Mackerel Media’s Search and Digital Marketing Roundup – March 2025
This March not only saw the arrival of Spring, but also some major updates across both organic search and paid advertising. From Google’s recent algorithm updates and Performance Max improvements, to changes in YouTube advertising and AI security developments, here’s a look at what’s been happening in the digital marketing space.
This month Google rolled out its March 2025 core update, which began on the 13th of March and completed on the 27th of March. Although Google has not disclosed which parts of search have been impacted by this update, there have been some early reports which show search fluctuations across a range of different marketplaces. As with all core updates, it is important to monitor your search performance and ensure that your content and overall site technical performance is in good health. Mackerel Media are on hand to assist with a review of search visibility, and advise on strategies to mitigate and improve search performance and overall user acquisition.
The Future of Google Search
Google’s Head of Search, Elizabeth Reid, made headlines this month by predicting that over time the standard Google search bar will become less prominent, and voice queries and image based queries will continue to rise. An ex-Google executive hinted that Google is moving away from its standard model of sending users to websites, and instead wants to keep users on the Google platform as much as possible. This coincides with the recent rollout of AI overviews which gives users answers to their questions within the search results, reducing the need for users to visit external websites. The effect that this will have on the SEO space means that it could lead to fewer users visiting websites directly. Optimising your site for better visibility within Google’s AI overviews, whether that is through optimised content, featured snippets and structured data becomes more important now than ever.
Performance Max Ads Reveal Their Secrets
Google also responded to the demand for more visibility in Performance Max campaigns. Advertisers can now see the actual search terms that are triggering their Performance Max ads, thanks to a recent update which integrates this data into the existing Search Terms report. Ad managers can now add negative keywords directly from the report which will help reduce spend and ensure ads are only showing for relevant searches. For brands running Performance Max campaigns at scale, this update is a useful step towards greater ad control and performance.
Google’s structured data guidelines have recently been updated, allowing merchants to display new pricing details directly in search results. The new properties include priceType, which labels prices as ‘strikethrough’ to indicate discounts and savings, and validForMemberTier (currently in beta), which displays prices exclusive to loyalty program tiers. These new improvements provide users with clearer pricing information which could lead to an overall increase in engagement and conversions. If you are planning on running any upcoming Spring sales or tiered offers, it would be worth checking your schema markup to ensure you’re making the most of these new features.
YouTube’s New Ad Strategy
YouTube has unveiled new plans to revamp their mid-roll ads starting in May 2025. Ads will now appear during natural content breaks to help reduce interruptions, such as during natural breaks and transitions in the video. YouTube creators will be able to add manual, automatic or a combination of both ad placements. Early tests show that using both ad placement types can increase video revenue by 5%. These changes could affect video monetisation strategies, especially for videos with manual ad placements, and so it is worth staying on top of any ad placement updates when planning future content.
On the AI front, Cloudflare has introduced AI Labyrinth, a free, opt-in tool designed to prevent unauthorised web-scraping bots collecting data from your website. When this tool is enabled, it will redirect any known bot to AI-generated decoy pages, which consumes all their crawling resources and prevents them from scraping important data. This new feature allows Cloudflare to identify and analyse malicious bots while protecting the site content from potentially being repurposed by AI in the future. As more companies and users are using AI for search and content, protecting your content could become just as important as optimising for it.
TikTok Turns Scrolls into Billions!
Finally, Sensor Tower’s Q4 Digital Market Index revealed that TikTok has led the mobile app market by generating $6 billion from in-app purchases in 2024. This total is almost double that of its closest competitors, and marks a 36% increase from the previous year. This surge shows the influence that TikTok has in both product discovery and user engagement. Additionally, 70% of TikTok shoppers have reported that they’ve purchased products after seeing ads or shoppable content. As TikTok continues to grow, it is important to consider ways to best maximise TikTok’s advertising and shoppable content to improve visibility and drive conversions.
