June 2024: Google marketing, Format updates & AI Overview criticism

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

Google Marketing Live updates

During Google’s Marketing Live event, several key announcements were made. Here is a brief summary of some of them.

Upcoming Changes for Performance Max ?

• High-Quality Visuals: Tools to create and edit product images, adjust sizes, and generate new context-specific images tailored to specific industries.
• Brand Consistency: Advertisers can set brand colors, fonts, and example images to ensure consistency in ads.
• Enhanced Reporting: Detailed placement reports on YouTube and asset-level performance metrics to help analyze and optimize ad campaigns.
• Creative Platform Integrations: Seamless asset creation and export to Google Ads through integrations with Canva, Smartly, and Pencil Pro.

Upcoming Changes in Search Results ?

• Visual Search Ads: Shopping ads will appear in Google Lens and Circle to Search results, showing products in relevant visual contexts.
• Personalized Ad Suggestions: Ads providing personalized recommendations based on user inputs like photos.
• AI Overviews: Testing of Search and Shopping ads within AI Overviews to increase product discovery opportunities.

Paid Social

Story formats for dynamic ads

It took some time, but Meta is finally communicating that it will be possible to set up story formats for your catalog → Better user experience in stories and reels. 50% of advertisers will have access by the 4th of June and 100% by the 2nd of July. In combination with video in catalogs, this could revolutionize dynamic ads.

New creative formats

Meta is currently testing an extension of link ads, allowing advertisers to add site links to their ads. This is currently in Beta and of course available for all Bluebird clients.

Update to the learning phase

We have historically used the guideline of having 50 conversions every 7 days to exit the learning phase successfully. However, the amount of conversions required may differ from advertiser to advertiser.? Meta is now communicating that the window will be shortened to 10 conversions.?

SEO

AI Overview Faces Criticism?

Google's "AI Overview" feature, launched in May 2024, provides summarized answers to user queries at the top of search results using generative AI. Despite its goal to simplify information retrieval, it has faced criticism for producing inaccurate and misleading responses, such as falsely stating that former President Obama is Muslim and suggesting adding glue to pizza sauce. Google acknowledges these errors as isolated incidents and is working on improvements based on user feedback. AI Overview is currently available in the U.S., with Google indicating it will be 'coming soon' to other countries.?

Screaming Frog SEO Spider 20.0 Released with Major Updates

This release introduces the ability to visualize the site's crawl structure through interactive visualizations, offering insights into how a site is organized and how link equity flows through it. Additionally, there are enhancements in crawl speed, JavaScript rendering, and new integrations with platforms such as Google Sheets and Looker Studio for more seamless data management. Read more at the SF-blog.