Following discussions with the Commission and network of national consumer protection (CPC) authorities, TikTok has agreed to implement regulations around promoting alcohol, cigarettes, and ‘get rich quick’ schemes. They will also allow users to report undisclosed branded content and flag ads that trick children into making purchases. New labels for paid ads. The policy will also identify ads with a new label, allowing users to see immediately whether a post is sponsored. Publishers will also have to switch on a toggle button when they’re publishing content captioned with certain keywords such as #ad or #sponsored. In addition, users with more than 10,000 followers will also have their videos reviewed to ensure they meet TikTok’s guidelines. The new commitments. According to the European Commission, the main commitments agreed to by TikTok are:
What the Commission says.
A troubling history of challenges. In 2020, TikTok came under hot water regarding its content moderation process and it’s exposure of young users in the app. While there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the app itself, a leaked document in 2020 showed that TikTok moderators had been instructed to suppress content that featured people who may have been seen as less desirable, as investigations have uncovered that TikTok relies on pretty young women, in particular. TikToks commitment. To learn more about TikToks commitment to EU rules, you can read the article here. Why we care. Any regulations aimed at cracking down on predatory social platforms that target children, and moderate content based on insufficient policies and practices that leave users vulnerable, are OK in our book. We hope these new regulations help make social media a safer place for children, but we’ll see. The post TikTok commits to updating ad policies to better align with EU rules appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://searchengineland.com/tiktok-commits-to-updating-ad-policies-to-better-align-with-eu-rules-386008
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Twitter announced yesterday they were launching Branded Likes. Branded Likes are custom Like animations for tweets that brands can create through the ads manager. What are Branded Likes. Branded Likes are Like buttons stylized for specific tweets. You can see an example here promoting the ‘Scream’ movie. A costly addition. Branded Likes were featured during the Super Bowl with brands Anheuser-Busch and PepsiCo taking the bait. But the price tag for the emojis then was around $1 million. They won’t cost that much when they’re launched, but it does make us wonder what sort of impact they had at that time if any. Who will get access. Twitter says that they’ll make Branded Likes available as an ad option to all advertisers in the US, UK, and Japan next week. Why we care. I’m not entirely sure we do. Branded Likes are a novelty, but there aren’t any early indicators that they’ll have a positive effect on brand awareness or engagement. The post Twitter launching Branded Likes appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://searchengineland.com/twitter-launching-branded-likes-386004 Google has updated its help document on Googlebot to specify that Googlebot will crawl up to the first 15MB of the page and then stop. So if you want to ensure that Google ranks your page appropriately, make sure Googlebot can crawl and index that part of the page within the first 15MB. What is new. In the Googlebot help document, Google added this section that reads:
Why we care. In general, you probably want to keep your pages pretty light for both users and search engine crawlers. But here Google is being very clear about how much Googlebot will consume from your page. A good way to test this is to use the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console and see what parts of the page Google renders and sees within the debugging tool. The post Googlebot will crawl and index the first 15MB of content per page appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://searchengineland.com/googlebot-will-crawl-and-index-the-first-15mb-of-content-per-page-385995 Twitter has just launched Campaign Planner, a forecasting tool designed to help advertisers estimate campaign results before launching. What does Campaign Planner do. The new Campaign Planner helps advertisers:
What Twitter says. Twitter created this tool in order to help empower partners and advertisers to better understand the size and cost of reaching a target audience during the campaign planning process.
How to access Campaign Planner. The Campaign Planner is available to all managed advertisers in the US, UK, and Japan. Managed partners can access the tool by contacting their Twitter Client Partner. You can access the Campaign Planner from your Twitter Ads account. Upon doing so, you’ll be prompted to enter details to begin building your forecast. What the Campaign Planner Looks like. Twitter recommended settings. Twitter has outlined recommendations on how to set up your campaigns most effectively. Twitter claims these recommendations are backed by research, but advertisers should set up their campaigns how they see fit based on testing and what works for their specific business. Reach and frequency. Once you determine your core audience, Twitter recommends using higher levels of weekly frequency to achieve better results. Most advertisers are aware that increased brand awareness leads to better results. A higher budget can help you achieve this. Campaign length. Twitter also recommends letting your campaigns run for a longer period of time to allow sufficient time to build brand recognition. They suggest letting the campaigns run over 5 weeks to gain momentum and up to 13 weeks to resonate with your audience. Learn more about Campaign Planner. You can read more about Campaign Planner via the announcement here. Why we care. The Campaign Planner seems like a useful tool for advertisers to predict the impact of their campaigns. However, the Campaign Planners forecast is estimated and their recommendations are general. There is no substitute for constant monitoring and testing. The post Twitter launches Campaign Planner appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://searchengineland.com/twitter-launches-campaign-planner-385990 Google and Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal are competing to help Netflix create an ad-supported tier of it’s streaming service. Subscriber numbers falling. In April Netflix announced that it had lost about 200,000 subscribers, which is the first time the streaming platform had lost any subscribers in over 10 years. Netflix reports that its user base is growing, however. One reason this may occur could be password sharing due to the increase in monthly fees. Either way, Netflix is hoping to boost its revenue by selling ads. What it means for NBCUniversal. It’s likely that a partnership with NBCUniversal would be exclusive. The ad unit, called FreeWheel, would provide the necessary technology to deliver the ads. The NBCUniversal sales team would help to sell the ads across Europe and the US. A Google partnership. Google brings its own ad platform, which Netflix is currently a customer of. An agreement with Google could mean an exclusive arrangement, but it hasn’t been confirmed. A shift in strategy. For over 10 years, Netflix has provided users with an ad and commercial-free streaming experience. But due to competition from rival streaming services, they’re rethinking their approach. Bringing in Google or NBCUniversal could help Netflix deliver an ad-supported tier much faster, though experts say it could still be a year or more before it becomes a reality. Experience supporting other companies. Both competitors are currently working with other large brands. A potential deal with Netflix could mean sharing access to its tech partners and audiences. NBCUniversal is the exclusive reseller of ads for Apple News and Apple Stocks since 2017 and has recently expanded into the UK. Google works with the Walt Disney Co. (a previous FreeWheel customer) to serve their ads since 2018. What Netflix is saying. Netflix hasn’t provided any details of its plans, how many ads will run, ad targeting, or reach. Read the announcement. You can read the article from the Wall Street Journal here. Why we care. An ad-supported Netflix tier would give advertisers another channel to promote their business, which could be lucrative and cheaper than traditional television commercials. However, a partnership with either means more data sharing and targeted advertising, which could be a turn-off for many users. The post NBCUniversal and Google competing to hep Netflix deliver ad-based option appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://searchengineland.com/nbcuniversal-and-google-competing-to-hep-netflix-deliver-ad-based-option-385985 After nearly a decade of using Universal Analytics for website traffic analysis, you probably have a pretty good idea of where you need to go to get the data you need. Maybe you’d even consider yourself a GA reporting master. Want to know how much traffic came from organic search? No problem. You can pull that report in two seconds flat! Or, even better, you’ve got it bookmarked. But when it comes to Google Analytics 4, things look and feel different. You may have no idea how to get started. Have no fear! In this guide, you’ll learn
Where to find the GA4 Acquisition ReportsAcquisition reports live under Reports > Lifecycle > Acquisition. You’ll immediately notice that there are actually two acquisition reports. The User acquisition report: And the Traffic acquisition report: Important differences to keep in mind:
