Cool Curious Glitched Hermes

CuriousMarketers.Club

Because marketing is more than advertising, it's pretty much everything. But it's also not that serious. And curiosity is the most important ingredient.

Google

    ∞

    First Microsoft Ads, now Google Ads: audiences based on interactions with your results and ads on Google and YouTube.

    Meet: Google-engaged audiences

    Google-engaged audiences help you to reach users who have previously interacted with your website on Google Search, YouTube, or other Google sites. It automatically generates lists of users who have visited your site from Google properties through clicks on either ads or search results.

    Based on my tests, it doesn’t appear you can break out audience based on whether they clicked a paid vs. organic result.

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    I just concluded a prez to the Blue Ion crew by saying that smart/AR glasses are the next consumer computing wave.

    This piece from The Verge makes me feel better about that prediction.

    and the third is the idea that no one device is the future of XR. Headsets, for example, may just be “episodic” devices you use for entertainment. Glasses could supplement phones and smartwatches for discreet notifications and looking up information.

    “The way I see it, these devices don’t replace one another. You’ll use these devices throughout your day,

    Ambient computing!

    There are plenty of hurdles left, but if Google has figured out on-lens optics, the big ones left are for the accountants.

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    The headline: Google To Have More Core Updates, More Often

    Details are thin, but this slide from the Search Central Live event where this was announced is interesting:

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    Everyone’s coming for Meta 😎

    Solos challenges Meta’s Ray-Bans with $299 ChatGPT smart glasses

    That allows the AirGo Vision to do things like translate text into different languages, provide directions to nearby locations or landmarks, and give the wearer more information about what they’re looking at.

    A swappable frame system means that you can wear the glasses with or without the camera

    To paraphrase Ian Fleming: Once is chance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is a trend.

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    Your creative is more important than your targeting. 

    Don’t leave the ad content as an afterthought. 

    Your ad creative is more important than your ad targeting. 

    You’ve got to grab attention. Spend at least as much time on your creative strategy as your targeting strategy. 

    Creative is the new targeting.

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    A good economic rebuttal to some of the requested punishments in the Google anti-trust case.

    Defaults matter, but switching also isn’t hard.

    Also, it’s a bit late, isn’t it?

    the antitrust case is happening when Google is losing advertising share and is under pressure from a new search technology, Artificial Intelligence. AI search from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta Llama, and xAI is very well funded and making rapid progress.

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    Google may not be killing off cookies, but it is ramping up first-party data features for marketers.

    You can now use customer match to supplement Analytics audiences exported to your linked Google advertising products

    If your data includes user-provided data, any audience exported to Google advertising products will match your consented, hashed customer data with Google data.

    Money follows data.

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    Interesting to see Google continue to shift features into the third-party realm. This time, it’s ad creation tools for YouTube and Display.

    Google will sunset Ads Creative Studio by the end of March 2025, shifting its focus to new growth areas and enhancing partnerships with creative agencies to deliver tailored campaigns at scale.

    For YouTube-specific customizations, advertisers are encouraged to engage third-party partners.

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    Some big ifs, but this means GPT is not an insignificant player.

    Google won’t be overtaken by one player, but by all these other slices growing over time. Chipping away and taking more and more search share.

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    Reddit traffic is exploding thanks to its recent licensing deal with Google.

    And some of those visitors are turning into users, adding 31 million daily actives in the last year.

    “Reddit also says that its Weekly Active Unique user count (WAUq) averaged 365.4 million in the third quarter, an increase of 53% year-over-year. The amount of daily to weekly usage here is unusual for social apps, which usually see about 2.3x usage between daily and monthly actives. Reddit seemingly sees a lot more than this, which could point to the less consistent way in which visitors use the app.”

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    The headline:

    OpenAI is thinking about making its own browser

    Not a surprise. They’re also rumored to be working on a phone and more integrations with hardware makers.

    “The New Google” is a pretty obvious avenue for them to pursue.

    This is why regulator’s reasoning for forcing Big G to sell Chrome feels off.

    Google is getting chipped away at from many angles as options proliferate. But a better option is the only thing that will knock the company synonymous with search out of its number 1 spot.

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    Regulators have submitted their Google punishment wishlist to the judge, and it rivals many a kid’s Christmas list.

    The Justice Department wants:

    • Chrome sold off
    • no playing favorites on Android (& maybe sold)
    • can’t buy default status
    • no favoring Google services in other Google services
    • license search index data to others
    • ad cost transparency
    • blah blah AI training access blah

    No. 3 is the most obvious one on the list. The others range from 🤷 to 😮

    Not sure this is the obvious outcome:

    A sale of Chrome “will permanently stop Google’s control of this critical search access point and allow rival search engines the ability to access the browser that for many users is a gateway to the internet”

    How much better does Google Search get if $20B a year gets reinvested instead of paid to Apple?

