Full Transcription
[Introduction] – 00:00
Hey everyone, welcome to episode 98 of the TWIMshow. This is your host, Sajid Islam. And today, I’ll be going over the notable news and updates from the digital marketing world from the week of February 28, 2022, through March 5th 2022, which was a Saturday. Anyways
[Update 1 – 4 New Things in Microsoft Advertising] – 00:15
With that, the first thing I want to cover is that there are four new things in Microsoft advertising and the four new things I’ll quickly go over them are one is Smart Shopping campaigns and Target return on ad spend. Shopping campaigns are accessible or now available in 29 new regions including seven new markets in Latin America. The reason why I’m covering this is this is something that shows Microsoft advertising is quietly growing in size. And of course Microsoft has a big foothold outside the US. And by Microsoft what I mean is Hotmail and all those things. I mean also Microsoft owns LinkedIn. So this is a pretty big thing. So if you are not advertising on Google ads because it’s too expensive, maybe Microsoft advertising is something you should consider. The other three updates I will quickly go over them is business attributes from Marketing with purpose is now available in all market as well as dynamic partner data upgrades does show that. Actually let me take a step back. So this is an attribute that shows a business attribute that shows marketing with purpose. So they shows up on your Bing profile and now it’s available to everyone. Make sure if you’re using Microsoft again, if you’re not using Microsoft, you should be on Microsoft. Why would you give up free traffic? So just go ahead and update. And if your business has a purpose, go ahead and highlight that. The third thing is Google important improvements. The only thing you want to know about here is that Microsoft has always made it very easy to import your Google ads into Microsoft Ads. And generally this has been for years. What Microsoft has done is like to bring customers from Google Ads, made it very easy. You can just pull it in and now they’re saying you can even import image extensions which is like images that show up next to your search results. And of course you should be using it if you’re not already using it, whether you’re on Microsoft or Google Ads. And also what they said is importing data from Google Merchant Center into Microsoft Merchant Center can also be done very easily and quickly. So again, this is in line with what Microsoft has always done to kind of throwing rocks at people who are tired of Google or people who are thinking of coming into the Microsoft world and not making it very challenging. They make it very easy. So they’ve always had this conversion or conversions tool like the tool sets that will allow you to convert from Google ads into Microsoft and get started. The last thing that Microsoft has announced is that automated bidding seasonality. What this basically means is that if you are expecting fluctuations in your ad campaigns and this only works for automated campaigns, again, you should do it for anything, any campaigns that you run on Microsoft just to inform their algorithm through this seasonality adjustment link that says, hey, I’m expecting a big traffic on such and such day because of promotion. So, for example, if you’re going to have a big promotion because of Cyber Monday or Black Friday and you know your sales are going to spike up or you’re going to have a lot of visitors, you want to inform Microsoft ahead of time now by informing Microsoft what you’re doing is informing the algorithm. And that algorithm is going to kind of factor in that and kind of say, well, this is unusual, but this is unusual because of this thing, right? You have to inform the unusual activity on your site or the spike on your site so that the algorithm can kind of learn accordingly. If not, it’s going to mess up your algorithm or not your algorithm Microsoft ads algorithm, and then it will probably give you crappier results down the road. Okay, with that, let’s move on to the next topic for today, which is
[Update 2 – 10 Minutes TikTok Video Is A Reality] – 04:17
TikTok. So TikTok has announced that ten minutes TikTok are coming to everyone. They have been testing it for a while. So TikTok Ten minute videos are a reality. Well, It’s kind of comes around. It’s not a surprise because one thing TikTok has realized is the reason why people go to TikTok is to watch engaging, entertaining videos. However, when you do engaging, entertaining videos, which are 30 to 60 seconds long, what happens is that there is not a whole lot of room or band space for the creators to monetize. What happens with YouTube?Youtube, you upload like a 10, 15, 30, or 1 hour video and you can insert ads and you can monetize that video. If it’s a 60 sec video, where are you going to insert ad? Right? As it is, you have such a short time to cramp up all this information. And if you don’t make money, then why are you as a creator going to create this engaging all these videos except for likes, but likes don’t pay the bill. So TikTok realize that. And they’re saying, hey, we are going to allow you to do ten minute videos because that gives us a lot of space to put ads on in the front, middle, or in the end, which is a good thing. Now, having said that, let’s move on to the next update, which is
