The September 2020 Search & Digital Marketing News Round Up
Yet another massive digital marketing news month, and the cake-topping story was the revelation that UK advertisers will foot the bill for the 2% Digital Sales Tax (DST) intended for Google, Facebook, and other tech giants to pay. Response has been mixed, with some advertisers reducing their budget to account for the rise, and others maintaining budgets as-is, taking the additional charge on the chin.
Google News, Google News & More Google News
In equally concerning news, Google announced it would reduce the visibility of search terms shown in reports for advertisers. Initial estimates from a number of agencies suggested up to 30% of ad spend will be impacted by the change, hugely limiting the potential to manage out poor quality queries. Google’s motivations are – as yet – somewhat unclear. In comments to Search Engine Land Google advised the search terms report will
“only include terms that were searched by a significant number of users.”
What does “significant” mean? Nobody knows. Google stated the motivation for the change is
“to maintain our standards of privacy and strengthen our protections around user data.”
Some industry pundits are (correctly) noting that Google’s general direction of travel is towards campaign automation, so it’s no surprise to see this happen, but set against declining growth in Google’s core search business – could this be a revenue play first, privacy second? Only time will tell.
Google introduced more ad features for businesses with physical locations including Smart Bidding for in-store sales, “Pick up later” for Local Inventory ads, and more. Gift Cards are being nixxed from Google Merchant Centre starting 30 September.
Also making its debut was the new Performance Max campaign type. Running across all of Google’s inventory, Performance Max marks a significant further move towards aforementioned automation and is designed to complement search campaigns.
For a bit of really good news, Google Shopping is now rolling out free globally, following a roll out to the US. Make sure you’re opted in to the programme. Google also launched new Schema for retailer shipping data allowing shipping costs and expected delivery times to be displayed in search results. The shop-ability of search results increases again…how long until you can buy exactly what you need, directly from Google? Tick tock, tock….that’s the sound of the ticking clock.
Google is giving certain publishers a new content ‘Showcase’ on News, Search, Discover. Launching as a partnership with over 200 publishers in Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, the U.K. and Australia, the new platform is designed to address some of the concerns news publishers have about the movement of advertising spend to Google and the other tech giants. To sweeten the deal, Google is committing over $1billion of investment in publishers over the next three years, and is providing tools for news outlets to curate, format and display their content how they wish.
Clicked the Facebook ad on Monday, had another look on Tuesday, I had it in my cart on Wednesday*….
Facebook is ditching its 28-day attribution window, starting 12th October, defaulting your attribution window to 7-day. Spurred in no small part by Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention measures, the change will impact on advertisers who experience a longer lead-time for purchases. The contrarian view: with its wealth of data Facebook knows that most purchases from ads happen within a 7 day window, and this is simply a far better way to measure performance. Could it be that simple? Possibly.
Instagram and Facebook Messenger have now merged replacing the old Instagram Direct service with Messenger. This represents a continuation of the vision to unite all of their (somewhat disparate) messaging platforms under one system.
This shift comes with the launch of ‘Facebook Business Suite’, a new mobile app and desktop interface aimed at SMBs combining Facebook and Instagram (with Whatsapp added within a year) publishing, messaging and analytics in a single dashboard. The tool doesn’t yet include Pixel, Ads Manager or Advanced Audiences, but for the millions of SMEs that rely on Facebook, it’s a simpler and arguably more pragmatic solution than Business Manager.
* apologies to Craig David
The Bite-Sized News
Snapchat is floating a new advertising offering called Platform Burst. Campaigns start at ~£100k – as yet no known takers in the UK.
A helping hand: SEMrush put together an evergreen content guide.
Ever wondered which CMS is the fastest? This study helps answer that.
And it should come as no surprise that paid search and social media spend are growing fastest in 2020.
Finally, a good watch, ‘SEO mythbusting’, with Google’s ever-colourful Martin Splitt and the multi-talented Lily Rae.
