1. Highlights From Snapchat Q3’22 Earnings – Here are the highlights from the Snapchat’s Q3’22 Earnings report. Analysis is in the podcast.:
- Revenue increased 6% YoY to $1.13 billion in Q3’ 22.
- Average revenue per user (ARPU) was $3.11 in Q3’22, compared to $3.49 in Q3’21.
- ARPU in US was $8.13
- ARPU in ROW $.89
- Daily Active Users (DAUs) were 363 million in Q3’22, an increase of 57 million, or 19% year-over-year
- Snap is still seeing the majority of its growth in the ’Rest of World’ category, where it’s added 45 million users year-over-year.
- Snapchat+ reached over 1.5 million paying subscribers in Q3’22 and is now offered in over 170 countries.
2. Uber Testing “Journey Ads” – Marketers Can Target Riders By Destination – Uber, the ride-hailing company is expanding its advertising business and is testing out ‘Journey Ads’ to its riders based on their travel history and their geographic locations. The journey ads will be shown in the Uber app at least three times during the riders’ journey. Uber will allow brands to place ads using data drawn from riders’ travel history and their precise geographic destinations. For example, if a user books an Uber to a specific retailer, cinema or airport, an advertiser could buy ads centered on that location.
An Uber spokeswoman said, “Uber does not share user data with advertisers. The information that Uber shares is limited to aggregated information or other non-personal data, such as the percentage of users who clicked on an ad, or the number of users who visit the retail locations of advertisers using our platform. Users can opt-out of targeted ads on the Uber app at any time”
3. New Features for Facebook Groups Announced In Communities Summit 2022 – Facebook has announced a range of new groups features during the Communities Summit 2022, including new Stories sharing tools, view-only chats, custom member profile displays, and more.
- Reels in Groups- With Reels now in Groups, community members can share information, tell stories and connect on a deeper level. Group admins and members can also add creative elements such as audio, text overlay and filters on top of their videos before sharing to bring their stories to life.
- The ability to share a public Facebook event for your community to your Instagram story. Whether you’re a group admin hosting a meet-up to celebrate a community milestone, or a group member sharing your passion with friends, this feature can help you showcase your community more broadly.
- Facebook’s also testing new customization options for people’s ’About Me’ section specific to each community, in order to better highlight relevant information for that audience, along with a new indicator that highlights whether you’re open to private messaging.
- Facebook’s also testing the ability for group admins and moderators to create view-only chats to send one-way communications to all of their members (without having to maintain or respond to messages in the chat), and a new process to highlight top contributing members, who’ll be able to earn points by taking on group engagement responsibilities.
- Facebook’s also trying out a new element within Admin Assist that’ll enable group admins to implement automatic removal of posts containing information, as determined by Meta’s third-party fact-checkers.
4. Instagram Announces ‘Creator Portfolio’ Option – Instagram has officially announced its ‘Creator Portfolio’ option, which will enable creators to build what’s essentially a media kit type package, in order to showcase their audience reach, as well as previous brand work. It’s similar to Instagram’s Creator Marketplace listings where influencers are presented in a collective showcase – though a Creator Portfolio enables individual users to share their profile direct with potential partners in the app.
5. Google: The Importance Of Image Filenames And One Big Mistake To Avoid – Google’s documentation doesn’t say if image filenames are ranking factors. But they do say that Google takes note of them in order to help figure out what the image is about. For that reason it’s recommended by Google that images be given meaningful filenames. It’s also a good practice to give meaningful filenames to images because it makes it easier for organization purposes to be able to see the image filename and know what it’s about.
In Episode 48 of Search Off the Record podcast, Google’s Lizzi Sassman and John Mueller discussed the importance of image filenames and here is the gist of their conversation:
- Image filenames that are descriptive are helpful from an Image Search standpoint because they help Google understand what an image is about.
- Alt text and the text surrounding the image provide a stronger and more important signal about the image than the filename.
- Changing the image filename of an already indexed image has a “minimal effect” and likely won’t make it better.
- Changing the filename of an indexed image may result in the renamed image going uncrawled and not indexed for months.
6. Google : The One Thing To Do Before Implementing Geo IP Redirects – Geo IP based redirection is the process of automatically redirecting a website visitor by their geolocation (country, state or city). It works by detecting the visitor’s location from their IP address by matching it against a database of IPs and locations.
In the latest #AskGooglebot video series, Google’s Search Advocate, John Mueller, shares that “this is a pretty complex topic and it can cause headaches depending on how it’s implemented. So I’d recommend getting help from experts or reaching out to the Search Central help forum for advice.
The most important aspect here is that Googlebot usually crawls and indexes a website just from a single location. If you’re showing different content by location only one version will be indexed for search. Because of that, if there’s something you consider important on your website, make sure it’s on the default content that’s shown to all users. And finally, if there’s any page you want to have findable in search, make sure that you’re not blocking users in other locations from reaching that page.”
