Lucy: Hello everybody and welcome to this weeks digital marketing news round up. It has been another busy week in the world of digital marketing with updates from Google, Snapchat, Tripadvisor and Twitter! Keep watching to learn more!
Katy: Google Search Console adds Product results filters to performance report. Google have announced that a new filter will be coming to Search Console for your products, specifically how well they are performing in search results. This report will be available under the Performance report then search appearance and will show metrics for clicks and impressions. Although Search Console is not showing data for individual products, it will give you an idea of how often your product rich results are showing.
Lucy: Google Maps is Becoming More Social. The Google Local Guides program has over 120 million members who are largely invisible in the Google Maps experience. Local Guides provide reviews, images and answer questions about local businesses and places. But now Local Guides will be more visible in a number of test cities. Users will now be able to follow Local Guides to see local recommendations of places and things to do in the likes of London, New York and Tokyo. Top Local Guides will be presented on the “For You” discovery tab at the bottom of the Google Maps App. Google has failed in the past to create a social platform, not including YouTube. So now Google are adding social aspects to their successful platforms. This is a great way for users to discover local businesses, however as a business it’s out of your control to improve performance of this feature.
Emily: Tripadvisor Has Launched New Self-Service Ad Platform. Tripadvisor has launched ‘media manager’ a self service ad platform. This is made for small and medium businesses and designed for simple ad creation and targeting. Media manager is available worldwide on the Tripadvisor platform. This new ad platform will provide an excellent opportunity for those in the hospitality sector to advertise their products and services.
Katy: Snapchat lets advertisers run video ads up to 3 minutes in length. Snapchat are releasing a new ad format for advertisers called ‘extended plan commercials’. This new ad format allows advertisers to use a video up to 3 minutes long in their ads. However, users can still skip this after 6 seconds, much like on YouTube. Speaking to AdWeek, Snapchat said that this new ad format gives advertisers an ‘opportunity to tell longer stories’ and ‘capture a greater share of the video ad market’. This ad format is currently for whitelisted advertisers only. I see this new feature as being a good move for snapchat to give advertisers more options, whilst still respecting the user’s choice to skip ads.
Emily: Twitter To Begin Deleting Accounts That Have Been Inactive For 6 Months. It is reportedly going to delete accounts that haven’t been logged in to for 6 months. This move is being seen as a way to free usernames that are being used by the inactive accounts. If your company or brand holds a Twitter account which is not currently being used it is worth logging into it to ensure it is not deleted. If it does get deleted then the handle will be available for others to use and may not belong to your brand or company anymore. This may cause issues if the handle begins to get used by someone else and that account associated with your company.
Lucy: That’s it for this week everybody! If you would like to stay up to date with the latest digital marketing news follow us on our social channels. See you soon!