On Monday, we released the first episode of our “Fortnightly Digital Marketing News Roundups”.
We know it can be difficult to keep up with all the changes in the Digital Marketing industry. Many of us work in busy offices, sometimes barely having time to grab a sandwich or a coffee. So, we wanted to make it easier for all of you to know what’s going on.
Daily, we post news articles we’ve found on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin. We wanted there to be one place you could rely on, to keep you up to date on the news in our industry. Along with these daily articles, we wanted to produce a video and a podcast that gives you a summary of the most important stories. So that’s what we’ve started doing. You have the choice of our video or our podcast, which is also available on Spotify.
If you want to stay up to date on daily news, our video and our podcast, then don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Otherwise, enjoy your choice below.
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Spotify Podcast: https://spoti.fi/2QMK1Fu
Martin: Hi everyone and welcome to this month’s digital marketing news roundup from Blue Thirst we’ve got the latest going ons from Google, Facebook so if you’re in digital marketing you’re in the right place
Katy: Bing has been rebranded to Microsoft Ads, this month Bing saw a big rebrand towards Microsoft ads and it’s intended to indicate a signal offering beyond search advertising. So what you may have seen, the logo’s changed, the platform hasn’t changed too much but it’s all become Microsoft Ads. There is already clients that are tapping into the Microsoft Audience Network. Which is sort of like the Bing Audience Network but obviously it’s all been rebranded now. And over the next year, there’s going to be more offerings added such as AI and machine learning.
Lucy: Facebook Redesign is more than just a new website. Facebook has just had a full refresh, some of you might have noticed this on the app on your phone, and after a tough 2018 on the privacy front Mark Zuckerberg has announced big plans for 2019, starting with this redesign. Almost every aspect of the platform is going to be changing in some way.
The core focus is to become groups as well as the launch of Facebook dating in more countries and improvements to the Facebook marketplace.
He basically wants to make it a nicer environment for people to go into because it had become quite negative especially with the privacy worries.
Martin: Google’s teased that they are going to be updating the Google ads app. So at the moment in the Google ads app all that we can really do is see the campaign data, what they’re teasing us with is that they are going to allow us to start making some modifications to ads. It looks like it might only be responsive ads that we can play with but it is starting to bring functionality into the app. It will actually allow us to make campaign changes on the fly which is exciting.
Emily: Instagram are testing hidden likes. Experimenting in Canada, Instagram are testing hiding their likes. Some individual users can still see who liked their post but their followers can’t see. Some people are worried that this might change the Instagram community. While others it will become less competitive
Martin: There’s going to be some updates to Google Local campaigns so Google Local campaigns are a lot like the automated campaigns for text, but they are designed to obviously drive people into stores or if you want people coming into your location they’ve been hinting there is going to be some updates. Some new ad inventory types, some new campaign types.
So if you are a local retailer or somebody has bricks and mortar keep an eye on the dynamic Google local campaigns because there’s some more features coming. They haven’t released what they all are. But they do sound exciting, the ones they’re kind of teasing us with.
Lucy: Google I/O 2019. At this years Google I/O the search giant declared their plans to take over the mid-range smartphone market by introducing two brand new Pixel Devices. They also announced a voice and gesture controlled Home Hub as well as a tonne of updates to their upcoming operating system Android Q. The pixel 3a and 3axl are pared down versions of their flagship device with reduced specs and features.
While the Google Nest Hub Max is a larger and vastly improved version of last year’s 7 inch home hub. It has improved speakers, a new 6 megapixel camera and personalised alerts. They have also refreshed the Google assistant referring to the new version as the Next Generation, it’s said to be up to 10 times faster than the current version and the assistants understanding has also been improved.
Emily: Facebook clear history. The long promised clear history tool is coming to Facebook. Announced in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica Scandal, it will give users more control over their personal data. It’s been designed to give users more transparency about how their data is used on and off of Facebook. This feature may impact advert targeting. Once someone clears their data, this can no longer be used for advertising purposes.
Katy: New features from Google Marketing Live. This month Google hosted their conference, Google Marketing Live in San Francisco, and this happens every year and it’s a highly anticipated event when new features and new announcements are made.
So lots of exciting things to come out of this year. Firstly for local campaigns, users can now promote their local businesses in Google Maps that’s great if you’ve got lots of shops or restaurants. There’s been lots of updates to the display campaign option in Google such as Discovery ads on mobile homepage, YouTube home page and Gmail promotion tabs and also a new program which allows you to generate bumper ads so the 6 Second Videos within Google ads. Lastly there’s been a new bidding control that offers more customization for precise bids in your campaigns, just neatening up the whole bidding process lots of exciting things come out of this month and they should be expected to roll out over the next few months.
Martin: Google are launching some B2B audiences to rival LinkedIn. Interesting in the last report we’ve heard that Google are going to be launching some B2B only custom audiences, trying to take on LinkedIn I think this one, we can choose size of business. Anything from one man band all the way up to 10,000 employees and also across multiple sectors. This is really interesting there’s not been a lot of B2B stuff in Google audience data, but it looks like they’re rivaling to take on LinkedIn with this latest addition to their audience demographic type.
Emily: Twitter experiment with showing more ads. If you’ve been noticing more ads on Twitter recently, there’s a reason. A spokeswoman has confirmed that Twitter are currently experimenting with ad load and emphasises that they are running to improve ad experience. This won’t currently affect everyone but if it is they want your opinions on it
Katy: Google mobile search has changed. This new update has changed the presentation and appearance of the Organic listings and ads in Google. So since 2017, ads have been notified with the little green label. This is now changed. So they are a black square that says ad in them, this is sort of a more discreet way of showing ads by still notifying the people that they’re there. The second update is that for organic listings you will start seeing favicons in your results. So to get your favicon included in those organic results you need to add a link tag to the header with specific syntax. So when Google crawls your home page it will look for this and will be able to update it in the listing. These changes will allow Google to add more sort of action buttons and helpful previews, while ensuring that the attribution is clear.
Martin: Thank you very much for watching, that’s everything for this month. Just a quick note to remember to subscribe if you want to automatically see next month’s edition but if you want to be kept up to date for the news articles as and when they drop don’t forget to follow us on our social channels and we’ll be releasing news articles as and when we find them.