Martin: Welcome to Episode 4 of our Weekly News Reviews. This week there have been improvements for local discovery on Whatsapp, New Google Combined Audience Targeting, Redesigned Microsoft Ads Editor and more. Keep watching to learn more.
Lucy: Whatsapp rolls out product Catalogs to support local discovery. The new catalog feature on WhatsApp allows small businesses to showcase their products and services via the app’s messaging function. Users are also able to discover businesses and see products directly on a business profile. Business owners can upload images of their products, as well as providing descriptions, and pricing. They can also provide the URL to take users away to their site. If you own a small business or run marketing for one, this is a great tool. WhatsApp are creating themselves as a complete commerce platform for small businesses. With more than 1 billion daily users, it’s a platform worth using.
Katy: Instagram to Remove Visible ‘Likes’ For US Users. Instagram will begin to test the removal of like counts for US users. This means the number of likes will be hidden from post viewers and only will be seen by the post owner. This test may already be in process this week. ‘Likes’ are a vital part of Instagram influencer culture, those with more likes are viewed as more influential. Influencers often pair up with brands to advertise products, could the removal of like counts diminish the success of influencer ad collaborations?
Martin: Google have rolled out combined audience targeting for search. Some advertisers have started to see combined audience targeting options when creating search campaigns in Google Ads. These audiences work by allowing you to layer audiences using and, or and not directives.This will allow advertisers to target audiences to more granular level than before. This tool will help you to only target the exact audience that you want. If you work in a niche this will be a great tool, there’s no longer a need to spend money on broad audiences when you can filter out certain interests from your chosen audience. So, imagine you’re running a rock climbing wall and you want to target after school events. You can now target the keyword, after school events. But you could choose only to target people with an interest in rock climbing, and have kids between the certain age that you want to target. So what this allows you to do is broad your keyword targeting out but keep it relevant, by targeting only the audiences within that keyword who would be interested in your product or services.
Katy: Redesigned Microsoft Advertising Editor now available. Following the recent announcement that the Microsoft Ads web interface will have a redesign, Editor has followed suit. The new update brings features including Recommendations, where Editor integrates AI powered recommendations for your campaigns. This can include keyword bids and fixing ad groups without keywords. Other new features include Undo and Redo and Combined Basic and Advanced search box. I get the impression that Microsoft ads are trying hard to catch up with Google Ads and this new update should make using Editor much easier for advertisers.
Emily: Customise the Look of Ad Placements When Using an Existing Post on Facebook To Create Ad. Now when you select an existing post on Facebook in order to create an ad you can customise the way it looks in different placements across Facebook and Instagram. When creating ads in Facebook Business Manager you can choose to advertise an existing post. The editing panel has the option to customise placements. This will help with the appearance of ads made from existing posts, hopefully posting the performance of the ad. It is little features such as this which are gradually improving the experience and use of Facebook Business Manager.
Martin: Thank you for watching. If you’d like to see these news stories daily then follow our social channels. See you next week.