Digital Industry Updates

Gemini AI Model Integration into Performance Max – February 2024

In November, Google introduced generated AI asset functionality into Performance Max, and it looks like even more complex asset generation tools are rolling out soon – globally!

Gemini (previously known as “Bard”), will be integrated into text assets, to give advertisers more capability to properly build out their headlines and descriptions.

Google are also upgrading its image asset generation models to Imagen2, allowing advertisers to scale their creatives even further. Image editing via Imagen2 is currently only being rolled out within the US, but is expected to roll out globally within the next few months.

Pinterest to Collaborate with Google – February 2024

Last year Pinterest chose Amazon as their first third-party ad partner. This year, looking to continue driving the platform’s revenue, they’ve just announced that Google Ads will become their second third-party ad collaboration. 

What does this mean? PPC marketers will be able to serve ads on Pinterest through Google’s Ads Manager, however what this will look like is unclear. We know that if a pinner clicks on one of these ads they will be directed straight to the advertiser’s website to complete the desired action.

It seems that brands won’t have to worry about directly competing against themselves through their PPC and paid social advertising as the partnership with Google looks to help Pinterest monetise in markets they are currently not able to do so. This isn’t rolled out to everyone and from the people that have been able to use this feature they have seen positive results.

LinkedIn Scraps Lookalike Audiences – January 2024

LinkedIn will discontinue lookalike audiences on February 29, marking a shift in its advertising approach. This decision aims to streamline offerings and prioritise more impactful advertising solutions. While the reasons for this move remain undisclosed, it suggests a focus on refining ad products and enhancing user experiences.

Advertisers must adapt strategies accordingly, exploring alternative targeting options like interest-based or account targeting. Leveraging first-party data becomes crucial. LinkedIn’s decision reflects the evolving nature of digital advertising, requiring advertisers to stay agile and responsive to platform changes.

Consent Mode V2 – The New Requirements for Personalised Ads Across Europe – January 2024

Google will be enforcing new requirements for Google Ads throughout Europe in March, and advertisers will be required to adopt consent mode V2 to continue to show personalised or remarketing ads.

This fast rollout and deadline is due to the large legislative push regarding user consent & privacy across search engine networks.

Advertisers will need to urgently prioritise their consent & google tag manager scope, otherwise risk losing critical advertising capabilities including accurate tracking, reporting – and vitally – leveraging the strength of automated bidding, which relies on plentiful and accurate user data.

Google Readies Itself To Phase Out Third-Party Cookies Across Chrome – December 2023

Google has begun its plans to restrict third-party cookies by default, rolling out on January 1st to 1% of Chrome users globally.

This is the start to retire third-party cookies entirely in the latter half of 2024 as part of their Privacy Sandbox initiative to safeguard online privacy and limit cross-site data tracking.

Advertisers will need to ensure they have up-to-date solutions in order to continue to accurately track and not miss out on any points throughout the customer journey.

YouTube Shorts Are Now Available in Video Reach Campaigns – December 2023

As consumers engage more with YouTube Shorts on their mobiles and begin watching more online content via their TV’s – YouTube has become a prime landscape for brands to connect with their target audience.

Video Reach campaigns now offers reaching users by scaling video creative to in-feed and YouTube shorts in Google Ads.

This new development will allow advertisers to uplift their brand awareness across high-engagement networks.

Google Introduces Gemini: Its Largest & Most Capable AI Model Yet – December 2023

Abandoning the “Bard” moniker, Google announced its ‘largest and most capable’ AI model – known as “Gemini”.

On the face of it, Gemini’s main purpose is to significantly enhance the way developers and enterprise customers build and scale with AI. But reading behind the lines, this is the next step in the “AI arms race”, as Google looks to retain its status as the defacto “everything” engine – a status it has enjoyed since beating out other search engines such as Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves and Dogpile (anyone else feel old?)

This model will be used within Google Products globally, including Google Ads, Search, Shopping & More throughout the coming months. While it is currently only being tested in the US, we expect this to be a fully functional part of the Google Search experience by the end of 2024. Advertisers will soon be able to use Gemini to create AI generated ad copy and sitelinks to improve the quality of their ads.