Which one should you use? That’s up to you and the type of analysis you’re trying to do (whether you want to know what brought the user to the site in the first place, or campaign information for the latest session that brought someone to your site). In this guide, we’ll examine the Traffic Acquisition report. Using the Traffic Acquisition ReportWhen you select the Traffic acquisition report, you’ll notice that the report defaults to the Default Channel Grouping view of data. In UA, you could select a Channels report to get this view, or you could choose to look at the “source / medium” report directly. In GA4, you can get all of these views from one single table. To do so, you can change the primary dimension in the dropdown of the table to switch the dimension view. If you want to rebuild the source / medium report that we all love from UA, it’s easy. First, you’ll change the primary dimension to source and then you’ll add a secondary dimension (click the + icon) of medium. *Note that as of this writing, there is not a single primary dimension for source / medium, but there is a secondary dimension for it. Hopefully, this will soon be resolved in the GA4 reporting interface. If you’d like to get a little fancier with your data analysis, you can leave the primary dimension set as is as Default channel grouping and add a secondary dimension of source / medium. It’s a nice view to see high-level Default channel grouping and the more granular source / medium breakdown together, giving you the ability to easily scan and classify traffic into channels and distinct sources. Similar to Universal Analytics, we can also filter a table report in GA4. For example, if you’d like to filter by Referral, you can use the filter box to narrow down your data results. One important difference between GA4 and UA is that the filter you add here will apply to both the primary and the secondary dimensions in the table. So if the word “referral” shows up in either column, the row will be shown. In UA, the simple filter box only impacted the primary dimension, and you could add an advanced filter option for the secondary dimension specifically. If you want to know acquisition data by landing page, you can apply this same methodology of adding a secondary dimension of source / medium to your fancy new landing page report we recently built. If you haven’t done it already, here’s how you can easily build your own landing page report in GA4. It’s a handy tool for search marketers. Now you’re a GA4 acquisition masterThat’s it! And it isn’t all that different from UA. With a little practice, you’ll be pulling those acquisition reports with your eyes closed. The post Google Analytics 4: A guide to the Traffic Acquisition Report appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://searchengineland.com/google-analytics-4-traffic-acquisition-report-385975 There’s a rise of the Workday Consumer who, due to changes stemming from the pandemic, unapologetically switches between employee, personal and consumer mode throughout the day. This behavior stands to have a significant impact on how your advertising engages them. Microsoft Advertising recently partnered with Forrester Consulting on research outlining how work and shopping behaviors have changed for people who work remotely. We take a deeper look at the behaviors of these consumers, the nuances of their shopping and work behavior, and how advertisers should think about reaching them. The Workday Consumer mindsetTo be more effective in reaching the Workday Consumer, we must consider that nearly 62% surveyed said they spend time shifting between various mindsets during work hours. During this time, they research or purchase products and services, sometimes putting those tasks ahead of browsing social media and consuming entertainment.1 While mobile is still a part of the decision journey, many consumers use their PCs to research and purchase high consideration items across categories. In fact, nearly two-thirds of respondents (63%) said they spent more time on their work PC than before the pandemic, and 56% said they use work laptops and videoconferencing software for personal purposes. Almost half (48%) said they prefer not to switch devices when doing personal tasks during work time.1 When targeting Workday Consumers, it’s important to consider their mindset, which influences the types of tasks, such as purchases, they’re undertaking. Three ways to reach the Workday ConsumerAs you reevaluate your methods to reach Workday Consumers, here are a few ideas that you can use for campaign planning. 1. Consider working modeThe Workday Consumer’s time and place of work has shifted dramatically. They may be hybrid, desk-based or frontline, office-based or remote. In each of these situations their mindset will be different. Having a deep understanding of your audience will make a difference in reaching and engaging them. Employ methods such as self-reported studies, observational studies, location tracking and time-of-day data. Just as Workday Consumers have shifted their mindset, advertisers must also shift targeting strategies. Use products that employ automation to understand audience behavior and adapt in real-time to adjust to their search desires. Consider using:
2. Engage Workday Consumers throughout the funnelTo attract, convert and retain Workday Consumers, it’s important to craft messaging, content and ads optimized for PC, search and native. This is especially important for upper-funnel campaigns because Workday Consumers actively research products and services in between work tasks. Once they continue their search, you’ll need to prepare to target them across their online purchasing journey. Engage partners that enable targeting based on signals such as opted-in digital consumer tracking panels, contextual insights, time-of-day data, and others to predict audiences and performance.
3. Use the verticals they’re researchingIt isn’t just one vertical that’s affected, this is relevant to all advertisers. The top 10 categories researched (in order) are travel, clothing, tools, sporting goods, electronics, financial products and services, health and personal care, household appliances, media/entertainment, and cars. When working, people are in a productive mindset, and they view researching and purchasing with efficiency in mind. This mindset has evolved the consumer journey, and much of this research is done on their work PC.
