Digital Marketing News 02/22/2022 – 02/28/2022

PPC

Google Ads Updates About the New Topics API for Privacy Sandbox

Chrome and its recent updates makes interest-based advertising even more private using the new Topics API.

In an announcement in January of this year, Chrome announced an updated Privacy Sandbox Proposal called Topics to support interest-based advertising. This new API replaces the Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) proposal. 

After incorporating industry feedback to improve upon the initial FLoC proposal, interest-based advertising can be more private with the new Topics proposal. 

Topics API allows a user’s browser to determine topics that represent top interests for the previous week based on their browsing activity. When a user visits a participating site, the API will share one topic per week from the past three weeks with websites and advertising partners who can use it as one of the many potential signals of interest-based advertising.

Here are some ways that Topics will be more private, according to Google’s article:

• Reduces the risk of identifying unique identities using limited sets of topics

• Provides more human-understandable transparency where users can clearly recognize topics they are associated with

• Avoids sensitive categories through manually curated topics 

Topics will be selected locally on people’s devices and will only be stored for three weeks, after which they will be deleted.

Social

Facebook Launches Reels Globally Along with Other New Features

Facebook takes on TikTok by building up short-form videos, now launching in iOS and Android Worldwide.

After Facebook’s historic stock plunge, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg attributed its loss to an “unprecedented level of competition with TikTok,” report says. The company started to prioritize Reels to compete.

Last February 22, Facebook launched its take on the feature first influenced by TikTok outside the USA, rolling out to 150 countries. 

Reels lets you create up to 60-second videos. But with new features, you can create mixes of existing Reels that others made—similar to Duets on TikTok, where you can use an existing video to showcase reactions or reactions to the original video. A new Save to Draft option can also help you pick up where you left off later.

A dedicated Reels label will be at the top of the Facebook app. In addition, an upcoming feature called Stars will let creators monetize their content through a tipping system while a live Reel is ongoing. 

Social

YouTube Introduces New Metadata for Educational Videos

YouTube rolls out new metadata for educational English language videos to help optimize videos for YouTube search.

During the company’s weekly roundup, YouTube introduced an additional metadata option specific to English videos that are educational by nature. Videos can be marked as educational during the upload flow when selecting a category. The new metadata fields include:

• type of video

• academic system

• education level

• exam

Other updates include a new way to add a custom thumbnail on mobile and new ways to highlight Shorts videos on desktop using a dedicated Shorts Shelf.

Search

Google Ads Shares Top Priorities for 2022

Google Ads team shares the top 3 priorities for the year: automation, measurement, and privacy.

Vice President and General Manager of Google Ads, Jerry Dischler, mentioned how shifts in consumer behavior present both challenges and opportunities. He continues to share three priorities that guide the product roadmap: unlocking new opportunities for business growth, preparing for the future of measurement, and ensuring we exceed in customer expectations for privacy.

Under the automation pillar, Google emphasizes the use of Performance Max and Discovery campaign types. Both focus on reaching users at scale from a single campaign. 

On the other hand, Google recommends leaning into automation with Smart Bidding, responsive search ads, and broad match keywords for single campaigns such as Search, Display, and YouTube.

For the future of measurements, Google is rolling out new solutions to privacy and measurements including: 

• Enhanced conversions

• Consent mode

• Conversion modeling

• Data-driven attribution

With the iOS 14 update, the future removal of third-party cookies, and possibly a lot more, new approaches to measurement will be critical to success and also prove the value of marketing.

These solutions will rely on first-party data and privacy-safe APIs, putting users first by respecting privacy while confidently measuring the impact of your ads.

Google also updates its privacy playbook to help build meaningful and manageable relationships between users and advertisers. The highlights of this playbook include building direct relationships with your customers, ensuring your measurements are accurate and actionable, and it’s driving performance by keeping your ads relevant.

PPC

Microsoft Ads Introduces Dynamic Descriptions for Dynamic Search Ads

Microsoft Ads rolls out Dynamic Descriptions for Dynamic Search Ads that advertisers can use to serve users.

Last February 22, Microsoft Ads announced its Dynamic Descriptions for Dynamic Search Ads rolling out to the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and Germany immediately. However, advertisers in potentially sensitive categories such as pharmacies and financial services will not be eligible for dynamic descriptions and will remain unaffected by this new feature.

Similar to Dynamic Headlines in Dynamic Search Ads, Microsoft Ads will automatically generate descriptions geared towards the highest relevance to each user. This is yet another nod to automation that proves to be where many tech companies are moving towards and that many also appreciate.

Algorithms will learn new user behavior based on evolving changes such as this so advertisers can expect some performance volatility. 

Dynamic Descriptions will be available to everyone starting April. 

Search

Google Adopting New Privacy Restrictions That Will Cut Tracking Across Apps On its Android Devices

Google plans to develop a new privacy-focused replacement for its advertising ID, following a similar move made by Apple last year.

On February 16, Google announced that it’s adopting a new privacy restriction that will cut tracking across apps on its Android devices. A new privacy-focused replacement is being developed for its advertising ID, the unique string of characters that identifies the user’s device. 

This change can affect many companies that have relied on tracking users across apps like Facebook.

Note that this similar change that Apple made last year contributed to wiping $232 billion from the company’s market cap in a single day.

However, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, voiced support for how Google plans to implement its privacy tweaks.

″[It is] encouraging to see this long-term, collaborative approach to privacy-protective personalized advertising from Google,” Graham Mudd, vice president of product marketing at ads and business at Facebook said on Twitter. “We look forward to continued work with them and the industry on privacy-enhancing tech through industry groups.”

Users are becoming more aware and concerned about their personal data, so changes are expected while also following regulatory issues and compliance.

What you can do next

• Shift the goal of your awareness efforts to capture first-party data instead of final sales to accommodate privacy-centric changes by more and more companies.

• Keep a close eye on changes in performance such as CTR, search terms, and conversion volume.

• Short-form videos are becoming the most consumed media online. Explore how you can use this format to reach your target market. 

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