September has been a busy month for Google and Bing with 19 official updates with the big news coming from Google on bringing their business in-line with a EU anti-trust order.
Changes to Google Shopping Results
Starting with the big news from Google this month.
Google were given until September 28th 2017 to bring their processes in line with an EU antitrust order, or face a further fine of up to 5% of its average daily worldwide turnover.
The company have now updated the shopping results to make sure they treat their own shopping services equally to other shopping comparison providers when they bid for ads at the top of a search page.
For more details on this you can read the update from Google here.
Optimising in-app actions
With all AdWords app install campaigns being moved over to Universal App Campaigns (UAC), in this update Google gives some information on how this new area can be used for optimising in-app actions. They do this by highlighting features such as being able to track journeys in-app and that information being sent back to AdWords.
This information will let you understand how users interact with your app as well as giving you tips on how you can optimise to make those users take desired actions.
You can read the full update here.
Connect and measure with YouTube
In this post Google highlight the importance of video in engaging audiences and announce four new tools they are launching to help marketers leverage the tool to their advantage. These new tools will let brands understand and reach the right audiences with their Custom Affinity Audiences tool, enable custom video creative to target different viewers with the launch of Director Mix, create engaging and ongoing stories over multiple ads with Video Ad Sequencing and a global new way to measure sales lift with Nielsen MPA (Matched Panel Analysis).
All details on this update can be found by following this link.
Boost call-only ads
Sometimes calls are the most important sales, marketing and customer experience route for a business, due to this fact Google have seen a rise in advertisers using call-only ads.
To boost the effectiveness of these adverts they have now introduced ad extensions that let advertisers add further information to adverts in order to get people to take action. These come in three types including location extensions, callout extensions and structured snippets.
The full update and all details on these new extensions can be found here.
Holiday updates for Merchant Centre
Just in time for the upcoming holiday season Google have made some updates with new tools in the Merchant Centre. By highlighting that high-quality product information is the best route to connect retailers to potential customers, they introduce tools that will allow you to:
- Add or override product data with supplemental feeds
- Add new countries with the same language to your primary feed
- Modifying your product data from the Content API with Feed Rules
- Get a better idea of potential results with the Opportunity tab
- Keep your team informed of your Merchant Centre account
Learn more about the Merchant Centre updates here.
Panoramic view of your data with dashboard
Understanding that all businesses have different data and reporting needs, Google have announced that they will be letting users create and view a central dashboard that will let you give a snapshot of data trends and movements in a single place on AdWords. You will also be able to share these dashboards with your team, giving your whole organisation an insight into crucial information.
For info on how these will work and how to create your first dashboard you can read the update here.
Up UAC performance with creative
Furthering the conversation on using the tools within Universal App Campaigns (UAC) for optimising in-app actions, in this update Google give a number of tips on how to get more out of UAC with creative assets.
Giving some tips and ideas around upping the number and variety of creative assets in campaigns, getting insight into the performance of those creative assets and optimising your asset mix with the Creative Asset Report.
More details on these tips can be found by reading the full article here.
Faster search text ads
Citing the fact that for every second it takes a retail website to load, conversions fall by up to 20%, Google highlight the importance of fast web loading. Pairing this with the importance of mobile in online retail they remind about the announcement of the combining of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and search text ads.
In this update, they give some tips on getting ready for this update.
Read all the details by clicking here.
Shopping ads in new countries
In this useful update Google highlight the major shopping events in all the countries in which they provide advertising services. They also take the opportunity to highlight some of the benefits of using their services in advertising in these countries.
Countdown ad customiser
Want to build excitement around and upcoming event or sale? Bing are now offering customised count down timers with their paid ads. This will let you advertise an exciting upcoming event and get people engaged ahead of time.
To learn how these will work practically read the post here.
dmexco 2017 update
Following on from the dmexco 2017 event where Bing took to the stage to give their thoughts on the future of intelligent marketing, they have shared an update on what went on at the event. In the post they cover off various areas including:
- The importance of providing a seamless, intuitive and vibrant consumer experience that adds value regardless of where and how called upon by the user
- The power and importance of search within the marketing mix, today and in the future
- How to prepare for this new level of automation across the business
To read all the details on the dmexco event click here.
Ad extension management improvement
In this update from Bing we see a brief overview of how they are working to improve ad extension management with account level association. Practically this means that you will now be able to edit ad extensions at the account level under the All Campaigns set up.
More information on this improvement to ad extension management can be found here.
Content network sunset
As previously announced, Bing continue their plans to clean up data related to content network that is no longer relevant on November 30th 2017. The update goes on to highlight exactly what this means for users.
To understand further how this may affect you read the post here.
Screen-less search
Highlighting the fact that ?Search advertising represents the majority of all ad spend today and is set to grow $60B by 2021.*? Bing use this post to give some tips and considerations for the future of search with screen-less search.
To read the full article and view the infographic click here.
DS Automobiles, Bing & OMD UK
In this post Bing take the opportunity to boast a little about the work they have been doing with OMD UK in advertising their clients premium brand DS Automobiles with a video case study.
You can watch the video that covers off the success story here.
Streaming data for BigQuery
Google have announced a major improvement to the way that Google Analytics data streams to BigQuery. For Google Analytics 360 clients they will now be able to send data up to six times and hour, meaning they can now make current day analysis. This is a 48x improvement over the current three times a day analysis.
For more information on this update and what you can do with this new ability check the update here.
Google Data Studio update
With 25 updates having being made to Google Data Studio in the past six month, Google have now announced new updates to make it quicker to access your data. This update includes:
- Community Connectors Developer Launch ? which will allow you to visualise data from any source
- Embedded Reports ? allowing you to embed Data Studio reports in your websites and apps using simple iframe embedding
- Data Control ? giving you the ability to reuse a single report across all your accounts
For more information and other minor updated read the full report here.
Enhanced support for AMP
Google has announced that a new API will let you see where visitors to your website have crossed over or come back to Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and non-AMP. Unlike before, this means that your web pages served by Google platforms and your domain can talk to each other and share data, therefore giving you a complete picture of user behaviours across the two platforms.
Read the complete update on this new API here.
M-dot to responsive
As more and more sites move towards responsive design to cater for various viewing platforms, more developers are searching for ways to migrate from separate mobile urls (m-dot) to using responsive website. In this blog post Google give an outline of how this can be achieved.
