The first month of the school year brought several interesting developments online. For some weeks now every advertiser in Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing) has been able to test…
Ivana Nosalova
PPC Specialist
10. October 2019
5 min
BeginnerThe first month of the school year brought several interesting developments online. For some weeks now every advertiser in Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing) has been able to test responsive ads, on Facebook to build custom campaign metrics, and on Instagram to show off their musical taste right in stories. Read more about September in online marketing in our regular post.
Every advertiser can now test responsive ads in their accounts. With responsive search ads, which Google brought to market for the first time last year, ads are shown automatically in combinations of several headlines and descriptions. You enter at least 8 to 10 headlines into the interface, avoiding similar phrasing, and at least two descriptions that differ from each other, with clear calls to action. Since these combinations can appear in any order, they should make sense on their own too.
If you have ever used Smart campaigns, you will know there is very little in them an advertiser can influence. Beyond the creative and the target cost, these campaigns are fully automatic. From now on, though, seasonality bid adjustments will be available for events where a marked rise in conversion rate is expected – sales, a product launch and so on. More about this practical addition here: LINK.
Google has arrived with a new automatic strategy meant to help maximise a campaign's total conversion value. At present you can use this campaign on the search network, and it suits cases where budgets are constrained at campaign level, so the target return on ad spend (tROAS) strategy cannot be used.
The "Local Campaign" placement is part of the local ads meant to raise footfall at local businesses. These ads appear across every Google service, search, maps, banners and YouTube included.
The search in the picture shows a Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep dealer in California. The ad, though, is for Valley Hi Toyota, roughly an hour's drive from the Chrysler dealer:
Has it ever happened that you needed a custom metric on FB (PNO, say :-) ) when reporting your campaign data, one the business interface does not provide? From now on, as in Google Ads, Facebook offers the option of building custom metrics from formulas. You can create your own custom report in Business Manager under the Ads reporting tab.
Here, in the Measure and Report section, we find custom metric creation:
This change pleased private users rather than business profiles, and drew still more fans to the ever more popular Instagram. The option of choosing a track from a rich library, or having friends choose it, and combining it with your own photo, video or "lyrics" is enticing, and in the first days after the launch in Slovakia Instagram stories were flooded with hundreds of musical excerpts.
Where stories on Instagram compete strongly with news feed content for popularity, on Facebook they are not faring nearly as well. Their position is now to be improved by placing stories separately and visibly right above the news feed. Paradoxically, it may be precisely companies' lesser interest in this space that creates less competition — and it is certainly worth trying.
At the end of September Instagram made it possible to tag branded content on the ever more popular video platform IGTV as well. As with product tagging in the news feed or stories, the feature is available only to verified and approved profiles meeting specific conditions, and the brand has to confirm the user as a business partner. The content is then shown labelled "Paid partnership with" and the business partner receives a notification of the tag. As in a story, the tag can be changed or removed in a published video.
Google has officially added timestamps to video and will show them in search results as well. The feature markedly eases and speeds up finding specific content and particular passages in videos. You will appreciate it with long lectures, various procedures, documentaries and the like.
If you produce video and want a particular passage to appear in search results, these markers (the time segments) have to be placed in the video itself.
Adding timestamps to a video (on YouTube) needs no technical coding — simply enter the time as ordinary text. For example:
If you have noticed changes in your Google positions over the past 2–3 weeks, it may be down to a change in how content is assessed. Google is visibly moving towards a new approach to content and to what is relevant from today's user's point of view. In future it will place far greater emphasis on expertise, authority and trustworthiness.
Google allows the display of snippets in search results to be configured. You can use the change to tailor meta descriptions better, which affects click-through rate. The change will have no effect on search rankings.
Google will honour the meta tags and HTML attributes 100%. The text you set will be shown identically on desktop and on mobile.
You can use these particular directives:
"Nosnippet" – an existing option specifying that you do not want a text snippet shown.
"Max-snippet: [number]" (NEW) – you set the maximum length of the snippet text for your page.
"Max-video-preview: [number]" (NEW) – you set the maximum duration of an animated video preview in seconds.
"Max-image-preview: [setting]" (NEW) – you set the maximum size of the image preview to be shown for images on this page, using "none", "standard" or "large".
Do not expect results in search immediately. You will see the change from the middle of October at the earliest (possibly not until the end of the month). The bot has to come to your site and index the changes you have made.
Ivana Nosalova
PPC Specialist
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