In the spirit of the nearing holiday season, many digital players have introduced tools and features to make the most of holiday shopping. Have a quick read about the top updates introduced this week!
News #1: Facebook Releases New Tools to help with Holiday Marketing
In an attempt to help Small Businesses flourish, Facebook has released a number of new marketing tools, catering especially to SMBs that will help them stand out during the busy holiday season.
Facebook has picked the perfect time of the year to come out with these new features considering holiday shopping tends to start in November or earlier, according to a study by IPSOS.
Some of the new features include Customisable Story Templates to create full-screen assets for ad campaigns, and different enhancements to Messenger and Instagram Direct Messaging to help with communications.
Facebook has also released a series of tips that they will be sharing on the regular, to help businesses use their new services. Check some of them out here.
Source: Search Engine Journal
News #2: Google Smart Shopping campaigns now allows Location Targeting!
The machine learning-driven product ad campaigns that automatically optimise ad delivery i.e. Google’s Smart Shopping Campaigns, now permit narrower targeting.
Google’s Smart Shopping campaigns previously only allowed an advertiser to target all countries. The new update now allows advertisers to narrow their targeting geographies as well as set radius targeting.
This new feature is beneficial to advertisers as now, they can finally choose to show their ads in a region where their target audience is most likely to convert into a customer.
Source: Search Engine Land
News #3: Will Amazon take over Google’s Search Ad Dominance?
Amazon’s share of search advertising is expected to grow alongside a decline of market share by Google, according to eMarketer.
Given its dominance in the market, it is predicted that Google will continue to retain its number one position in Search Ads, yet their market share is expected to drop to 70.5% by 2021 from its current 73.1% in 2019.
The main driver of Amazon’s growth stems from the fact that users are beginning their product searches on the platform instead of Google. Amazon’s investment in an advertising features such as UI, API and various ad formats is simply fueling its growth.
In response, Google has upped their Google Shopping features. Will this be enough to sustain their market leadership in the US? Only time will tell.
Find out more about Amazon’s advertising efforts here.
Source: Search Engine Land
News #4: WordPress moves 5.3 steps closer to Valid HTML
The wordplay was unfortunate, but it had to be done because WordPress just announced that version 5.3 will use enhanced coding that are closer to to HTML compliance standards!
Although this does not guarantee 100% HTML validity, it is a step in the right direction and a victory nonetheless.
WordPress is one of the most important content management systems and hence, obtaining valid HTML for a website is much closer now for a large number of sites across search engines. HTML code on your website is important for your SEO.
The new version is tentatively scheduled to be released on November 12, 2019 and I don’t know about you but I’m ready for this move. Learn more about the move here.
Source: Search Engine Journal
News #5: Google introduces Two New Audience Targeting Options for Search Campaigns
Google announced the two new features in an official statement on Wednesday. The updates are an ‘In-Market Seasonal Event Segment’ and ‘Affinity Audience’ options.
In-market audiences have existed since 2017 that allows advertisers to reach consumers actively searching for products. The new seasonal event segments, introduced on Search and Youtube, allow advertisers to reach these segments at the right time, especially since the holiday season is upon us.
Affinity audiences allow advertisers to prompt audiences who have a strong interest in their products towards buying them.
By creating an affinity audience, your campaigns will be seen not only by people actively searching for your products but also, by people with a passion for your products even if they’re not looking to buy them. It is more of an awareness tool.
Both these options can be used as prospecting tools to reach audiences based on their search history and browsing signals rather than just keywords. It is also the perfect time for Google to roll these out with the holiday season right around the corner.
Find out more about Google’s audience targeting here to better improve your targeting efforts in this busy shopping period.
Source: Search Engine Land