Vertical ads are different for each category or industry. They focus on information that a specific consumer is looking for and provide it in an engaging, easy-to-read format (pre-click) and with images. Vertical ads for travel, financial services and automotive industries, with more coming soon. The Workday Consumer and niche personasConsumers’ attention spans have been famously likened to that of goldfish for years. Now you must also consider short attention spans and distracted and fragmented browsing as they shift more frequently between work and personal tasks. Therefore, knowing your audience thoroughly is more important than ever. For example, we took a deep dive into our data and found our new attitudes and behaviors causing a change in how we reach and engage customers across industries. They are:
Download the booklet for a wealth of information on these attitudes. The Workday Consumer behavior shows up across all these personas, as well as others you may have developed yourself. Read on for tips on how we applied the Workday Consumer mindset to the four new personas for ideas on how you might apply the thinking to your own personas. Luxury ShopperWe already know the Workday Consumer is working remotely while researching, purchasing products and services, performing personal tasks, chores, managing finances, and consuming entertainment. They have a few additional characteristics if they’re also a Luxury Shopper. The online Luxury Shopper seeks to elevate everyday experiences with the finer things and is comfortable purchasing online. They’re browsing online, researching, and looking at the large variety of luxury goods online instead of in-store.2 They can be found across multiple search engines, with 51% of them researching vacations, and 43% searching for business-related topics.3 Because Workday Consumer Luxury Shoppers research before purchasing and are quick to switching tasks, consider features that grab their limited attention. Remind them to revisit sites and put them closer to making a purchase decision before they even click.
Empowered ActivistThe Empowered Activist is the consumer who makes purchasing decisions by spending money on brands that align with their own values. They seek eco-friendly, inclusive, ethical small business-oriented brands, and they vote with their wallet. Empowered Activists on Microsoft Advertising are 33% more likely to purchase online if they know the product or company is environmentally friendly.4 They use multiple devices throughout their day to shop and to research products and company or brand values. On the Microsoft Search Network, we saw a 141% year-over-year (YoY) increase in beauty searches for black-owned and minority-owned related terms.5
Self-Care EnthusiastsSelf-Care Enthusiasts are interested in spending time where it matters most, whether with family, on mental health, or fitness. They seek brands that enhance their physical and mental well-being. This audience works hard across all aspects of life. Their time is stretched throughout the day, so time management is top of mind. This group consistently multitasks between work, school, life and leisure activities.
Digital NomadsDigital Nomads are location-independent people who value flexibility and make a living working online. Because they work 100% remotely, they can travel constantly and move from place to place as long as there’s an internet connection. Digital Nomads are the ultimate Workday Consumer, as they’re searching for housing, transportation, and all the needs, services and amenities that accompany daily life in new locations. Consider using:
Reaching the Workday Consumer requires targeting based on a robust first-party data strategy, signals like opted-in consumer tracking panels and contextual insights to predict audiences and performance behavior. While some aspects of the pandemic such as virtual happy hour have come and gone, the integration of work and life is here to stay. Make sure your brand is there when the Workday Consumer is making decisions. Stay informedSign up for the weekly Microsoft Advertising Insider newsletter for additional Workday Consumer topics and insights, product news, tips and tricks, thought leadership, customer success stories and resources. Sources 1. A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Microsoft, November 2021. The global online survey included 5,329 employed consumers. They were 18 or older and had made an online purchase via their PC during the previous six months. Another survey of 1,301 marketing and advertising decision-makers are directors, VPs, or heads of brands. 2. Microsoft Advertising Luxury Shopping Study, 2021. 3. GlobalWebIndex, U.S., June 2020-June 2021. 4. GlobalWebIndex, U.S., Q1-Q4 2021. 5. Microsoft internal data, U.S., May 2019-August 2021 and May-December YoY figures. The post Create campaign impact by reaching the Workday Consumer appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://searchengineland.com/create-campaign-impact-by-reaching-the-workday-consumer-385927 Marketing agencies recognize the need to be at the top of their data game to provide the best return for clients. That’s why it takes two to tango. If you don’t have clients’ buy-in for embracing a data-driven approach toward their marketing efforts, untapped potential and money gets left on the table. These are the most frequent obstacles our clients face, and how to overcome them. 1. Tracking is an afterthoughtUTM parameters are a marketer’s best friend when measuring down-funnel performance measurement. They give us incredible visibility into exactly what drives performance across all digital channels. However, the reality is that many organizations simply don’t have a UTM structure to properly attribute data in their marketing campaigns. Some of the common critical pitfalls are:
