83: [Ep83/15Nov21] – Google Ads Customer Match Is Now Widely Available And Easier To Use & Other Digital Marketing Updates from the Week of Nov 15, 2021

[Introduction] – 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome back to episode 83 of the TWIMshow. This is your host, Sajid Islam. And today, I’ll be going over the notable news and updates in the digital marketing space from the week of November 15, 2021. 

[Update 1- Snap Introduces Multi-Format Delivery] – 0:12

So today, First off, a little bit of public service announcement where we are going to basically where I’m going to share that. You know, Snapchat has introduced multiformat delivery. Now, Snapchat is something that is not readily, readily used by everyone. It’s a very niche segment of the market that uses Snapchat, as well as Snapchat ads. However, because this is the ‘This Week in Marketing’ show, I felt it is my duty to bring this information to you where Snapchat has enabled, advertisers to incorporate multiple video ads formats within a single ad set which is with this new multiple formats delivery option. Right, so you will soon see a new ‘multiple formats ad’ set option within your snap ads setup which will then enable you to bundle various creative options for placements across Snap suite. This will enable snaps unlimited placement tools to help maximize add responses while also streamlining management of your snap campaigns by keeping your creative elements in a single ad set. Of course, this will reduce some control and significant in, and this will, of course, this will reduce some controller insights into specific elements, while it also puts increased owners or increased pressure snaps automated placements right. Obviously now Snap has to respond. Now if you ask me for my own personal opinion, I would say this is something it’s OK. It’s fully automated and you know you lose control. But hey, some people like that.

[Update 2 – YouTube Video Discovery Ads Are Now In-feed Video Ads] – 1:55

With that, let’s move on to the next update, which is YouTube this. Again is also a sort of a public service announcement where you know YouTube has decided that they’re gonna rename, discover YouTube discovery ads, and they’re going to rename into in-feed video ads. No other functionality of these YouTube video discovery ads or YouTube in-feed video ads are changing at this time is just that they’re renaming it. And they basically bring it in line.

[Update 3 – Microsoft Bing Releases List Of Bingbot IP Addresses] – 2:22

 Next update for this week is Microsoft Bing has released a list of bingbot IP addresses. If you’ve been following our show in Episode 82, which was last week, I shared how Google has released a list of all their IP addresses so that you know you can whitelist their IP’s and then kind of, you know, prevent all the bad actors and bad bots from indexing your site. Now obviously the other thing is if you listen to this show, you know I have always been talking about how these companies are all following each other, copying each other along the lines. What’s happening here is Microsoft said you know what? Google’s doing this. We should also, you know, release a list of our IP addresses so that customers can also whitelist our bots and let us index it. The things that you want to know again, if you haven’t had a chance to listen to episode 82 is that you definitely want to, you know, prevent rogue bots from crawling your site and you can ask why? Why does it matter? Well, number one, it’s going to eat up some of your resources, number two it’s going to slow down your site and #3 you don’t want you know you to be found, or just it just gets messy. It’s a resource issue. If your small business your finite resources. Now this is something you probably will have to work with your tech person to get it done to whitelist certain bots and also you know Blacklist other bots. Now if you’re using Wix or Squarespace, this probably doesn’t affect you as much. If you’re using WordPress, then this affects you right? You want to update it.

[Update 4 – Learning Lab, Microsoft Advertising’s Hub Has Been Updated With New Resources] – 4:04

Along with that line. Let’s move on to the next update for this week, which is again Microsoft announcing or updating Learning Lab, which is Microsoft advertising hub with new resources. Now this is one of the reason why I like doing this podcast is because, you know, because of. You all I have to go research and find cool and things that I did not know exists. One of those cool things. Learning Lab. I did not realize and I did not know that learning lab exist until I came across this update and I found this up quite a bit of a. You know trainings in there and Microsoft structures things a little bit differently. Where you know? They focus on your learning and your journey path. So if you want to become a Microsoft advertising certified professional, you can take that trail and this reminds me of Salesforce cause in Salesforce if you ever go take Salesforce certification and Salesforce is a big you know platform right they were. The. They were The Pioneers when it came to software as a service industry and I kind of going on a different tangent, but I want to say is like you know, sales versus marketing, sales versus take and sales versus sales and what you can do is you can take different trails and go different places and learn different topics. And then Microsoft has done the similar thing where you know if you want to become a Microsoft advertising certified professional do you go on a different search advertising learning path. If you’re interested in learning more about display advertising then you will use Microsoft Audience Network Learning path and then if you are preparing for the holiday season then you can try the Microsoft shopping Learning path to learn more about setting up your merchant store and shopping campaigns for this holiday season. Now I’m going to put the link to the announcement. From there you can find the different sublinks that you need to visit if you’re interested, but I just wanted to share with you all like you know how this was something cool that I did not know exist until this week.

[Update 5 – Instagram Adds A Bunch Of New Features To Its Interface – Badges, And Editing Carousels] – 6:02

With that, let’s move on to Instagram, Instagram has a bunch of new features to its interface. The most notable ones are now there’s the badges feature and the editing carousels. So what are badges? Badges are basically something are available to creators in the US. eligible creators in the US who are who lives in the US, over 18 years old, have a creator of business account. Have at least 10,000 followers and pass and remain compliant with Instagram’s partner monetization policies, content monetization policies and community guidelines. Now, after you’ve gone through all these things and of course you have to apply. And you have to get approved and then if you do that then when you go live, then your supporters, followers, whatever you can can purchase badges and increments of $0.99 or $1.99 or $4.99 and that can give you and then they can you know kind of give you those. Badges to you in during the LIVE. So in layman’s terms, what this is all about. Imagine and I’m going to use a bad terminology here, but I think that’s the best way to do it in imagine and you probably have seen it in movies where you know a guy goes into a strip club performers performing, and then the guy. Kind of, you know, takes out a dollar bill and throws it at heart. Or yes, it is hard. Or maybe a guy, and if it’s a girl going to strip club, now, what these badges are? Badges are like that, right? You are performing. You need to have fit all these Instagrams criteria of 10,000 customers, 10,000 followers, compliant with all these three things. And then you know your followers can. Give you some money badges that they buy and give it to you. Of course, Instagram is not going to charge you anything or take anything off the top up till 2023. They announced that earlier, right? So Instagram is not going to take any take their share, but eventually they will. I know I’m using a very bad way to explain this whole thing, but that’s how it kind of you know that’s the only thing that comes to my mind right now. Now what is you know? Obviously you can with and you too. If you’re doing that again, don’t think I’m being super negative ’cause you know they’re. Good cases if you are struggling musician, right? If you’re struggling musician then you know. Obviously you could play music to your fans and then when they really want to love you, they want to support you. They can do that so I don’t even know how much. Between kind of take off in the US it remains to be seen. I wish you know Instagram and I’m hoping Instagram is going to come out and go to say hey here’s what it’s gonna happen right? Here is what you know here’s what we’re using so that I can check it out and see how it’s being used. The other things that Instagram has announced is you know you can promote lives using countdown stickers in stories, right. Practice before going live with practice mode. So if you have a guest you can go up and practice in that mode. You can recognize supporters. Creators can increase the purpose purchase of multiple badges, which helps them earn more and gives live viewers more ways to support and be reorganized. Thank supporters with thank you stickers and that’s about it. Then coming back to the Carousel post is obviously. You know if you have been using Instagram, you know if you mess up. Any of the. One any one of the images in the carousel post you have to delete that and recreate it. So now Instagram is bringing in this delete feature where you can go delete this and you know and the rest of the carousel remains the same. Well it’s a nice feature, Instagram. It’s took a long time to recognize this feature. I’m glad they’re listening because if not TikTok’s going to take their cake and eat it.

[Update 6 – Google Launches New Local Search Features] – 10:00

With that, let’s move on to the next update, which is again Google launches new local search features. You know, again what Google is saying that you know. News near me, stores near me, options near me, These “near me” thing has kind of, you know, grown drastically in the last few years, past few years and. Obviously this is for news, but I just wanted to kind of bring it up and use this time to talk to you about. You know that people are shopping local nowadays. They don’t want to. Yes, of course, they go to Amazon, but sometimes they want things right now and so the news near me, things near me is skyrocketing. So if you are a business owner listening to it. You know brick and mortar store. Definitely, take advantage of that right? Definitely take advantage of that because you want to be heard. You want to be found and you know as I do research for the TWIM show week over week. I kinda see Google is for going into that direction, which is all about hype being local and being hyper-local. That’s where the money is in the future.

[Update 7 – Google Ads Insights Page Updated With New Features] – 11:05

Next up we have is Google Ads Insights Page has been updated with new features. First of all, Google is testing demand forecasts right which will provide estimation of likely search interest for your products over the coming six months. By combining machine learning with past and old trends right now, what you need to do is obviously you don’t have demand forecast. You can only look at seasonal forecast and you can look at last years’ data and you can kind of figure things out, so Google is making this thing. It’s in beta mode, so but nevertheless I like what Google is doing. It helps us marketeers. Look at things in a different lenses, right? Google is also testing a new consumer interest inside element, which will aggregate the top-performing search query themes that are driving performance in your campaigns. I like that. Lastly, Google’s also testing Audience Insights, which aims to provide more info about the interest of our customers. Including what create if their response in responding to. I like this as well. Overall, if these are insights, data sheets, and feedback that Google is giving us from machine learning and their own looking at their data and then saying, oh, I know, we see this kind of things, this account should do this. That would be amazing. What I don’t want is Google using this as an example of dollar grab and running all a lot of lot more automated campaign which I feel like it’s going to happen, not now. Five years from now, but for now, let’s enjoy the ride. While we can again too. Reiterate, this is a beta function, but Google is going to start adding this into all accounts an obviously this is going to be hit and miss is because this is a beta function as Google kind of figures out their machine learning algorithm but give it a try and let us know how it is.

 

[Update 8 – Google Ads Customer Match Is Now Widely Available And Easier To Use] – 12:51

Lastly, last update of this week is Google Ads Customer match is now widely available and easier to use. What that basically means that up until now. There was a lot of restrictions on you able to upload your customer data. Who is buying from your from your business? Whether you’re brick and mortar store or if you have, for example, a storefront on your own website as well as Amazon, you would not. You would have restrictions on uploading the data. So now the widely making it very wider. All you have to do is you have to be policy compliant in the last 90 days and have a spend of over $50,000 and then once you do that you can tell hey Mr. Google, this is what my customer looks like and it helps Google’s machine learning algorithm to better understand who your customers are. Add kind of go find people who are more likely to buy from you. Now there’s a pro and there’s a positive and a negative of these things. Like everything in life, right? If there’s a day there is a night. If there’s summer, there’s winter, well, The thing is from is a business perspective, it’s great. Now you have better control of who your customers are and target and. You know? Get more profitability on the other end. Your customers may not even know you’re using that you’re uploading their data into Google and letting Google figure things out, but you know like now the industry is happening working this way where you know businesses are taking your data and uploading it back to Google or Facebook and doing customer matching and similar audiences or. Targeting things like that and look alike audiences in Facebook, but for now know that it’s there. And enjoy it while you can.

[Closing] – 14:43

With that folks, that’s it for This Week In Marketing. Now you know everything to be in the know. If you’d like to learn more or read more and look at some of the links we’ve talked about, then make sure you visit our show page. With that, I’m signing off until next week. Take care bye-bye.

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