Martin: Welcome to this week’s digital marketing news round up, we have updates from Microsoft Advertising, Google and Google Ads.
Katy: Microsoft Advertising If Functions for Dynamic Ad Copy. Microsoft Advertising have announced that they now support IF functions in ad copy. This allows advertisers to create conditional messaging in ads and works off a customer’s device or audience segment. To set these up, all you need to do is create or edit an existing text ad and start typing IF, where the interface will guide you through the rest. An example given for this would be to change messaging for mobile users. Google Ads have had these for some time now but it’s great that Microsoft Ads has joined the party. This is a really great way to make your ads more personal for users and hopefully get that CTR up.
Lucy: Unconfirmed Google Algorithm Update. Google has not confirmed an algorithm update but rank checking tools are at insane levels which aren’t typical of your regular Google core update. Users are reporting seeing traffic dropping at very specific times only to return to normal 24 hours later with the tool trackers saying the data is correct and not in error. On the 13th February a Google rep responded to queries with ‘We do updates all the time’, neither confirming or denying that something was changed.
Emily: Google Premier Partners: Eligible Users. Google recently announced a change to the requirements necessary for the Google Premier Partner badge, including needing 50% of eligible users on a manager’s account to earn the appropriate certifications. Google has released a list of reasons to clarify why there may be client accounts included as eligible, these are: they use personal email accounts, they use email addresses with your company domain and more users than necessary have access. Google suggests replacing personal email accounts in the Ads manager account to those that have registered with the Google Partners, asking clients to use their own company email domain address and give those who don’t need as much access read-only and email-only access as these won’t be counted as eligible. With this advice advertisers will hopefully be able to reduce the list of eligible users to a manageable size and those who are relevant will be able to earn the certifications. Even so, it is still quite a big change that s me advertisers may find hard to meet.
Martin: Google Ads Change History Easier to Review. Google Ads will be updated to show change history in a performance chart, meaning you can view changes against reporting data. This change is coming to Google Ads now, we can see it in our ad accounts which are single but cannot see it in our MCC account. This change will make it so much easier to see how account changes affect the account performance, and should make the process of making changes in the account more transparent.
Katy: More Granular Conversion Actions on Google Ads. Google is currently running tests allowing some advertisers to choose more granular conversion actions for leads and sales. These include website actions such as ‘add to cart’ and ‘get directions’. This is currently available to some but not all advertisers. If the test proves to be successful and helps advertisers target conversions more effectively it is likely it will become available to all in beta. The new options will allow advertisers to target important parts of the customer journey and tailor campaigns to customers in the particular stage they are in.
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