??PPC News (Week 21)

Our primary objective is to keep you up-to-date with the latest developments in the advertising industry. By doing so, we hope to help you stay ahead of the competition and achieve your advertising goals effortlessly! ??

PPC News

May, 22nd to May, 28th

Google Marketing Live 2023 brought exciting updates across various advertising platforms. Here are the key highlights, and additional updates from other platforms during last week.

Prior to reading: While our aim is to publish the latest official news from the past week, there are certain important updates that may not have been officially released yet but are worth sharing at this time.

Analytics

Google Ads is streamlining the onboarding and management of first-party data, making it easier to connect and translate data into valuable insights in a privacy-centric manner.

Enhanced conversions, which enable privacy-centric and accurate reporting, can now be set up more easily in both Google Ads and Search Ads 360. Account-level controls will allow you to activate enhanced conversions across your entire account.

Google Analytics 4 audiences can be built and utilized directly within Google Ads. This includes predictive audiences identified by Google AI as most likely to convert. Upgrading to Google Analytics 4 by July 1st is recommended.

Fractional, data-driven conversion credits can be imported from Google Analytics 4 to Google Ads, allowing for more accurate bidding based on the true value of each ad.

Offline conversion adjustments allow you to update the value of online conversions up to 7 days after they occur. This customization helps optimize performance based on unique conversion values and goals.

Paid Search

Through the Search Generative Experience (SGE), Google will experiment with integrating Search and Shopping ads into the AI-powered snapshot and conversational mode. This will enable the creation of highly relevant and customized ads throughout the search journey by discovering new topics, getting quick tips, and exploring products with ease. (source )

If you are in the US, join the waitlist at labs.google.com/search. Google will start testing in July.

Conversational experience: Later this year, you'll be able to use Google AI to generate effective keywords, headlines, descriptions, images, and other assets. This feature will be available for testing in July.

Brand restrictions for Broad match: Rollout of brand restrictions, enabling the use of broad match while ensuring it matches relevant brand traffic, expanding reach without compromising specific brand requirements.

Top search categories for RSAs: You can now review the top search categories to get deeper transparency into what’s driving performance and get new ideas.

Automatically created assets (ACA): Generative AI will enhance automatically created assets in Search campaigns, generating more relevant headlines and descriptions aligned with user search queries.

You can still decide to turn it off if not relevant.

Performance Max

Using the revamped asset creation flow, you will be able to generate new, high-quality assets in Performance Max. Get multiple options for text and image assets, revise or remove suggestions, and receive insights on performance and recommendations. These updates will be available on desktops in English-speaking countries later in 2023.

New customer acquisition goal: You can now optimize for new customers with high lifetime value through the new customer acquisition goal, available in beta.

Additionally, a new re-engagement goal will be helping you connect with valuable existing customers to boost retention. (Later this year in beta)

Deeper insights

• You can download search terms insights via the API (incl. date range)
• Run new types of experiments within Performance Max campaigns, such as final URL expansion
• Asset insights provide details on creative performance and recommendations for optimizing results. (tweet )

Ads Creative Studio

You can now use the new Ads Creative Studio and it will help you uncover the latest search trends and discover new ideas. Sign up to give it a try!

Shopping

"Merchant Center Next" will gradually become the new Merchant Center version by 2024.

It allows for smaller stores to remove the product feed completely. Although it has fewer features and some key ones like custom rules are still missing, it's worth giving the new version a try. And don't worry, you can always switch back to the old version if needed. (source )

Product Studio will now help leverage generative AI to assist merchants in easily creating unique product imagery. By utilizing this tool, businesses can enhance their visuals by adding custom product scenes, removing distracting backgrounds, and improving image resolution.

You can now identify optimization opportunities for products and categories with ease and receive actionable recommendations directly in Google Ads.

“Trusted Store” badge: when you score an excellent rating on your?Shopping experience scorecard, the badge will say "Top Quality Store" instead (source )

In the future, you'll be able to measure your campaign profitability (or POAS) and track changes over time by analyzing product profits so better to get ready in advance. (source )

To access these reporting features in your Google Ads account, you'll need to implement cart data conversions and provide the value for the?cost_of_goods_sold?(COGS) attribute under “Price & availability” in the data specification for your Merchant Center product feed.