[Update 3 – Instagram Will Shut Down IGTV App] – 05:30
Instagram. Instagram will shut down the IGTV app and why I’m covering right behind TikTok is that last two weeks ago we said, hey, you know what Instagram is now, or meta is now focused fully on Reels are available globally and Facebook is going all in or Meta is going all in. The TikTok update is kind of showing how Facebook/Meta is copying everyone and it’s just going from one thing to another thing. It’s like they have the shiny object syndrome. IGTV kind of came out because it was Meta/Facebook’s answers to YouTube dominance back in the day. And now then they say, oh, TikTok is the rising child. Let’s go copy TikTok. And they went all the way in Reels, whereas, TikTok is saying, you know what, while we are the number one, we know from history
that just being number one in the short clip video, we are not going to be able to monetize and our users are not going to be able to monetize and we are eventually going to die. So this is very interesting. But coming back to the main topic of this update is Instagram will shut down IGTV apps. It’s basically they did not specify that,
but eventually it will shut down again. Instagram back in 2021. In October, Instagram did say that IGTV is going to be folded into the Instagram main app as it is. So the long form content is not really going away. It’s just that the separate app is going to die. And of course, the placements that you can do in IGTV app through Facebook ads is going to go away and it’s going to be folded into something else. So that’s all you want to know. But with that, let’s talk about another thing. On Instagram,
[Update 4 – Instagram Rollsout Automated Captions for Feed Videos] – 07:13
Instagram rolls out automated captions for feed videos. This is great because I will tell you one thing, automated captions did exist for IGTV videos back in 2020. They expanded into stories. And now this is for In-Feed videos because again, people consume content differently and we have always created whenever we have created video on Instagram, we have to create the video, create the caption, upload the caption. So there was a lot of post editing work through this option. Now we don’t have to worry about it. If someone wants to consumer content in caption only mode, they can turn it on and they can consume the content. And by the way, this automated caption is available in 17 languages and they’re going to add more. So this is a great update. It just cuts down the amount of post production work that we as a business owner or creator have after the video is created because we want our content to be consumed by people who have the sound on or sound off because they’re in public space or they’re in the room and they don’t want to turn on the volume. Okay, with that, let’s move on to Google’s SEO front
[Update 5 – Desktop Rollout For Google Page Experience Update Is Complete] – 08:25
with that, what I want to say is Google has announced that they have completed the Page Experience update for Desktop. So basically what that means, it took them nine days. They started in February 22 and nine days later they said, hey, update is completed. Again. Just to let you know, we’ve covered this topic a few times in the past. Page experience update basically for desktop is similar to the mobile update. Again, the mobile update. And the only difference between the mobile update and the desktop update is that mobile update tries to find out how mobile-friendly is your website? Is your website mobile-friendly? And for the desktop that ranking does not
exist, but all the other rankings exist. We are going to write a blog on this as well as publish a video in the coming days. So make sure you check that out. If you’re listening to this podcast, get on our email list which is marketandgrow.com Go there, sign up for their email list. You will get these podcast episodes emailed as well.
Plus you’ll get all the updates when we release videos and blogs on this. Okay with that. The next update on the front,
[Update 6 – Per Google: Ranking Quotas Do Not Exist] – 09:32
on the SEO front is that Google has announced or not announced. Google has verified that there is no ranking quota. That basically means that there is no limit how many times or for how many keywords your site can get ranked on Google’s John Mueller confirmed it like they don’t have a hard limit. You can get ranked on as many keywords as you wish. You just have to create good content and make sure you are not creating like two, three or multiple pages for the same keyword because then again you’re competing with yourself, right? So folks, don’t think, oh I’m already ranking for these 20 keywords. I don’t think I can rank for anything else. That’s not the case. It’s like go for it. As long as you have good quality, high quality content. Google is going to rank you next up.
