- HubSpot
- Drip
- Google Ads
- Google Display Ads
- Instagram Ads
- MailChimp
- Adobe Marketo
- Microsoft Ads
- Yandex
- & more!
- Show your brand off the bat and continue to show it often
- Have the right video length
- Use a voice-over
- Include all 3 aspect ratios
Big G runs on ads and AI and is still working to combine those 2 to create the future of Google Search.
In its earnings call for the third quarter of 2023, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that the company plans to experiment with a native ad format suitable for its Search Generative Experience (SGE) that is “customized to every step of the search journey.”
via TechCrunch
We might have reached peak vertical video:
Have consumers started to cool towards short-form video? That’s certainly one read from Google and Snap results.
If anything this serves as a good reminder to not go all in on one content format based on the platforms’ push du jour (just ask news publishers about social video). Different businesses do different forms of content better than others and different forms work better for different purposes.
Don’t give up on vertical video. But don’t go all in on it either.
Google is further signaling the decay of attribution modeling with the announcement:
First click, linear, time decay and position-based attribution models are going away
None of these were great. Data-driven replaced position-based and GA4’s shift to user (and event)-based measurement over session-based made first click redundant.
But I think this is an admission from Big G that (aside from last click) accurate attribution is hard to do in a post-cookie world, so it’s all about data modeling now.
ChatGPT can query the web again. Which means it’s crawling the web. Which means it’s indexing the web. Which means it’s a search engine.
Search 1.0 was hand built directories (Yahoo!)
Search 2.0 was algorithms (Google’s PageRank)
Search 3.0 will be information engines 🔮
Provide the answers without the user clicking all over. Worse for websites, better for users?
For Google Ads peeps, looks like Discovery campaigns are being auto-upgraded to Demand Gen.
X (Twitter) is desperate for money since Elon has been scaring off advertisers. If you can’t get paid directly, why not get that money indirectly? (Deception fits the current playbook perfectly.)
Enter: Google Display Network
advertisers will be able to tap into the X home feed inventory through Google Ads Display campaigns
Potentially more importantly for you, you can exclude the placement.
🎉🎉🎉
If you’ve enabled Google Signals for your property, simply disable “Include Google Signals in Reporting Identity” on the Admin’s Data Collection page.
Turning this option off helps to minimize data thresholding if your property uses Belnded or Observed reporting identity.
via MarTech
Apple has all the pieces for it’s own search engine. It just needs the appetite to give up $8B in guaranteed money from Google each year.
AI might be the catalyst. Models are built on data, and big companies aren’t going to want to share. (Plus, any antitrust action may make Big G less likely to shell out.)
Think about a Spotlight search experience built on full, cross-app/web indices and connections to various inputs types with a chat-like interface. All built on Apple’s privacy reputation. (And Apple’s adtech stack, of course.)
Google is on trial.
AI will reinvent search behavior.
Social is closing off, going private, and decentralizing (yeah, confusing).
Cookies will be naught but crumbs.
Apple is still trying to build an ad empire.
The digital ad duopoly has already been disrupted. Looking like that was just the start.
Here’s a fun attack vector
In practice, this means that bad actors are identifying websites that have an internal search function and are seen as trustworthy by Google — such as government, educational, and media websites — and putting in searches for things like “buy cocaine,” along with Telegram handles or a website address.
A change to Google’s indexing means your site search may be used as a webpage generator by bad actors. 🙃
Remember, drugs are sold in gas stations and fentanyl is in everything
The era of subsidizing subscriber numbers in a free money, growth-before-everything-else market is over. Streaming TV is is now cable and it will be ad-supported (but you can pay your way out of ads).
Amazon aims to show ‘meaningfully fewer ads’ than traditional TV or rival streaming platforms. An ad-free option will be available for an additional $2.99 per month.
TV has been fully unbundled. Which means it’s time to start bundling again.
I put Amazon, Apple, Google, and Roku at the front of the pack of potential bundlers due to saturation and having existing streaming hardware platforms.
Remember that Apple announcement about removing link tracking in Safari (private browsing plus iMessage and Mail)?
It’s here!
It impacts:
UTMs survive.
Huh…
some TikTok users are now seeing a new prompt appear within their search results in the app, which includes a CTA to expand their search on Google.
I’m not sure if this is a “keep your enemies closer” play or a weird “we’re both under regulatory scrutiny so let’s team up” play.
I guess TikTok can use it to disclaim Chinese info control claims.
And Google can gain traction with the youths?
Google: where the algorithm’s made up and the prices don’t matter
The search engine “frequently” changes the auctions it uses to sell search ads, increasing the cost of ads and reserve pricing by as much as 5% for the average advertiser.
For some queries, the tech giant may have even raised prices by as much as 10%, according to Google Ad executive, Jerry Dischler at the federal antitrust trial.
Nothing like disclosing your monopolistic behavior while on trial for being a monopoly.
Incentives matter.
Quick refresher on some brand settings in Google Ads.
If you want to use broad match keywords but also want them to be brand relevant, try brand restrictions:
For Search, brand restrictions limit traffic to serve only on search queries related to specified brands.
If you don’t want to use Performance Max for branded queries but more strictly for prospecting, try brand exclusions:
For Performance Max, brand exclusions provide added control so your campaigns won’t serve for branded queries you want to avoid on Search and Shopping inventory.
Google will now use AI to tell you how to optimize your video ads based on their “data-backed creative best practices”.
Basically, it’ll tell you if you didn’t check a box on the list.
That list includes:
More ABCD compliant attributes coming soon.