Mackerel Media Search and Digital Marketing Roundup – October 2024
Welcome to our October Search and Digital Marketing roundup, where we highlight the recent developments currently shaping search and digital marketing strategies. This month has brought with it some important SEO updates, such as Google and Bing rolling out changes to their search experience, whilst social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and LinkedIn are changing the way that users are engaging with them.
Bing Things Up A Notch
At the start of the month, Microsoft announced the roll out of generative search results on Bing. This new expansion is designed to better address informational queries, and offers more in-depth answers with clear, easy to follow numbered links. Even with this development, Google still holds a dominant 90% share of the search market and so it may take time before Bing emerges as a significant competitor in the search landscape.
Google Fights Back
Not to be outdone, Google has also made some changes to their own generative search this month. On the 28th of October, Google announced it is rolling out AI search in more than 100 countries. This new expansion aims to reach more than 1 billion global users every month, and includes language support across all countries so that users can see AI overviews in their preferred language.
Google has been making changes to their search results and overall user experience by removing the Sitelinks Search Box. This feature allowed users to search within a website in real time directly from Google search, however usage of this function has dropped over time, and to simplify their search results Google will discontinue the feature from November 21st 2025.
LinkedIn Levels Up
Meanwhile, LinkedIn has improved its marketing capabilities with a new feature which allows businesses to boost posts for lead generation. This update uses LinkedIn’s first-party data to target potential leads, so that businesses can extend their reach beyond their existing page followers. This new feature allows businesses to create lead capture forms, set campaign parameters and launch targeted campaigns directly from their LinkedIn Page.
Ticking All the Smart Boxes
Over in the world of Social Media, TikTok has launched Smart+, an AI-driven advertising solution that automates campaign management across targeting, bidding and creative elements. This new ad platform aims to deliver the best ad to the best audience for enhanced performance. Advertisers simply have to enter their assets, budget, and targeting goals and Smart+ handles the optimisation process using TikTok Symphony’s AI capabilities. Smart+ can be accessed through TikTok Ads Manager, and when running will adjust creative elements such as videos, text and call-to-action buttons, while automatically reallocating budgets towards the best-performing content.
The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, confirmed that Instant adjusts the quality of videos based on their engagement, and that popular videos are presented to users in higher quality, whilst less popular videos are shown in lower quality. This feature is meant to save on video encoding and storage, however Instagram have stated that the quality difference is minimal and that ultimately the video content matters more than the resolution. This announcement has upset some creators who argue that it creates an unfair advantage for established accounts and makes it harder for new and emerging content creators to gain visibility and grow their audience.
From Chatting to Finding
Finally, on October 31st, OpenAI announced the launch of their built-in ChatGPT search functionality for paid subscribers. This new feature means that ChatGPT can now dynamically search the internet and provide users with relevant text, sources and up-to-date information all within the ChatGPT interface. This advancement could lead many users away from Google since there are no ads being shown and ChatGPT incorporates videos alongside their text. OpenAI plans to expand this functionality over to free, enterprise and education users in the upcoming weeks.