Google Merchant Center Next To Support Supplemental Feeds & Rules – December 2023

Advertisers using Google Merchant Center Next (GMCN) can look to breathe a sigh of relief as Google announces GMCN will be supporting supplemental feeds & rules early next year.

The simplified version of Google Merchant Center (GMC) unveiled in May lacked many tools its predecessor had available, leading advertisers to revert back to ‘classic mode’ in order to restore functionality that is integral to optimising Google ad shopping performance.

Important to note: Once reverted back to classic, access to GMCN is unavailable until the classic GMC is retired next year.

Meta unveils five new lead generation ad tools for Facebook and Instagram – November 2023

Meta’s unveiling of five new lead-generation ad tools provides advertisers with powerful tools to drive business growth and foster meaningful connections with their target audience.

WhatsApp Lead Gen: Meta is expanding the lead opportunity to users via WhatsApp chats with businesses. This feature assists marketers in nurturing high-quality leads through messaging. Going forward, certain advertisers will have the opportunity to incorporate a Q&A flow directly within Ads Manager.

Instant form ad format. Allows users to explore and engage with multiple businesses simultaneously. For instance, upon registering for a bridal hair trial, users can effortlessly share their contact details with other businesses, such as a nail salon. This feature enhances convenience for users while expanding opportunities for small businesses to attract interested customers.

Calling leads on Facebook. Meta is currently experimenting with a new functionality on Facebook that enables businesses to directly contact leads, offering reassurance and showcasing their business details. Additionally, Meta is in the testing phase of Advantage+ for Lead Generation, a feature that enables full automation of lead generation campaigns through Meta Advantage. This empowers advertisers to employ AI across various campaigns which will help to improve performance. 

Hubspot. To assist businesses in efficiently generating high-quality leads, Meta is introducing HubSpot as a new CRM integration partner, providing a simple click-through setup which will help to streamline the process further.

Google Reviews Update – November 2023

Starting on the 8th November 2023, and finishing on the 7th December 2023, this will be the last time that Google confirms an update to the reviews algorithm.

What is now likely to be a realtime system, due to the ever-increasing deluge of fake reviews across sites thanks to services such as ChatGPT, all publishers of sites with reviews should keep their eyes open for increased levels of seemingly natural reviews.

It is going to be tough for publishers to know if Google’s review algorithm is rewarding or punishing them. The only way to be entirely safe is to give enough internal resource time to ensuring that any added reviews are as genuine as possible.

There is almost certainly going to be many sites that have been using fake reviews with ranking headaches over the next few weeks.

November 2023 Core Update

The November Core Update started to roll out on the 2nd November and concluded on the 28th, only a few weeks after the October Core Update.

During this period and like in many other updates, many sites saw volatility in their keyword rankings. But in the early stages of the roll-out, many other SEOs noticed the impact quickly, which implies that there were significant changes being made at the time.

Like with many Google Core Updates, there aren’t clear actions to take for recovery, but as always it’s important to monitor which areas of your website were impacted to review whether any further action is required.

Interestingly, Google released another update during this period, with the Google 2023 reviews update beginning to roll out on the 8th November – meaning two updates overlapped with each other.

Search Themes on Performance Max – October 2023

Performance Max has seen another new update – this time its on audience targeting. ‘Search Themes’ is the new way to target users based on keyword “themes”, which appears to be a consolidated method of targeting both “user searched for” and “purchase intention” terms used in Pmax Audience Signals.

Google have stated that Audience Signals will eventually be phased out, with “Search Themes” being the sole method of targeting users via search terms. This is in line with Google Ads’ gradual shift towards broader and more automated-targeting, challenging marketers to consider that being TOO exact is detrimental to success (as we’ve seen with increased Broad Match performance).

How Google plans on integrating this new targeting method with other Audience Signal factors, like customer data or in-market audience targeting, remains to be seen…

TikTok Launches New Paid Placement: Search Ads Toggle – October 2023

TikTok is an entertainment platform first and it’s become clear that TikTok users come to the platform to search, research, find out information on new trending products and watch reviews from their favourite creators. 

