July PPC news

Here is a round-up of the news that caught our eye last month.

Google Ads replaces AdWords

Aiming to simplify the overview of its advertising products, Google renamed Google AdWords to Google Ads. The change rolled out across all accounts during July and arrives together with a new design for the ad system's interface.

AdWords launched in 2000 as a tool for advertising in Google search. Today Google Ads lets us manage far more than that: banners on the Google Display Network, ads in the Gmail interface and video ads on YouTube.

Shopping on Facebook gets more lifelike still

This month Facebook tested a new ad type called Augmented Reality Ads. The ad is meant to let a customer use their phone's front camera to see what individual products actually look like — sunglasses, a particular shade of lipstick and so on. The ad is currently in testing, with brands such as Michael Kors, Sephora, NYX Professional and Bobbi Brown trying it out.

Even more interaction with your audience on Instagram

A new Instagram feature currently in testing is adding open questions and polls to stories. Followers can write in a question they are curious about. The questions appear in the viewer list and stay private unless the user decides to share the answers publicly on their profile. Through this new format, Instagram stories are becoming ever more interactive and appealing. Nediétuj is one account making excellent use of it.

Music arrives in Instastories

Another Instagram novelty is the option to add music to our stories. Instagram users will be able to find the MUSIC icon among the stickers and then pick a track of their choice from a music library. Users need not worry about copyright infringement, because the music will be free and several musical styles will be on offer.

Better shopping campaigns on Instagram

As on Facebook, Instagram has introduced the option of using the collection format for shopping campaigns. A user can browse several products without leaving Instagram. Only on clicking a product is the user taken through to the product page on the e-shop. Another new feature is that a shopping bag icon can be added to stories, so users can click a specific product within the image and are then given further information about it — description, price and so on.

Google Chrome marks sites without an SSL certificate as not secure

Following the latest update to the popular Google Chrome browser, sites without a working SSL certificate are marked as not secure. The warning can be seen in the address bar. If a site is secured, it is marked with a green padlock.

Google is taking further steps to push website owners towards securing their sites properly. Such sites are also favoured when placed within the free organic search results.

Changes for Google Hotel Ads

Google will shortly move hotel ads, which appear in Google Maps and in Google search, under the Google Ads platform, so campaigns will no longer have to be managed in a separate platform. The feature is in BETA testing with selected testers for now, which means we can expect a full launch soon. Google Ads will once again be a more comprehensive tool with new options for advertisers.

Google's URL inspection tool is now available to everyone

This tool lets you inspect a specific URL on your site and see how Google Search sees it. It "provides detailed crawl, index and serving information about your pages, directly from the Google index." It shows the last crawl date and any crawling or indexing errors.

It shows whether the page was indexed successfully, and any AMP errors, structured data errors or others appear as well. You will find the tool within the new Search Console interface.

Google launches the Speed Update

Besides its efforts to make browsing more secure, Google is pushing on speed as well. Most visits to the web come from mobile devices, where loading speed matters a great deal. The Google algorithm update continues to penalise sites that load slowly on mobile devices. Do check your speed.

New automated bidding strategies coming to Bing Ads

Bing ads will start offering target CPA and maximise conversions strategies. A campaign needs at least 15 conversions over the last 30 days, which is where we see a difference from Google, which needs at least 30 conversions over the last 30 days. Bing announced that these strategies are available for Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the UK and the USA.

Maximise conversions aims to generate as many conversions as possible within the campaign budget. Target CPA aims to generate conversions at an average cost per action that we set at campaign level.