January 2024: New year, new updates in the digital atmosphere
Bluebird Media / NoA
Bluebird Media is the award winning partner of choice for bold brands looking to improve everything digital.
Welcome to our first newsletter of 2024! As we soar into a new year, our team is thrilled to bring you the latest trends, insights, and strategies in digital marketing. Get ready to elevate your online presence and achieve new heights with Bluebird by your side.
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The Bluebird Messenger is a monthly newsletter that recaps all the latest news that digital marketers need to stay on top of their game. Keep scrolling to find out which updates recently dropped and how they impact best practices within marketing. Enjoy the read!
Paid Search
Warnings for identifier issues, not disapprovals
Google has updated its policy regarding unique product identifiers (UPIs), stating that the existence of an identifier issue will now result in a warning rather than an immediate disapproval of product listings. This change means that offers with the "Incorrect value: identifier exists [identifier_exists]" issue will receive a warning, and non-compliance with product identifier requirements may limit the item's performance.
Temporarily opt-out from Search Partner Network
Google is allowing advertisers to temporarily opt out of the Search Partner Network (SPN) in Performance Max and Universal App Campaigns. This change comes in response to concerns raised by media buyers about Analytics' report revealing Google Ads appearing on undesirable sites. The opt-out option for PMAX campaigns is available until March 1st, offering advertisers more control over their ad placements.
Google trials text labels for verified ads
Google is currently testing a new text label for ads in search results, indicating advertiser identity verification. Instead of using the traditional blue or gold ad badges, the text label reads "advertised identify verified" or "identify verified.
Campaign-level ad customizers?
Google is currently rolling out headline assets, that work similarly to ad customizers where you can add a headline on the campaign level and schedule it. This works great for pushing sales campaigns and is easier to work with than ad customizers. However, ad customizers are still more beneficial as you can work with descriptions as well.
SEO
Google introduces Gemini and Bard Advanced
On December 6th, Google introduced the world to Gemini, Google’s largest and most capable AI model.?
The model stands out by being multimodal, which in short means it can understand, operate and combine different types of information, like text, code, audio, image and video, etc.?
Gemini also comes in three different sizes at first:
Google also highlights that Gemini Ultra is the first model to outperform human experts on massive multitask language understanding (MMLU)
Gemini Ultra is currently being tested by experts within a variety of relevant fields.
Google will roll out Gemini Ultra in early 2024 for developers and enterprise customers.
Early in 2024, Google will also launch Bard Advanced, which will include Gemini Ultra. Gemini Pro is already available within the current Bard version in English in more than 170 countries and territories. It will be added to more languages and places (like Europe) soon.
Algorithm Updates in 2023
Every year we are introduced to several “confirmed” algorithm updates, and 2023 was no exception. We got a total of 9 algorithm changes, where 6 launched between August and November. Included were 4 Core Updates (March, August, October, and November) compared to 2 in 2022.
Search Engine Land has published a great article with a more thorough overview of each and their impacts, which you can read here.
Analytics
GA4 updates
New default reports: That enable you to analyze data from the 360 ad platforms you integrate with your Google Analytics 4 property:
GA4 audience builder in Google Ads: Create and apply Analytics audiences, including predictive audiences, directly in Google Ads. Build better audiences by relying on the extensive behavioral insights available only in Google Analytics 4
GA4 audience export with Google Ad Manager PPID: Export Analytics audiences to Ad Manager for effective monetization through first-party segments with PPID. Target high-value users efficiently.
Google Tag Manager updates
Introducing Consent mode V2: In light of regulatory changes and increased demand for protecting users’ privacy and consent choices, Google introduces two new consent options “ad_user_data” and “ad_personalization”, which can be attributed to a user’s consent.?