Tagged for Success - Tag Digital’s Newsletter - #12
Welcome to the 12th edition of Tagged for Success, keeping you up to date with the latest in the digital marketing landscape and key updates across paid channels.
This month we're diving into the latest updates across Meta, LinkedIn, Google & Microsoft, sharing practical use cases for you to implement in your event marketing campaigns.
What can you expect in this newsletter?
?? New Feature Alert: SMS Verification for Meta Lead Ads ??
?? What’s New? ??
Meta is rolling out an update designed to help advertisers secure higher-intent leads and reduce spam or low-value submissions.
One of the biggest challenges with lead generation campaigns on Meta is ensuring that the information submitted is accurate and that the user has a genuine interest in your event.
Meta’s new SMS verification feature aims to address this issue by requiring users to verify their phone number before submitting a lead form.
This extra step acts as a quality filter, ensuring that only users with valid phone numbers can complete the form and in turn helping businesses improve lead accuracy and reduce spam.
This feature will be very helpful for free events as this is where we often see an increase in unqualified or low-intent sign-ups.
?? How Does It Work? ??
1?? The lead form must include a required phone number field.
2?? Users receive a one-time verification code from Meta.
3?? Only verified phone numbers can successfully submit the form.
?? What Does This Mean for Event Marketers? ??
Boosts Lead Quality: Ensures only users with real, verified numbers can submit.
Reduces Spam: Adds a barrier to prevent spam or low-intent leads.
Improves Campaign Efficiency: Higher-quality leads mean better conversion rates.
?? When Can You Use It? ??
The feature is rolling out gradually across ad accounts. Keep an eye on your Meta lead ads settings to see if it's available for you!
This could be the lead quality boost you’ve been waiting for from Meta. Let us know what you think in the comments! ??
?? New LinkedIn Ad Format: Articles & Newsletters ??
LinkedIn has introduced a new ad format that allows you to promote long-form content directly within the platform. With Article Ads and Newsletter Ads, businesses can now share in-depth insights, showcase expertise, and grow a highly engaged subscriber base.
Unlike traditional ad formats that focus on quick conversions, this update is designed for brands looking to build credibility, educate their audience, and foster long-term relationships.
By putting valuable content in front of the right people, companies can attract decision-makers, spark meaningful conversations, and turn readers into loyal followers.
Article Ads on the feed saw 2.3x higher click-through rate and 1.4x higher engagement?rate compared to Single Image Ads with a link to a 3rd party article – LinkedIn Marketing Solutions.
?? What’s New? ??
? Article Ads – Promote detailed insights, case studies, and expert content to educate your audience.
LinkedIn Articles are individual, stand-alone long-form content pieces on a variety of topics that matter most to your audience.
? Newsletter Ads – Expand your reach and gain more subscribers for your LinkedIn newsletter.
Whereas LinkedIn Newsletters are recurring, serialised articles on a certain topic with the goal of building a subscriber community.
?? Why B2B Event Marketers Will Benefit...??
Strengthen Thought Leadership: Establish your brand as a trusted industry voice.
Target the Right Audience: Use LinkedIn’s precise targeting to reach professionals who matter.
Encourage Deeper Engagement: Build a loyal audience that stays connected with your content over time.
This ad format is ideal for B2B brands, industry experts, and marketers who want to do more than just capture leads and start creating a strong content ecosystem that nurtures trust and long-term engagement from their audience.
Whether the goal is thought leadership, demand generation, or brand awareness, this format offers a new way to connect meaningfully with potential customers.
We recently launched newsletter ads (hello if you're a new subscriber ??) and we've already seen an uplift in our engagement and subscribers – we'll be sharing a full case study once this campaign is complete.
What do you think about this ad format? Do you have a newsletter that would benefit from this? Let us know in the comments! ??
?? Google Expands Demand Gen Ad Tools & Phases Out Video Action Campaigns ??
Big changes are happening in the Google Ads ecosystem! Google is rolling out expanded Demand Gen ad tools and phasing out Video Action Campaigns (VACs), marking a new era for AI-driven, visually engaging advertising strategies.
?? What’s Changing in Google Ads? ??
? Video Action Campaigns Are Sunsetting – Sunsetting began in 2024, VACs will be automatically upgraded to Demand Gen campaigns, which bring enhanced reach and more creative options.
? Expanded Demand Gen Tools – Expect improved audience targeting, AI-powered creative optimisations, and broader video placements across platforms like YouTube, Discover, and Gmail.
? Focus on Engaging Visual Ads – Demand Gen campaigns are designed to provide more scroll-stopping content to drive conversions, surpassing traditional search ads in effectiveness.
?? Why Should Marketers Pay Attention? ??
?? Enhanced Performance – Demand Gen ads leverage AI to optimise placements and creative materials for better engagement and conversion.
?? Sharper Targeting – Take advantage of first-party data, lookalike modelling, and Google’s advanced audience signals to reach your ideal customers.
?? Effortless Migration – Advertisers currently running VACs will be automatically transitioned to Demand Gen in the coming months.
?? How This Change Will Impact Your Advertising Strategy ??
With Demand Gen ads, Google is pushing for a more immersive, AI-driven ad experience, offering advertisers a chance to get creative with their campaigns.