App

New SKAdNetwork integrations: In the coming months, Google will add support for more user sign-in types like phone numbers to further enhance conversion measurement and configure the schema with GA4. (source )

Amazon Ads

New budget rules are available for SB, utilizing Top of Search and New to Brand metrics (Himanshu Verma / Prem Gupta ).

You now have the ability to establish budget rules based on the percentage of your Top-of-Search impressions share and the percentage of sales attributed to New to Brand (NTB) customers.

?? These performance metrics are currently exclusive to SB (including video) budget rules.

?? SP budget rules continue to utilize the same performance metrics, including ACOS, CTR, CVR, and ROAS.

Starting June 19, 2023, the Inventory dashboard will be replaced by the new FBA dashboard, which consolidates information for managing your FBA business, including inventory planning.

Key features include storage utilization ratio, daily sales orders, IPI score, FBA enrollment opportunities, shipment summary, estimated aged inventory surcharge, and inventory optimization recommendations. (Akshay Tarpara )

Amazon SDA Images now offers enhanced image control and simultaneous aspect ratio previews for optimal visual impact. (Shimmas Younus )

Paid Social

YouTube

2 new campaign types, Video view and demand gen campaigns, have been introduced:

(1) Video view campaigns leverage skippable in-stream ads, in-feed ads, and Shorts ads to maximize video views (Beta opens next month)

(2) Demand gen campaigns span across various platforms like YouTube Shorts, in-stream, in-feed, Discover, and Gmail, aiming to boost conversions. Additionally, a new lookalike segment builder is available to help expand advertiser reach: Narrow (2.5%), Balanced (5%) and Broad (10%)

With local offers in YouTube in-stream ads, you can now display item availability and variable pricing based on customer location.

Suitability settings impact forecasting will provide insights into how the settings for your YouTube ads may impact campaign performance. This enables you to make more informed decisions and understand the trade-offs between exclusions and metrics like impressions and CPM. (source )

Meta Ads

Facebook

As shared previously as audience control, you can also exclude specific cities within selected countries in Advantage+ Shopping campaigns on Facebook for more targeted ad placements. (Bar?? Sapmaz )

Instagram

Instagram search results are available via the Instagram Marketing API. This new ad's placement does not require an upgrade. Developers will be able to use "INSTAGRAM_SEARCH" as one of the placement options when creating ads. (source )

Programmatic

Display & Video 360

Optimized targeting with AI-powered audience solutions can help you find new converting audiences without relying on third-party cookies. (source )

Engage your first-party audience with Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation (PAIR) to connect with known audiences while respecting privacy, and very soon you'll be able to use third-party data clean rooms (source )

You'll be able to gain insights from the new Digital & TV Report, measuring the reach and efficiency of your connected TV campaigns, and soon, cross-device conversion measurement for CTV will provide a comprehensive view of customer actions. (source )

Google Ads Manager

The new Google Ad Manager API v202305 ?brings support for new?DAI ingestion?statuses?and removes deprecated?SPM?reporting dimensions.

Organic Social

WhatsApp

WhatsApp now allows users to edit their sent messages, giving them more control over their chats. Users can make corrections or add additional context to their messages by long-pressing on a sent message and selecting "Edit" from the menu within 15 minutes of sending it. (source )

Instagram

Instagram’s?new?Twitter-like, text app may be here as soon as the end of June ( Lia Haberman )

TikTok

At the same time, Tako, a?new AI chatbot within the TikTok app, is currently being tested with users in the Philippines. (source )

Marketing Industry

Advertising News

Meta has been forced to sell Giphy, a platform of sharable animated images and micro-videos, to Shutterstock for around $53 million in cash after an antitrust ruling. Meta originally paid around $400 million, which is a big loss. (source )

Spotify is developing AI technology that will be able to use a podcast host’s voice to make host-read ads — without the host actually having to read and record the ad copy. (source )

Adobe’s AI image generator Firefly was released as a web-only beta in March. Generative Fill launched in beta, but Adobe says it will see a full release in Photoshop later this year.?(source )

Bard now includes images in relevant responses and also when you specifically ask for them, starting with English (Jack Krawczyk )

Microsoft pubCenter, Microsoft's AdSense alternative, is being relaunched. Here's a setup guide from Barry Schwartz .

Did we miss anything else?

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