If you’re a longtime PPC marketer, you’re likely familiar with Customer Match – the feature that allows advertisers to upload a list of first-party customer data to their Google Ads account for stronger remarketing or exclusion purposes. And, if you’re familiar, you’ll be pleased to know that on Thursday, April 29, Google Ads announced they will now be showing instant estimated match rates upon upload! This means we can be clearer in setting expectations with our clients and stakeholders as we launch new initiatives and can better project performance instantaneously.
iOS 14.5 Is Now Available
The day that digital advertisers have been dreading is finally here. After Apple’s announcement last year that they would change their user experience from an opt out of advertising model to an opt-in model with the new iOS14 update, a looming cloud has hung over those that rely on digital advertising for their business models. Every subsequent iOS update this year has been met with anticipation of these changes, but after months of teasing, the moment is finally here with iOS 14.5.
Last week, iOS 14.5 became available to users and the ripple effects are slowly beginning to spread across the digital marketing universe. There has been countless speculation about what these changes will mean for businesses, agencies, and their digital marketing efforts, and now we’re able to see what’s real, what was just rumors, and how we’ll have to adapt to these changes.
A Quick and Easy Guide to Aggregated Event Measurement
After months of anticipation (read: dread) iOS14.5 is finally here. There are tons of changes coming to the way digital marketers advertise on Facebook, many of which we lay out here.
Google Ads: What the FLoC is Happening?
If you’ve been following the news in the digital media industry, you’ve likely heard that advertisers have been anticipating the shift away from third-party cookies for quite some time now, coming off the mounting concerns around user privacy. With Google being an industry leader – both with the largest worldwide ads business and an owned internet browser, Chrome – we’ve all been anxiously awaiting how they will approach the shift. As PPC marketers, it’s important that we understand the changes, inform our clients and monitor our campaign data as new tracking methods come to light.
Earlier this month, Google made an announcement explaining that they would not build or use any alternate identifiers to track users for advertising, and that they would instead be testing one of their Privacy Sandbox initiatives, known as FLoC, or Federated Learning of Cohorts. Though this is only in testing, our team is doing our best to remain up to speed on FLoC and how it works.
An Easy Guide to Facebook Publishing Page Verification
In an attempt to crack down on bots and misinformation, Facebook is ramping up its page publishing verification for accounts and publishers of those accounts. Assuming you’re not a bot or trying to fake your country of origin, the Facebook verification process is a quick and relatively painless procedure.
Google Ads Beta: Display Ads Included in Attribution Reports
As an open beta, Google is now including Display ads as a campaign type in their Attribution Reports section of Google Ads. While this used to be reserved for just Search and Shopping Ads, last year Google added YouTube ads to the reporting as a beta, and as of late last month, has added Display ads for users who opt in. Together, they are calling this the “cross-network attribution beta” opting advertisers into viewing data for both Networks at once.
The Glowing Aura of Facebook Advertising
ROAS: a digital marketer’s North Star. Return on Ad Spend is understandably one of the most heavily weighted metrics for advertisers in determining the success of their online ads. As with most things in life, you want to know that when you put something in, you’ll get something in return. Return on ad spend shares some roots in the logic of Newtonian physics, that for every $1 you put into your online advertising, you’ll receive $2 back or more in revenue.
Due to Apple’s recent iOS14 announcement and subsequent privacy changes, ROAS’s reign as the supreme advertising metric may be waning. While marketers will have to adapt to these changes (you can read more about our recommendations here), we wanted to take a step back and look into one of the central tenets of online advertising on Facebook, the Halo Effect.
Understanding Google Ad Extensions
An Ad Extension helps to expand your search ad, providing the searcher additional information about your business. Ad Extensions often increase an ad’s CTR significantly, since they make the overall ad appear larger and take up more room on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) when shown. One of the reasons this helps improve CTR is because it pushes down competitor’s ads and also gives the user more information on why they should choose your business.
Google Set to Enhance Phrase Match & Phase Out Broad Match Modified Keywords
If you’re in the PPC world, last week was probably a little hectic! Google sent out an email to many Google Ads advertisers with an important (albeit very confusing) update regarding match types. In the email, Google stated that starting on February 18, 2021 phrase and broad match modified (BMM) keywords will begin matching to the same user searches. The email explained that due to the updating matching behavior, advertisers may see an increase in traffic on any phrase match keywords and slight decrease in traffic on any BMM keywords.
Apple’s iOS14 Announcement Will Transform Digital Marketing As We Know It
2020’s Word of the Year was pivot. The best laid plans were thrown out the window and the entire world pivoted to new ventures, new business models, new working environments, and more.
We’re not even a full month into 2021, and we’re already being thrown curveballs to incorporate into our tentatively built marketing plans. Last year, Apple announced that iOS 14 would bring changes for digital marketers, but the release was delayed. Now it seems like Apple is taking its New Years Resolution seriously and rolling out iOS 14 in the coming weeks.
Among these changes, the biggest, most anxiety-inducing disruption regards a change in data privacy. When users are updating their operating system to iOS 14, they will be asked if they’d like to opt out of tracking when downloading new apps.
Before you panic, take a deep breath and keep reading. We’re here to walk you through what these changes entail and how to adapt.