TikTok has seen this behaviour change and launched Search Ads Toggle which allows advertisers to deliver ads within the TikTok search results making it a completely immersive experience.

This is a major benefit to advertisers as we can now target high-intent audiences with creative tailored to their search results. What’s great is that if you decide not to serve ads through that placement you can opt out and it won’t push your ads back into learning.

Meta Launches Subscription Service For Instagram And Facebook – October 23

For consumers in Europe, Meta launched a monthly subscription service where users can pay to use Facebook and Instagram without ads being served to them, becoming an ad-free platform. 

What does this mean for advertisers? Your audience pool becomes smaller. You have fewer people to target, and now the platform becomes more competitive which could mean you see your costs increase across the board. However, this is all dependent on consumers buying into this subscription, if demand for this service is low then there will be little impact on your current performance.

For users, this means that their data will not be processed or collected by Meta as there is no need for tailored advertising.

Demand Generation Campaigns Rolled Out – October 2023

Following the removal of “Similar Audiences” in 2023, Google has launched its new flagship campaign type – Demand Generation (Demand Gen).

Vitally, this new product re-introduced “Similar Audiences” as “Lookalikes”, utilising the campaign’s Awareness & Consideration focus to find new customers based on customer/client data (such as email addresses and phone numbers).

While having more of an upper-funnel focus than Performance Max (targeting users across Display, Android Feed, Gmail and YouTube placements), Google has stated that Demand Gen will be a performance driver, and using Data Driven attribution, give revenue & conversion credit as appropriate.

October 2023 Core Update

This Core Update marked Google’s 3rd broad core algorithm update of 2023, rolling out just 1 day after the Spam Update.

This update began rolling out on October 5th 2023 and concluded 2 weeks later. Due to the overlapping of this update with the Link Spam Update, it was difficult to identify its individual impact.

In usual form, Google declined to provide any specifics about the update and encourages users to follow best practices.

October 2023 Spam Update

On October 4th 2023, Google announced that they were rolling out a Spam Update to their algorithm, which concluded its rollout after 2 weeks.

This update improved spam detection, largely in non-English-speaking markets, which resulted in many spammy websites losing Organic visibility.

However, this update preceded the October 2023 Core Update which began rolling out the following day, so measuring the impact was challenging.

Microsoft Ads & AI-Generative Content – September 2023

Just one day after Google’s own announcement, Microsoft Ads now also aims to “transform search and advertising” with new AI tools.

Having previously beaten Google to the “AI battlefront”, Microsoft is continuing to find ways to advance AI-integration with PPC. One such feature known as “Compare and Decide” ads, which allow product shoppers to compare different product offerings from advertisers, leveraging product feed data attributes to inform this decision making.

Feed quality & optimisation has always been key to ecommerce success in PPC, but with this useful feature directly showing product attributes vs others, its clear that the more detailed attributes will win out.

Google Rolls Out Automatically Created Assets Across Ads – September 2023

As Google begins to automate more of their advertising processes, “Automatically Created Assets” (or “ACA” for short) have now been rolled out for general availability and in 7 new languages.

These are campaign-level settings that generate custom headlines and descriptions based on your ad’s context and landing pages to further enhance the ad relevance of your search ads.

Advertisers will need to look out for ‘enable automatically created assets’ within their recommendations or opt in via their campaign settings to trial ACA’s for themselves.

While this may not be suitable for all industries and audiences, especially those with strict compliance policies, It may be an interesting way to bring new content to your ads, and improve your ad strength.

This is the latest step in giving advertisers more tools to get more varied ad copy added to their campaigns – a practice that many do not typically adopt.

September 2023 Helpful Content Update

This update officially marked the third “Helpful Content” update that Google has ever rolled out, however it was the first of 2023.

The Helpful Content Update rolled out over 13 days and rewarded websites that Google deemed to have “Helpful Content” for their users.

This update impacted rankings more significantly than the previous two, which is theorised to be due to the rise in AI content.