- The Reports section provides insights into how users engage with your websites and apps so you can improve your product and user experience.
- The Advertising section will become the hub to monitor and analyze your campaigns whether you’re a publisher or an advertiser.
- Single headline responsive search ads
- Changes to account-level automated assets
Quick Hit Google Bits
Google Analytics 4 launches new trend detection insight
trend change detection focuses on slower changes happening over a longer time. This gives users a detailed view of data changes, making it a useful tool to spot both quick and long-term trends.
Reddit signs AI content licensing deal with Google
reportedly paying Reddit $60 million per year to train its artificial intelligence models (e.g., Gemini).
OG journo-blogger Matt Welch on legacy media, like the Village Voice & LA Times:
Never could adapt to the new reality. It’s a success curse.
When you’re making that much money, you’re that powerful, the people who work for you—including yourselves—are not going to solve the industry once the industry turns and changes.
This is not just a media problem.
Same could be said of Google right now.
How do you change when the change threatens your business model?
Walmart is in talks to acquire Vizio, which sells a popular line of value-priced smart TVs that include an ad-supported free streaming service
which
could make Walmart a significant player in the connected-TV advertising business, competing with the likes of Roku, Amazon and Google/YouTube
via Variety
When users say “platform,” we mean software (increasingly cloud-based).
When platforms say “platform,” they mean hardware.
Every major ad platform wants a hardware platform of their own. For that sweet, sweet first-party data & to not be beholden to someone else (especially a competitor).
I’m turning into a Google bear 🐻
Competition from OpenAI: Develops Web Search Product in Challenge to Google
Arc Search getting buzz (I’ve used it & can easily see this being a glimpse of search’s future)
Earlier this month I asked if Google was now Microsoft.
Magic 8 ball says “Signs point to yes” 🎱
via Inside:
A U.S. federal judge has scheduled an antitrust trial against Google for Sept. 9, 2024. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) lawsuit targets the search giant’s alleged monopoly over online advertising.
If, like Microsoft, Big G limits/unwinds development to avoid more antitrust actions, we may have seen the last of Google as portal to the Internet.
& yes, it’s an existing trend that is accelerating.
& yes, Microsoft pulled a phoenix so it’s not necessarily The End.
The cookie has crumbled and the replacement isn’t out of the oven yet. At least in the short term, ad platforms are turning to Enhanced Conversions.
A Google rep recommended this to me to avoid losing signal after Chrome sunsets them for good this summer.
From Microsoft:
With Enhanced conversions, you can supplement existing conversion measurements by using privacy-safe customer first-party data, such as email and phone number.
Seemed like Google wanted to be a platform for everything you might need to do on the web. (Which meant more vectors for data collection to fuel the revenue generator: ads.)
Now it is starting to replace Big G products with third-party integrations (Search cache, A/B testing).
Is it now Microsoft?
Google Search’s cache links are officially being retired
Google claims it’s less necessary now that internet reliability has improved.
Google is a cloud computing company. One with a robust PR department that likes to make everything a societal positive. One that needs to find profit, fast.
How do you increase cloud capacity without increasing hardware costs? You delete a bunch of stuff taking up space. Like Search cache. Or Universal Analytics data (148 days until deletion).
What will fill this space?
I’m sure some will be whatever paying customers put there. It mostly, AI.
If you want to glimpse the future of search, don’t look to Google.
Asked: Test or beta?
Answered: Google has now rolled out campaign level headlines and descriptions.
You can now have the option to associate up to three headlines and two descriptions at the campaign level. “If you need to show these assets during a specific time period, such as a sale, you’ll be able to schedule specific start and end dates for them.
Also:
Create Google search ads, with AI!
The conversational experience enables advertisers to generate relevant ad content, including creative and keywords, from a website URL.
You may have heard the Google Ads rule of thumb that you need 30 conversions before changing your bid strategy to Maximize Conversions. That’s not entirely true.
Max conversions can work on fewer than that. Target CPA or Target ROAS on the other hand, wait for 30.
per a Google Ads rep
Test or beta? Who knows, but hopefully it’s a toy we all get.
Google is toying with campaign-level headlines and descriptions.
This is all “as seen on LinkedIn,” but looks like you can add up to 3 headlines & 2 descriptions to an entire campaign and set on-off dates. Perfect for promos.
Google Ads match types:
Exact Match is really phrase match
Phrase Match is really broad match
Broad Match is really garbage
Instacart is an advertising platform that dabbles in grocery delivery, just in time for the Retail Media Renaissance
From Bloomberg:
Instacart will show advertisements on the high-tech shopping carts [which include self-checkout and are equipped with cameras and sensors to detect items] it sells to grocery stores
& a Google Shopping Ads partnership:
powered by Instacart’s first-party retail media data and closed-loop insights, to reach high-intent consumers searching on Google and get their products into consumers' hands in as fast as an hour.
YouTube—the unofficial king of podcasts—is coming for the crown.
If you’re a podcast creator, you can use YouTube Studio to upload your podcasts to YouTube through an RSS feed.
via Google
About that Google kicking cookies to the curb thing…
Google is phasing out third-party cookies this fall, but some sites will be able to temporarily re-enable them until the year end.
via MarTech
It’s GA4 all over again
🍪 ☠️
The day has come, with Google activating the first stage of its cookie-removal strategy today [January 4]
via SocialMediaToday