Lucy: Hi and Welcome to our Digital Marketing News Roundup. In the last week Google have made a lot of changes. More Shopping ad Inventory on YouTube, New Extensions for Youtube Ads and more.
Lucy: Google extends Shopping Ads to a larger YouTube Inventory. In time for the festive period, Google are expanding Shopping campaigns onto YouTube. Shopping ads can now appear on the YouTube home feed and in search results. To take advantage of this new inventory, make sure your ads are opted into ‘YouTube and Discover on Display network’. Google are eager to get shopping ad in more places. Google argue that purchase intent is shown on YouTube similarly to how it’s shown on Google Search. With the company saying that there has been a 4x increase in watch time of ‘holiday shopping’ videos over the last 2 years. If you have eCommerce clients, don’t miss out on this new inventory.
Emily: Google Rolls Out New Extensions for YouTube Ads. Google have announced that new ad extensions are coming to YouTube ads. These are said to act the same as search extensions and invite users to take further action. The new extensions coming to YouTube are; directing users to a store location, interest lead forms and other Call to action extensions. Google have taken inspiration from the high performance that search extensions have for advertisers and hope to see this mirrored on YouTube. It’s worth keeping an eye on your account and we will definitely be using them.
Lucy: Updated Version Of Google Ads Editor With New Features And Supporting New Campaign Types. The new version of Google Ads Editor includes new features such as shared negative keyword lists, searching for specific errors, hiding empty fields, image names and maximum conversion value for bidding strategy for search campaigns. Furthermore, Editor now supports app campaigns for engagement and discovery campaigns. This version of Editor is available now, those who already have editor downloaded simply need to update their version. This update follows a series of updates which are aimed at improving the usability and capabilities of Ads Editor. I think these features will really help with the ease of editor, and for myself searching for all instances of errors within the account will be a life saver.
Emily: Redesigned YouTube Desktop Home Page. The desktop design update, which also applies to the YouTube apps for iPad and android tablets includes visual changes such as: longer video titles, larger thumbnails, higher res video previews and more. Another update which will come soon for desktop and tablets will allow users to choose their favourite topics and use these to customise their home feed. The visual changes may help brands who use YouTube to release content as more information from their videos will be displayed. If you are using YouTube it will still remain important to use well thought out titles and thumbnails to allow users to understand what your videos are about.
Lucy: Google Chrome Plans to use Badges to Indicate Slow Loading Speeds to Users. Google has a plan for chrome to introduce loading speed badges to sites, this will let users know whether the site usually loads slowly. This badging system is currently being worked on by Google and isn’t out yet. The badging system is aimed to encourage site owners to improve their page speed. It is likely that users, upon seeing a ‘slow’ badge will abandon the page. Google has been known to change their criteria for site speed, putting more precedence on showing users site speed may backfire if they decide to change the way they test site speed again, as many sites that were previously considered fast by Google could be seen as slower, as what happened last time.
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