If you’re still using Video Action Campaigns, it’s time to start experimenting with new formats and understand how Demand Gen’s features can boost your campaign performance.
领英推荐
Google is combining its video advertising tools under the Demand Gen umbrella, however they are adding new features to help advertisers better compete with paid social platforms.
?? Full details here: Google Expands Demand Gen Ad Tools
We'd love to know what you think about these updates...let us know in the comments ??
?? 5 New Microsoft Performance Max Features: Including LinkedIn Targeting & Measurement Features ??
Microsoft is making big moves with a current pilot test.
Microsoft is enhancing its Performance Max campaigns with new targeting options and improved measurement capabilities, offering marketers greater flexibility to refine their strategies and maximise impact.
This update aims to provide more precision and deeper insights across Microsoft’s diverse advertising network.
Microsoft is tapping into their unique access of LinkedIn’s professional network data to offer stand-out targeting capabilities for advertisers.
?? What’s New with Microsoft Performance Max? ??
1?? LinkedIn Profile Targeting as an Audience Signal –?Advertisers in six major markets (U.S., Canada, UK, Australia, France, and Germany) will be able to tap into LinkedIn’s professional targeting data, including company, industry, and job function signals. This is in addition to in-market audiences by job title and company size.
Note: This feature has not been rolled out to everyone, advertisers can request to be enabled for this pilot.
2?? Enhanced Reporting – Advertisers will be able to analyse performance by audience segments and track individual asset performance, providing clearer insights into what’s working.
You’ll be able to measure and analyse your campaigns in greater detail, making data-driven decisions simpler.
As of February 2025, the advanced reporting tools are being rolled out to all.
3?? Conversion Value Rules – Microsoft have introduced new conversion value rules that will let advertisers adjust values in real-time based on business-specific factors like location and device usage, making automated bidding more precise.
This is applicable to all campaign types, including Performance Max campaigns.
4?? New Customer Acquisition Goal Strategy – This strategy is available to all advertisers on Microsoft, to enable specific targeting of new customers, with options to either increase bids for new customers or focus exclusively on acquiring them.
5?? Improved Machine Learning Optimisations – AI-driven technology continues to drive intelligent ad placements, now with even greater efficiency across Bing, Outlook, and the Microsoft Audience Network.
?? Why Does This Mean For Event Marketers???
?? Refined Audience Reach – These targeting enhancements give you better control to engage the right audience based on precise characteristics.
?? Smarter Analytics – The advanced measurement tools offer deeper insights into your campaign’s performance, making it easier to adjust your strategy in real-time.
?? Maximising Impact Across Channels – Performance Max now covers the entire Microsoft ecosystem, ensuring your ads reach the right people in the right places, driving higher conversion potential.
?? What Does This Mean for Your Marketing? ??
The expanded targeting and measurement options open up exciting opportunities to optimise campaign performance.
These new tools would enable you to deliver more relevant ads and track their impact more accurately, ensuring that your efforts are always aligned with your business goals.
LinkedIn profile targeting as an audience signal is the only feature that is not widely available to everyone right now, currently running as a pilot test, suggesting Microsoft is gathering feedback before a broader rollout.
What do you think of these changes? Share your thoughts in the comments below ??
?? Unlock Exclusive Insights From the Event Industry Digital Trend Report 2025 ??
We wanted to round off this month's first newsletter with an exclusive for you all...The Event Industry Digital Trend Report ??
Take a look into the future with our benchmarks for 2025 event paid campaigns with one of a kind data (not just predictions!)
Unless you're new here (if so, welcome, we're excited to have you join us), you'll know that we release our Event Industry Digital Trend Report every year but what makes this different to all of the other trend reports you see?
Every year, Tag Digital run 100,000+ paid digital marketing campaigns, specific to events, across over forty countries.?You won't find this data anywhere else.
We crunch the numbers so you don't have to and aggregate this data to create a one-of-a-kind data set to be used for benchmarking and to determine “what good looks like” for your paid campaigns.
?? What You Can Expect from the Report? ??
Massive Data Set: We've analysed paid advertising campaign data that includes:
?? 2.7 billion impressions
?? 25 million clicks
?? Over 1 million conversions
Recent Campaign Data: Our 2025 report features data from January to December 2024, allowing you to accurately project the budget you need for successful campaigns this year.
Find the Data That Matters Most to You: It's crucial that you are comparing your results to relevant events in your industry and region, that's why we've split the report by:
?? Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) by Objective, Industry, Region, and Platform
?? Cost Per Click (CPC) by Objective, Industry and Platform
?? Cost Per Thousand (CPM) by Platform
Benchmark Data for All Platforms: We've spoken a lot about different paid advertising platform updates in this newsletter, find out how your results on each platform compare to the rest of the events industry with our full report.
?? Average CPA, CPC and CPM for Google, Meta, LinkedIn and Programmatic
Here's a sneak peek with the cost per acquisition by platform ??
We hope you enjoyed the latest edition of Tagged for Success, we'll be back again this month on the 25th Feb with the second AI edition and innovations for your marketing.
As we navigate sharing an AI specific newsletter alongside our normal newsletter, we will be testing a variety of content, we would love to know what you thought of this edition in the comments ??
We now release two newsletters every month with all of the latest news and updates in digital marketing, make sure you're subscribed to Tagged for Success!