Paid Media News & Opinion ?? #71
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?? Google shopping to personalise products shown using user preferences
???What’s happening
Google is introducing new personalised features to help users tailor their shopping feed exactly to what they like:
Google has also introduced significant changes to its search results, particularly in the UK and Europe. Now, users in these regions will notice default tabs for Products and Product Sites, offering distinct sets of results.
???Why we care
Striking a balance between product data optimisation and competitive bidding is essential. This will involve leveraging data analytics to identify trends in user preferences and adjusting product feeds accordingly, while also employing strategic bidding tactics to remain competitive in auctions. Will organic merchant listings that align closely with user preferences receive preferential treatment? Or will sponsored ads still feature prominently based on bidding competitiveness?
Seeing as users can now select their favourite brands, Google's algorithm will also need to strike a balance between showcasing user-favourite brands and maintaining diversity in search results.
The emphasis on personalised shopping experiences underscores the importance of optimising shopping feeds to align with user preferences and search queries. Product data and metadata will need to be fine tuned to enhance relevance and visibility in these tailored shopping experiences.
?? Google’s new ‘Top Ads’ definition: what does it mean?
27th March 2024 ? PPC ? Source
???What’s happening
Google has changed its definition of ‘top ads’ – ads that appear in the top section of the search engine results page (SERP) – to reflect a tweak to search results where ads may now appear both above and below the organic results.
This has been confirmed by google as a ‘definitional’ change, meaning no impact on performance nor ad rank. Their update says “placement of top ads is dynamic and may change based on the user’s search.”
The update comes in the wake of SGE (Search Generative Experience) and some testing in 2023 on where sponsored results (ads) were appearing in 3rd and 5th positions in search results.
???Why we care
While a seemingly trivial change, we think this is important for two reasons.
1) It demonstrates that Google is looking to move towards a more user-centric results page, possibly with ads having less authority over organic results, depending on the query.
2) Advertisers need to be aware that any bidding, optimisations or reporting/analysis of top impression share will now have changed. As a general rule, top impression share is now slightly less valuable as in some cases it will be trumped by organic results.
We recommend that advertisers take a look at their current impression share metrics and ad rank metrics, and take action to ensure their avg. position remains high in the face of (potentially) more competition from organic results and AI-generated results (SGE). Watch this space!
For advertisers in industries such as travel, B2B and insurance, where lots of content is competing on main keywords, this will be particularly important.
Read more about Top and Absolute Top metrics here.
Find out more about Top Ads here
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?? LinkedIn Ads release time-saving dynamic UTMs for campaigns
25th March 2024 ? Paid Social ? Source
???What’s happening
LinkedIn has (finally) added the ability for advertisers to attach dynamic UTMs to ads served on the platform. Until now, data such as campaign_id had to be defined manually on each ad, whereas with this change, advertisers can now just enter {{CAMPAIGN_ID}} and then this will dynamically populate with the campaign ID corresponding with an ad click.
This change aims to make it easier for marketers to attribute traffic accurately to specific LinkedIn activity without the need of manually fill out every ad UTM.
Elsewhere, it's been reported that LinkedIn is now testing short term video in a closed-Beta, which though still only speculation, would mark a potential change in the sort of placements they might be able to offer to advertisers.
???Why we care
This week has been an interesting one-two punch with two totally different but equally intriguing stories. The dynamic UTM update is quite dry news but nonetheless, big news for anyone who has been in LinkedIn and experienced the pain of manually tweaking every ad URL to ensure they are assigned correctly. This long overdue change will save many headaches and help to speed up media managers workflows, enabling more easy LinkedIn analysis in tools like GA4.
The short term video Beta, though not official yet is one to keep an eye on as this sort of content being available organically will no doubt lead to future opportunities for paid media placements, in this case offering a more casual feel than most platform placements, which are designed around cold emailing (InMail) and lead magnet downloads (Unlock Document ads).
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What else we've been talking about: