The new year is kicking off with some new updates, features and product launches by top players in the search market. Here’s some of the top launches from this week.
News #1: Google Launches a new Publisher Centre
Last month, Google merged Google News Producer and Google News Publisher Centre into Publisher Centre.
What is Google Publisher Centre?
Google’s Publisher Centre is Google’s new way to manage publications and is a means for owners of multiple publications to organise and switch between them easily. Publishers can point to the URLs of sections of their websites as well! Here’s a quick guide to the Publisher Centre.
The top benefits of this new feature include:
- Content and Branding control
- Monetisation opportunity
- Placement Eligibility
Source: PPC Land
News #2: YouTube’s Privacy Changes can affect Creator Revenue
YouTube officially announced the roll out of a series of privacy features and changes that will be put in place to protect children and their privacy on the platform.
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) prohibits corporations from collecting data from children under the age of 13. This means that targeted ads will no longer be shown alongside videos made for kids.
YouTube will treat any personal data collected from anyone consuming content designated for children, as data coming from a child and hence will not be used, regardless of the viewer’s age.
For creators of kids’ content, this means they cannot serve targeted ads to their audience but non targeted ads may still work. The full impact on their revenue will remain unknown until there’s enough data to compare targeted versus non-targeted ad revenue.
Source: Search Engine Journal
News #3: Google tests Comments for Live TV Shows
Google confirmed that they are testing out user comments in search results for queries on live TV shows. The feature is currently available for live sporting events and has been for a while now. It is being tested across other live shows as shown below.
Comments will be public to all users and unfortunately cannot be made anonymously, so it would be in everyone’s best interest to be nice online for once. The comments will appear with the Google user’s account name and picture.
This is a step forward for Google as users can now interact with events in real-time bringing an element of social engagement into Search. This can also help show marketers analyse real-time sentiment and gauge reactions.
Source: Search Engine Land
News #4: Twitter Launches an Ad Unit in the Explore Tab
Twitter announced its plan to launch the Promoted Trend Spotlight that will display ads at the top of its Explore tab on the platform.
Users may recall seeing an initial release of this during the launch of Disney+ as the ad unit was used to increase awareness of the new streaming service.
The Promoted Trend Spotlight will immediately capture users’ attention, as it is placed in the Explore tab on their first two visits after which it moves to the standard Promoted Trend placement; thereby increasing visibility and creating the maximum awareness.
Source: Search Engine Journal
