After a short Covid-19 break, we bring you the latest trends by channel from the last quarter to bring you up to speed on everything that’s been going on in the world of digital marketing.
Organic Search
- Google is currently testing webpage results on YouTube. Users can either visit the page YouTube is displaying, or click a link to conduct a search directly on Google. At this stage, the links being displayed here are not paid for, though this could easily be the future plan if they see good engagement.
- Google has defined a set of metrics site owners should focus on when optimising for user experience, named Core Web Vitals. These measures include: loading speeds, page interactivity (responsiveness) and visual stability.
- Bing can now return a “Yes/No” response to certain queries, alongside a carousel of sources, using natural language modelling. This will undoubtedly have an impact on how impressions are delivered to different pages.
Paid Search
- Google has added a new Retail Category reporting feature for e-commerce brands, allowing them to see Retail Category performance based on where the ad showed. Amongst other things, this will allow retailers to compare campaign performance across Search vs Shopping.
- Google’s Smart Shopping product is beta testing a new conversion goal: New Customer Acquisitionv (NCA). This new goal type allows advertisers to set Smart Shopping campaigns to optimise towards acquiring new customers specifically.
- Google Discovery ads are now fully operational in all markets. These can display across YouTube, in the Google Search app and on Gmail, highlighting timely offers to shoppers. Using social media-like targeting, as opposed to keyword-based intent, advertisers can target their campaigns by audience and/or demographic.
Paid Social
- Facebook is beta testing mid-roll ad placements, as well as ads within live streams. The new 10-15 second mid-roll ads will be non-skippable for the first five seconds, after which time a YouTube-style Skip button will display.
- E-commerce brands will now be able to sell directly through Facebook and Instagram. Facebook & Instagram Shops is free to use and is designed as a mobile-first shopping experience. That goes for both creating a shop and buying items from one. Facebook & Instagram Shops can be customised to a brand’s look and feel, and can be advertised via Stories or Ads.
- TikTok opens up ads via Sprinklr API. All of the normal functions for campaign management, such as campaign creation, ad creation, targeting, and execution will be available via Sprilklr, as will reporting data.
