Digital Newsletter July
In between a very competitive team sports day (don't get us started on the egg & spoon race) our teams have been out and about at multiple industry events across the country to deliver the latest?industry news and trends.?
See the latest changes in search landscape, AI overviews and how to tackle Google's cookie announcement below. Keep scrolling to the bottom to put some faces to our wonderful team's name in a new team photo!?
AI Overviews launched in the US in May, but were met with mixed user reactions due to inaccurate or unhelpful results. These have decreased to just 8% of searches, but with longer content and linking to four sources. Zero-click searches continue to dominate, with 60% of searches ending without a click.?
SearchGPT is being tested with 10,000 users. It will prompt users to answer "what are you searching for" and provide an answer that will include links to sources within the answer. OpenAI claim they want to 'create a user-friendly search that isn't overwhelmed with advertising'.?It's too early to see the full impacts on Google Search, but it's one to watch going forwards.
The new version adds AI editing tools to generate headlines and descriptions, account level negative keywords and a new customer acquisition goal.
Google has announced that all online retailers will be switched over. The new platform has additional insights reports as well as Gen-AI content tools to generate tailored product assets. Soon advertisers will be able to animate a still image or tweak an existing product image to match your brand style. Quick tasks like removing backgrounds or increasing image resolution will also be easier.
Meta has introduced a new feature in its ad setup process that identifies offers from the URL entered for a campaign. This feature can highlight discounts and promo codes from the site in the promotions and display them to viewers when they are most likely to respond, based on their past ad interactions.
TikTok is partnering with Eventbrite, allowing TikTok users to promote Eventbrite links within their videos. This integration will make it easy to include and highlight links to public events on Eventbrite, enabling viewers to tap through to the Eventbrite app or website to learn more and book tickets.
Earning backlinks through your content is still a highly effective and underused tactic. Examples of great link building content include guides, groundbreaking research, visually appealing infographics and forward-thinking opinion content. All of this encourages other sites to link back to it as a trusted authority.
Google has dropped its deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome, instead introducing a system that allows users to make informed choices about their privacy settings. While this change delays the urgency for developing cookie alternatives, the trend towards privacy-centric solutions continues.?
It is still important that we focus on attention metrics, first-party data collection, and privacy-compliant technologies, which will remain critical as the industry navigates this new landscape.
UK advertising spending increased by 9.3% to ￡9.2 billion in the first quarter of 2024, setting a new record. This growth was primarily driven by digital formats, which made up 79.7% of the total spend, with Display up 12.8%.?Future growth expectations for 2024 and 2025 have now been raised to 7.7%.?
If you have any questions or would like any support on these or any digital activities, reach out at [email protected]
Thanks, the tmwi Digital team