As the year winds down, we wanted to send out the last bit of important digital news for 2022.
Later next week, we'll send out a quick year-in-review in digital marketing, so you can relive the best and the worst of the announcements we got this year. We'll also provide any updates we have on how that news has panned out.
In the meantime, we've also relaunched our blog!
We'll be sharing our own new content in each newsletter edition, and on our social channels. So follow us on whichever channel you prefer, and feel free to reply/comment to let us know of any topics you'd like us to cover!
- 4 new features on the Google Insights page,?including: Search terms, assets. audiences, and change history. The features are said to help users navigate demand and trends. For us, more data is always better, so we welcome this update!
- More metrics! This time in GA4.?These are Views Per Session (similar to Pages Per Session from UA, but includes App and Website views now) and Average Session Duration (this is the same as it was previously). For now, you'll have to add these in Custom Reports.
- New default report in GA4: Landing Pages.?GA4 doesn't have nearly as many default reports as we're used to in UA. While you can recreate them yourself through custom reports, there's definitely a few key reports we've been missing in the switch. Landing Pages is definitely a welcome addition so we can more easily see how people interact based on the URL they landed on.
- 2 new Data-Driven Attribution features have been announced.?This includes a new simulation tool to estimate the effects of switching (particularly helpful if you need to explain to people above you that have no idea what any of this means). They will also be expanding support to Discovery campaigns.
- A bit of a click-bait title, but an interesting read nonetheless.?Ex-Googler answers why Google search is getting worse.?Spoiler alert: the "ex-Googler" was Marisa Meyer (aka former CEO of Yahoo), and she doesn't think it's Google's fault.
- How did you feel about your Black Friday/Cyber Monday/Holiday promotions this year? Was it better, worse, or similar to last year?
- For the most part, we saw businesses have their best year yet with this Holiday season, but we know it's been a mixed bag across the board. Also seems to really depend on the industry.
- Interestingly, we've seen some businesses do better with December sales compared to BF/CM ones. This is most likely due to cheaper ad costs and less noise in the marketplace. Obviously it's still an expensive, crowded time to advertise, but BF weekend has become an onslaught so some people seem to be tuning it out a bit.
- According to Adobe Analytics, BF sales were up this year both online and in-person.?Shopify also announced a record-setting BF on their platform.
- So on the whole, things were good. Maybe not quite as good as some anticipated, but still up from last year.