations of your existing ads, based on their keywords, landing page, targeting, ad extensions, and other relevant content. Microsoft Advertising will create ad suggestions when it detects that an ad group may perform better with higher quality ads.
The new feature with ad suggestions is the auto-apply feature. Ad suggestions marked as auto-apply will start serving after 14 days if the advertisers have not taken any action. This feature can be disabled so that you will only see ad suggestions under your recommendations and will need to manually choose to push the ads live.
Microsoft’s announcement did not state whether the auto-apply ad suggestions setting is enabled by default, so make sure to check your account!
To help the travel industry, Google launched property promotion ads for hotels in March. These ads will help hotels capture demand for users who are browsing hotels but have not decided yet on which hotel they would like to book. This will give advertisers the ability to influence user buying decisions.
Prior to this launch, advertisers were only able to participate in property promotion ads if they were whitelisted, but now advertisers can participate directly in Google Ads’ interface. Property promotion ads will be available via an ad group type within the Hotel Campaign in Google Ads. All active hotel campaign advertisers are eligible to show.
“They show prominently in search results for geographical locations, allowing advertisers to position specific hotels in a particular place. Previous to this launch, direct participation in property promotion ads was done through a whitelist.” Peter Fernandez, Product Manager, Hotel Ads
Google has started testing its Privacy Sandbox initiatives, called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC).
Google is positioning FLoC as an answer to users’ growing privacy concerns, and advertisers who are looking for how to move forward in a cookie-less world. Testing has just begun and we know a few things so far:
What is it? FLoC will allow interest-based advertising. FLoC gathers data on a user’s browsing habits and then clusters them into a group with users with similar browsing habits and interests -- forming a ‘cohort.’ Information about the cohort is then shared for advertising purposes.
Where is the data kept? Individual user data will be kept locally in the browser and the browser will only expose the cohort ID. In theory, cohorts will include enough users that it will be difficult to identify a particular user within the cohort, but will be specific enough to allow for effective ad targeting.
When does testing start? Google announced that testing will begin in Q2 of this year, and it appears testing has already started. While testing has begun, Europe and countries that fall under GDPR/the ePrivacy Directive will not participate. No date for testing in Europe has been released, but this likely means there are some questions around whether or not FLoC and its cohorts are GDPR compliant.
Microsoft Ads gave advertisers more control over their DSAs with the release of static headlines for DSAs (Dynamic Search Ads). One popular stereotype of PPC account managers is that they don’t relinquish control easily to automation. Based on how I work and how my favorite PPC’ers work, I think this stereotype is pretty accurate!
A DSA “identifies a potential customer’s intent and dynamically generates an ad pointing to the right page on your website” based on your site content. The intent of this ad type was to relieve a lot of headaches and manual work for PPC account managers. But, again, we’re control freaks so clearly none of us were willing to fully relinquish ad creation control.
The new update to DSAs means advertisers will be able to match search queries to a landing page, while “retaining complete control over ad content.”
The Static headlines will be an additional column that advertisers can add to their Dynamic Search Ads page feed. Advertisers can specify then which specific ad title should be used for a particular landing page in the feed.
SEO News & Marketing Updates
The March 2021 update for Google Analytics 4 properties was aimed at improving measurement when third-party identifiers are not available. The update will affect conversion count metrics in GA-4 properties, as well as on Firebase. This update should help conversion counts be more closely aligned to the event counts seen in reporting.
Need a refresher on GA-4 since you live under a rock?!
In October 2020, Google released Google Analytics 4. The new analytics platform has many new key features that make it very different from the old version. One of the biggest differences was the new data modeling feature that used AI to fill in gaps in data where traditional Analytics may be blocked by cookie-consent rules, blocked JavaScript, and a focus on privacy. Other key differences to note:
User interface: Google Analytics 4 will have a completely new interface, but hopefully you have had a chance to become acquainted.
AI-powered insights feature: automatically highlights helpful information
The main form of data measurement: machine learning uses existing data and makes assumptions about user behavior/site traffic for modeling purposes.
Focus on complete user journey: there is a larger focus on cross-device customer journeys to cover the complete user shopping journey and less of a focus on individual metrics across pages/segments.
Features “data streams” instead of the views and segments used by old Universal Analytics properties.
Data Tier Organization: only has Account and Property levels, “view” level is no longer available
Event Tracking changes: advertisers can edit and correct the way events are tracked in analytics without having to edit on-site code 🎉
Reports: a new “Life Cycle Report” is be available and focuses on the user journey. Templated ecom funnel reports are available as well (this was a feature previously only available in GA 360 accounts).
Glad we could have that chit-chat.
Microsoft announced changes last month with aims to make the search experience more visually immersive. This update will be seen across a few different results:
Infographic search panel: the new knowledge panel designs will still provide substance, but a bit more style as well
Expandable Search Carousels: After conducting a search, users will be shown answers in a carousel format that showcases just the results’ high-level information to avoid overcrowding the page. If users want to learn more about a result, all they need to do is hover over the result and the result will expand with more information.
Local Answers: When users search for local answers they will receive top images, visitor reviews, information from Bing Maps, and more.
This update expands to a few other search results as well (i.e. recipe results), so head over to Bing to take a look at the new changes.