[Update 7 – Per Google: We Will Verify Merchant Experience Scorecard Metrics] – 10:14
A couple of weeks back we said Google is rolling out Merchant Experience Scorecard Metrics and Merchants with higher scorecards will get some benefits and from Google in terms of visibility and things like that. And obviously the concern was and I did share, maybe someone could game the system even blah blah blah. That could be bad apples out there. We’re going to basically put sending the fake data to Google and then you’re going to basically manipulate the whole system and show up and when they’re going to have a good customer merchant experience. Well Google came out and confirmed that hey we are Google. We have ways to figure this out. And if you are lying to us or if you’re doing something wrong, guess what? We will ban you from our system. So folks, and this is really true. I’ve seen this with merchants or advertisers who got banned from Google for doing wrong things and they’ve tried to create a second Google account or another Google Ads account using a new laptop, new IP, new credit card and everything. And Google somehow figures out within a few days or weeks that hey this is the same person. We’re going to just basically ban that account as well. You don’t want to mess with Google. Google has a lot more data on us than anything else. Right? I do not know how they figure out, even if you change the laptops and the credit cards and things like that. But Google does. And this has something I’ve seen in forums where people are saying, hey, my account got banned and blah, blah, blah. And I’ve tried this thing, that thing. And I still Google figures out that I’ve been banned. First of all, try not to get banned by Google. That’s a death penalty right there. Even though you’ll be alive. It just feels like that. Okay, last update for this week is that
[Update 8 – Google Ads Launches Enhanced Conversions for Leads] – 11:46
Google has launched Google Ads has launched enhanced conversion ads for leads. What this is, is like, first of all, we live in a multi touch, multi influence world. People do not convert just because they saw our ad one time. They can see our ad today, then they are going to interact with our website directly, come back. So it goes back into the Attribution thing, right? Who should get credit for the conversion? But sometimes what happens is as you get the lead, you do not know. Google doesn’t know that the lead eventually converted into customer downstream, right? So I got the lead today in my business. And maybe we had a couple of Zoom calls, maybe we had a couple of follow up calls, maybe in person visit. And then eventually they decided to sign the contract. Well, Google, in the old days, regular conversion is like, did you know that this person has converted? Now Google is making it easier so that you can upload first-party data. By first party data. What I mean is like, it could be either email address or name and address or phone number. But if you provide phone number, then you need to provide name and home address to Google and to tell Google, Hey, Google, this person that you sent to me as a lead has eventually become my customers. Because Google’s algorithm, same thing with Facebook, same thing with Microsoft, same thing with everyone else. These algorithms work better the more data you have. So if you send them that data back to them through this enhanced conversion for leads, Google will know, oh, wow, we send these five people and one of them converted. So let’s go help Sajid find more of this person who matches this criteria, because then there will be a chance that they’re going to convert more into customers. So that’s all what this is all about in a nutshell, which is now Google makes it easier for you to send first party data back into Google for leads. For leads conversions. That’s all this is, right? There will be a blog article on this, as well as a video explaining it in a much more in-depth. But because this is a podcast, I wanted to keep it short. Hope this helps you. Hope you enjoyed
[Closing] – 13:52
With that folks, that’s it for This Week In Marketing. Take care, and I’ll see you next week, bye-bye.
Thank you for tuning in this week, it was a pleasure to serve you all. Hit the subscribe button so that you remember to sign on next week. Same place, same time for another round of This Week In Marketing.
1. 4 New Things in Microsoft Advertising (00:15):
- Smart Shopping campaigns and Target ROAS for Shopping Campaigns are now accessible in 29 new regions, including 7 new markets in Latin America (LATAM). Last month, Microsoft announced the launch of Shopping Campaigns in Latin America, but these new shopping features will be accessible soon! You’ll be able to expand your shopping campaigns to the Microsoft Audience Network as well.
- Business attributes from Marketing with Purpose will now be offered in all markets. There are currently 32 attributes available across four categories: Inclusion, Environmental, Community/social responsibility, and Accessibility. See the help page under Dynamic partner data upgrades for more information on all the business attributes and how to use them.
- Google Import improvements: Image extensions and Shopping Campaigns – you can now import your image extensions into search and audience campaigns through Google Import! These campaigns will automatically come over to the associated campaign, and you can find these images in your image library to use across other campaigns as well. Microsoft also allows you to import products from Google Merchant Center to Microsoft Merchant Center, streamlining the process of setting up an import and successfully running Microsoft Shopping Campaigns. For more information on all things, Google Import, see Import shopping campaigns from Google Ads (microsoft.com).
- Automated bidding seasonality adjustments are rolling out globally this month – This feature is supported for Search campaigns (including Search campaigns extended to the Microsoft Audience Network), Shopping campaigns, and Dynamic Search Ads campaigns. Through this feature, you can inform Microsoft automated bidding algorithms with more signals that specify when you expect performance changes, like when conversion rate (CVR) variance will occur during a seasonal event, promotion, or other variation for your business. This helps address anticipated short-term fluctuations without significant long-term impact on your algorithms’ learning, as well as help maximize performance around critical times such as Black Friday or Cyber Monday.
You can create multiple adjustments targeting various campaigns or various time periods. If multiple adjustments target the same campaign, all adjustments will be applied. Lastly, keep in mind that seasonality adjustments should only be used for campaigns with stable performance with automated bidding and have already completed their learning period.
2. 10 Minutes TikTok Video Is A Reality (04:17) – The maximum video duration on TikTok has been upped yet again, this time to ten minutes, according to the social media platform. This update, which will be implemented globally in the coming weeks, is the result of months of testing. TikTok videos were initially limited to 15 seconds. TikTok later doubled the maximum video duration to 60 seconds and then tripled it to 3 minutes in July of this year.