7. Google: To Have An Unique URL You Need A Character The /? – Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter “Using just “/?” at the end of a URL is equivalent to not having anything after the slash. You need at least 1 character after the “?”.”
8. Google: There Is No Need To Use English URLs For Pages Not In English – Google’s John Mueller wrote on Twitter “There’s no need to use English URLs of the content isn’t in English. That said, keywords in URLs are a bit overrated, so I wouldn’t worry too much about it.” The same information was conveyed back in 2018 in a video.
9. Google: Spam Update Rolling Out – It has been 11 months since the last time Google released a spam update and now Google announced the October 2022 spam update. The spam updates help document reads:
“While Google’s automated systems to detect search spam are constantly operating, we occasionally make notable improvements to how they work. When we do, we refer to this as a spam update and share when they happen on our list of Google Search ranking updates. For example, SpamBrain is our AI-based spam-prevention system. From time-to-time, we improve that system to make it better at spotting spam and to help ensure it catches new types of spam.”
Here are the important things you need to know about the October 2022 Spam Update:
- Name: Google October 2022 Spam Update
- Launched: October 19, 2022 at around 11 am ET
- Rollout: It will take several days to fully roll out
- Targets: It improves Google’s spam detection techniques, Google said “sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all.”
- Penalty: It penalizes spam techniques that are against Google’s spam policies.
- Global: This is a global update impacting all regions and languages.
- Impact: Google will not disclose what percentage of queries or searches were impacted by this update.
- Recover: If you were hit by this, Google said you should review its spam policies to ensure they are complying with those.
- Refreshes: Google will do periodic refreshes to the spam update. It can take many months to recover, Google said.
10. YouTube Ads: Moment Blast & Expanded Product Feeds For Discovery Ads – YouTube is launching a new offering called “Moment Blast,” designed to reach viewers during events like live sports, movie releases, or product launches. Moment Blast gives advertisers prime positioning on YouTube Select content on connected TVs (CTV) and other devices, plus a Branded Title Card and optional Masthead placement. Moment Blast is intended for brands looking to raise awareness during key moments, like major sporting events, movie releases or product launches. In the announcement, YouTube says “People have always connected in front of the TV screen, but YouTube gives them the unique chance to bond over shared passions — like watching live-streamed concerts, fitness classes or even religious ceremonies together. They feel a similar connection to the ads they get, too.” YouTube also claims that 59% of respondents in a survey feel that ads they see on YouTube are more relevant than on linear TV or other streaming apps.
Furthermore, YouTube will be expanding product feeds to Discovery ads to help advertisers scale their social media creative and reach more engaged viewers. Soon, product feeds will also include local offers, allowing brands to show real-time availability for products in their Google Merchant Center so people can find the most convenient place to buy. Creators will also be able to transform their content into virtual storefronts. Additionally, more creators will have the ability to tag products in their videos and Shorts. These features will be available on November 10.
11. Google Ads Updates “Unavailable Video” Policy – This week, Google quietly updated its “Unavailable Video” policy to give advertisers a clearer understanding of the disapproval reason and how to rectify the issue quickly. The four reasons why you may receive an ad disapproval with “Unavailable Video” policy are:
- Video status changed to “deleted” after submission.
- Video status changed to “private” after submission.
- Video marked live premiere.
- Videos marked sponsors or members only.
12. Google Ads: Seasonal Video Ad Templates Are Now Available – To support your holiday and seasonal marketing efforts, new seasonally-themed video ad templates are available in Google Ads. The templates have designs and music tracks that reference the following holidays and moments: Diwali, Hanukkah, Christmas and seasonal sales events like Cyber Monday and Black Friday. Expect to see additional templates applicable to more seasonal moments throughout the coming months.
As with all of their templates, you can customize them with your images, logo, brand colors and text. Videos you make may be used in any campaign that accepts video assets, like Performance Max campaigns, Video action campaigns and App campaigns. These campaign types automatically scale to YouTube Shorts inventory, where vertical video assets are most effective. You can browse all of the templates by clicking here.
13. Google Ads : 3 New Reporting Columns – Google Ads has rolled out three new columns to reports that make it easier to understand how conversions impact campaign performance. Before this update, you would have had to apply custom segments to see each conversion action and the categories they fall under. Now the data is more readily available. The new columns are:
- Results : shows the number of conversions you’ve received across your primary conversion actions for each of the standard goals in your account. In addition, you’ll also see the impact this campaign is driving against goals it’s not optimizing towards.
- Results value : shows the calculated conversion values you’ve received across your primary conversion actions for each of the standard goals in your account.
- Conversion goals: shows the goals listed in your campaign-level settings that drive performance.
14. Google/YouTube Audio Ads Now Available – Google in their announcement cites data from Edison Research that finds YouTube is the second-most popular destination for listening to podcasts. Now, all Google advertisers can reach podcast listeners with audio ads on YouTube. Audio ads are also served to people who listen to music on YouTube. However, there’s an option to limit targeting to podcast listeners if that’s who you’re primarily interested in targeting.