The Principal Program Manager at Microsoft Bing, Fabrice Canel, submitted a feature request to WordPress for the platform to push new and updated URLs directly to search engines. Why is this a big deal? If WordPress does end up supporting this new feature request, it would simplify the process of WordPress sites getting their content into Microsoft Bing Search. A win for many marketers and businesses who use WordPress! 🎉 This could also be the additional pressure needed to push Google to begin supporting a content submission API for normal content. Google currently only supports job posting URLs and live-stream content with its indexing API, so this would be a win as well.
Need a refresher on technical SEO best practices for ecom sites? Google Developer Advocate, Alan Kent, gave a refresher this month on best practices to help SEO marketers increase traffic from Google to their product page.
Social News & Marketing Updates
YouTube rolled out its TikTok-Like beta “Shorts” in the US this month. In YouTube’s app, US users will see a new Shorts row in their main feed. The new feature will come with a dedicated logo, as well as provide users with access to a Shorts camera and specific video creation features.
YouTube Tests removing Public Dislike Counts
As part of a larger effort to reduce negative behaviors on its platform, YouTube is removing public dislike counts on some creators’ videos.
In YouTube Studio, Creators will still be able to see their full like and dislike counts. Users will still be able to like and dislike videos like usual and those votes will continue to count towards video ranking on the platform. YouTube is hoping that by removing the public dislike count, more users will for more comfortable sharing their content.
Facebook has announced that it will be holding its developer showcase event in 2021. Due to ongoing uncertainty around lockdowns and travel, the event will be hosted virtually and is titled “F8 Refresh.”
Facebook will showcase its latest projects, new tools across its various apps and expert panels.
Useful for Stories creators, Facebook is testing a new feature for stories -- “Green Screen.” This feature will allow users to overlay their video over a selected video or still image.
After testing out IGTV ads with US creators last year, Instagram announced in March that it would be expanding its program with select creators in the UK and Australia now eligible to activate ads on the IGTV uploads.
Instagram testing a new auto-caption feature in Stories.
Instagram is testing a new option where users can auto caption their Stories as they speak. Gone are the days of typing out a caption after recording your Story. Now just add the “Captions Sticker” to your video clip and let the text type itself out as you speak.
Instagram is taking new measures to protect its young members.
Instagram released new safety features to protect teenagers from ill-intentioned adults. One feature is set to prevent adults from sending messages to people under 18 who don’t follow them back. The adult will receive a notification that DM’ing the underage user isn’t an option. The feature will rely on ages provided by users in their profiles, as well as machine learning technology to predict users’ ages. Instagram will also be supporting parents with new resources to help their teens have a safe and positive experience on Instagram.
Instagram announced that users will soon have a new option to save their Instagram stories as drafts, that can be posted to your page at a later date. This is great for both brands and users as it gives everyone the ability to easily create and revise their stories prior to posting.
LinkedIn released a new campaign planning guide to help marketers map out effective marketing campaigns on the platform. The guide provides marketers with worksheets and templates to help them build ad campaigns around clear central objectives. The guide also comes with recommended ad specs along with links to resources with best practices and specialized tips for each product.
LinkedIn is looking to help its users share more of their personal stories by releasing a few new features.
Cover Story: This new tool allows users to personalize their first “hello” to engage with their audiences and reach potential recruiters.
Optional Gender Pronouns: Users now have the ability to add their preferred pronouns on LinkedIn.
Creator Mode: This new feature will enable users to showcase their on-platform engagement and activity in a new way. Users can add a selection of hashtags to indicate what topics they post about the most, which LinkedIn will use to showcase them to interested audiences.
Over the past few months, Twitter has identified the brands with the best Tweets. These brands will now go head-to-head in Twitter’s ‘Brand Bracket.’ It’s my type of March Madness.
“We know the conversational nature of Twitter makes it a place where brands can be their most human-sounding selves. Brands can have two-way conversations with their audience that are real and unfiltered and can’t be replicated anywhere else. With this bracket, we aim to celebrate those that do this the best – as selected by the people of Twitter.”
Twitter's looking to provide more options and transparency over its rule violations and moderation processes, with a range of new tools currently in consideration that could give users more ways to understand and action each instance.
Safety Center, which Twitter says would be a one-stop-shop for safety tools'. This new tool would be accessible via Twitter’s menu and would give users a full overview of any reports, blocks, mutes, and strikes that they currently have in place on their account.
Policy Hub will provide users with a full overview of its rules and policies. In making these documents more readily available, Twitter is clearly aiming at setting clearer parameters of what is and isn’t allowed on the platform.
Snapchat is testing another TikTok-inspired option, with the release of a new 'remix' option on user Snaps.
The new process adds a 'Remix Snap' option into your response tools on each Snap. This will allow users to record their own Snap alongside the original as it plays, then reply to the user with their 'remix'. Sounds very similar to TikTok's 'Duets.’
Looking to grow ad revenue opportunities, Reddit announced in March plans to open a new office in Toronto, Canada. The teams there would be focused on dedicated account management, sales, and engineering, and community teams. This will provide Reddit with new opportunities, to connect with local businesses and offer them new ways to engage with Reddit’s userbase.
Did you see any interesting updates for online advertising or social media in March 2021? Share them below in the comments!
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