When it comes to advertising a business, product, or service, short-form material can be restrictive. In terms of monetization, it’s all really limiting. This improvement allows viewers to stay on the platform for longer without having to watch several portions of a video series. TikTok is the third most popular social media platform (after Facebook and Instagram), and its user base continues to expand.
3. Instagram Will Shut Down IGTV App (05:30) – Last week, we shared that Instagram is going all-in with Reels. Now Instagram has announced that it will soon shut down its separate IGTV app, while it’s also removing its in-stream video ads option. This makes sense since Instagram retired the IGTV brand in October 2021 so it was inevitable that the IGTV app will be retired soon. While this may seem like a step back for creator monetization, Instagram’s looking to replace this with sticker ads for Reels and other options.
Per Instagram, “As part of our efforts to make video as simple as possible to discover and create, we will no longer be supporting our standalone app for IGTV. Instead, we will focus on having all video on the main Instagram app. We believe that this makes it easier for people to have all of these features and abilities in the main app, and are excited to continue to simplify and improve video in the main Instagram app.”
P.S: Short-form content is wonderful for engagement, but it’s challenging to monetize because 30-second snippets don’t allow for mid- or pre-roll commercials. That’s why YouTube has been promoting its own short-form video format, ‘Shorts,’ as a supplemental channel to assist producers to expand their main content stream and TikTok just increased the video length to 10 minutes.
4. Instagram Rollsout Automated Captions for Feed Videos (07:13) – Instagram has taken the next step with the addition of auto-generated captions in Instagram feed videos, following the launch of automatic captions for IGTV uploads in 2020 and the expansion of captions to Stories last year.
Auto captions will now be available for any Instagram feed post, giving users another way to consume content on the app. It will also assist creators in maximizing viewership in both sounds on and sounds off contexts, which is a huge plus. It’s inconvenient to be in a public location or even on the couch with your lover and not be able to grasp the whole context of a clip because you can’t turn on the sound without provoking the fury of others around you.
Instagram’s auto-captions for feed posts will initially be available in 17 languages, with more to come soon.
5. Desktop Rollout For Google Page Experience Update Is Complete (08:25) – Google has announced that the page experience update for desktop is now done rolling out. This update started to roll out on February 22nd, and now, 9-days later, it is now fully rolled out.
This update will include all the current signals of the mobile version of the page experience update, outside of the page needing to be mobile-friendly. Google said all of the page experience factors for mobile will be included with the exception of the mobile-friendliness requirement, which is kind of obvious.
6. Per Google: Ranking Quotas Do Not Exist (09:32) – Google’s John Mueller reiterated that the company does not have a quota system in which a website can only rank for a certain number of keywords. There are no hard limits on how many pages they can show from a site, subdomain or not, according to him. It gets hard, he said, if you’re attempting to compete against yourself for the same set of keywords. Why construct numerous pages to try to rank for the same term, after all? So, if you want five of your pages to appear on the same search results page, that method might not be the best. “Regardless, from a strategic point of view, if you’re competing with your own content, you’re going to have a harder time against stronger competitors.”
There are endless opportunities for your site to rank for endless keywords.
7. Per Google: We Will Verify Merchant Experience Scorecard Metrics (10:14) – I recently reported on Google’s new Shopping experience scorecard program, which is a collection of ranking indicators related to the Google Shopping tab. The fear was that merchants would be requested to submit these metrics to Google and would only feed positive scores, perhaps manipulating the metrics and thus their rankings.
After the concerns were raised two weeks ago, Google’s Alan Kent eventually reacted, saying that Google has “mechanisms in place to validate the information merchants are supplying.” So, somehow, Google is able to verify that the products are delivered on time, that the shipping cost displayed on the checkout page was accurate, that the return cost was accurate, and that if the client returns the product, it is accepted within a particular return window.
He did state, that “merchants attempting to provide false information will be excluded from the program as this creates a poor customer experience.”
8. Google Ads Launches Enhanced Conversions for Leads (11:46) – We live in a multi-touch and multi-influence world. Simply relying on last-click attribution is not the best thing for us.
Understanding which leads convert to paying clients is crucial if you’re a lead generation marketer. Importing your offline conversions can help: you can identify how campaigns are producing impact and optimize for important customers by measuring and reporting on your closed leads. However, in order for this method to succeed, it frequently necessitates time and developer resources. Google Ads has introduced enhanced conversions for leads, which allows you to track your offline leads using technologies comparable to enhanced conversions for the web.
Enhanced conversions is a Google Ads tool that you can use in conjunction with existing conversion tags to improve conversion measurement accuracy. Enhanced conversions make use of your existing Google Ads tag, which securely sends first-party conversion data to Google in a private and secure manner. First-party data includes:
- Email address (preferred)
- Name and home address
- Phone number (this must be provided in addition to one of the other attributes)