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    Google Analytics 4 adds benchmarking data

    reference metrics that help you compare your business performance against the performance of other businesses in your industry.

    in percentiles (median, 25th, and 75th) based on peer groups of businesses for a wide range of industry categories. The businesses that form the peer groups are determined by an industry category assigned to each property. This industry category is determined by a combination of factors including the broad industry category provided in setup and signals from things like a property’s URLs and App attributes.

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    Google’s getting ready for shopping szn

    Google Lens

    Google Lens can quickly show you product insights tailored to the store you’re in. Just snap a photo to find product information, similar products in-stock, whether a store’s price is competitive and shopper reviews.

    Shop Via Maps

    search for products in Maps and find nearby stores selling them

    As the moat around Google’s Knowledge Graph erodes in a post-AI world, the “Shopping Graph” may be the next fulcrum for revenue growth.

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    Samsung and Google are working on smart glasses to rival Meta’s Ray Bans to be released late next year.

    Gemini would handle AI tasks alongside support for “payment,” QR code recognition, “gesture recognition,” and “human recognition functions.”

    I think we’ve found the most probable next consumer computing platform.

    AI needs a computer, but not necessarily a screen.

    The era of ambient computing is upon us.

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    Apple continues its services push:

    Any verified business can now create a consistent brand and location presence across apps that customers use every day, including Apple Maps, Wallet, and Mail.

    Now more than just a Google Business Profile clone, Business Connect adds:

    • Branded email: name and logo in Mail
    • Branded payments: logo in Tap to Pay
    • Branded incoming call screen with Business Caller ID (coming soon)

    Apple is turning its hardware network into an integrated marketing platform.

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    Google giving us more control?

    With brand guidelines, you can control how your brand is represented in your Performance Max campaign automated assets or formats.

    Your Performance Max campaigns use Google AI to infer key brand elements using your final URL. You’ll be able to review the brand information Google infers, then can fine-tune your brand guidelines based on your brand and campaign goals.

    Guidelines help control generated videos and responsive display and include font, color, name, and logo(s).

    Brand marketers rejoice!

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    It seems Google is testing adding if there was a change to that score because of "competitive pressure" and might even list the competitor that is causing such pressure.

    Might we be getting more helpful info from Google to help with ads management?

    More context, more better.

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    Now you can ignore everything I put in the big election spending post from yesterday.

    We will pause ads relating to US elections from serving in the US after the last polls close on election day, November 5th, 2024. This will include US Election Ads as well as ads that refer to US elections, their processes or outcomes.
    The restriction period for ads about social issues, elections or politics is being extended until later this week.

    Pressure released.

    ∞

    Election Campaign Spending Crowds Out Your Messaging

    I’ve been harping about election campaign spending and its impact on marketing expectations this year for a bit now. So here’s an Election Day post running through it all again. Go vote!

    2024 is projected to be a record-breaking year, surpassing $12 billion in political ad spend.

    Seventy percent of that windfall will be spent after Labor Day

    The Harris campaign has instead focused its digital spending on larger platforms like Google and Meta, where it has spent over $280mn this year. The vast amount of political spending on those platforms — already more than $1.5bn
    For context, in the second half of October, political parties spent well over $2.5 million per day on YouTube. For Meta, it’s closer to $1 million per day.

    Why won’t I shut up about this?

    Because this level of spend puts intense pressure on the ad auctions and inventories of the utilized platforms. These are mostly net-new dollars flowing in at a rapid clip. For most brands this means higher ad costs and lower return reducing the efficiency of their spend.

    Emarketer curated some reporting that includes:

    • brands reporting ad costs increasing 2-3x in the final weeks of the election
    • surging TV ad costs, especially in swing states

    Of course, the impact on marketing budgets is just the beginning.

    This messaging overload overwhelms consumers, raises anxiety levels, and increases ad fatigue (who else is sick of all the election messaging you get bombarded with?). Which can all lead to a “pre-election slump” in consumer spending. Of course, this theoretical slump is not universal—I bet alcohol sales and the like are doing just fine.

    But the bigger the price tag, the bigger the impact.

    In times of uncertainty, people sit on their cash. They purchase discount or off-brand. They hold off on large luxury purchases made in celebration or confidence.

    Election Day itself is no exception, more the final culmination of the building gravitational pull. A black hole that will collapse into itself tomorrow (right? please?!).

    the election is fraying the nerves of the electorate, with nearly 70% of US adults calling it a significant source of stress

    According to a recent Ipsos poll of roughly 1,000 US adults, 47% said election stress is causing them to spend less and save more

    Meanwhile, the scale of an Election Day productivity slowdown could be staggering. An analysis by Challenger, Gray & Christmas estimates that productivity losses could reach $3.5 billion per hour
    Your marketing and messaging is like a fire, it needs a steady source of fuel to keep burning—to act as a beacon to the people it's for. The election is a vacuum, it sucks all the oxygen (and attention) out, making it all but impossible for that fire to keep burning without any changes.
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