A consistent, cross-channel UTM template can be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet. Ensuring that it is adopted across the entire marketing operations team can immediately improve attribution and measurement insights. Furthermore, as we move more toward machine learning and automation, clients must capture click-level IDs to measure performance, provide feedback to the platforms that offer offline conversion tracking and further optimize campaigns and bidding strategies to down-funnel goals. While Google and Facebook are currently the only platforms that offer offline conversion tracking, we have to anticipate that this will become more widely adopted sooner than later and eventually become the best practice. To take full advantage of offline conversion tracking, the client has to do the legwork in setting up their martech stack to capture and pass these IDs through. They also need to create internal reporting and dataset schemas to export this information back into platform APIs. 2. No centralized data management strategyOften, greener companies lack cohesive data infrastructure, and their data is siloed and disorganized. It lives all over the place in different formats (Google sheets, CSV files stored in a folder that has no access controls and lead data that lives only within their CRM). When we see these kinds of issues, we also tend to see that the organization’s various departments handle their data differently. Marketing operations should be considered integral and aligned with organizational goals, and data management practices should reflect that. Having a centralized data warehouse solution and a data operations team that transcends individual departments forces the entire organization to align with its data storage practices and definitions. Getting everyone onboard with a more modern approach to data can seem daunting, but it pays dividends in the long run. 3. Analysis paralysisThe volume and granularity of data available to us as marketers are almost limitless and will only continue to grow. It is easy for an organization to fall into the pitfall of spending too much time analyzing every piece of data instead of zeroing in on what’s important and actionable. When an ad manager or client comes to our BI department with a new dataset or visualization request, marketers should always ask:
Actionable is the key word here. Because of vast data availability, it can seem daunting if an organization doesn’t have someone asking these kinds of questions to steer the ship toward a thoughtful and focused approach. Data analysis typically falls into three categories:
As marketers, we want to focus our efforts on the last two. In other words, what is currently happening, what do we want to happen and what do we need to change to get us there? While there is a time and place for more exploratory analysis, it’s essential to not take our eyes off the prize and the insights that truly matter for a client’s bottom-line goals. 4. Lack of data culture in the organizationWe hear the term “data culture” thrown around quite a bit, but the phrase can come across as a bit nebulous and sound like a substanceless buzzword. Ultimately, all of the plights above can be encapsulated in one overarching challenge: a lack of decisive, holistic data management direction. Data culture has to be embraced at the executive level and implemented top-down. If marketing operations speak a different data language and define important organizational goals and KPIs differently than financial operations, that’s a problem. When we see a lack of data culture and a disorganized approach to handling and storing data, most likely, a company hasn’t put the right people and tools in the right places. A company must be willing to invest the time and resources into finding data leaders who can guide:
We can do our part as marketing data experts to guide our clients toward fixing some of the low-hanging fruit in the short term, like improving tracking and measurement. Still, it ultimately falls on the shoulders of their organizational leaders to foster a data culture that is forward-thinking and open to change to set them up for long-term success. The post Top 4 data challenges among agency clients appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://searchengineland.com/top-data-challenges-agency-clients-385964 Twitter is testing a new feature that would eliminate the constraints of its 280-character tweet limit and allow users to publish long-form tweets. Twitter confirmed the test via a tweet. When this will become available to all Twitter users? It’s unclear. Twitter noted: “We’re excited for the moment when everyone can use Notes, but for now, our focus is on building it right. A large part of that is engaging with writers and building community.” For now, Twitter plans to test it over the next two months with a small group of writers from Canada, Ghana, the UK and the U.S. Why we care. This could be the solution to those long Twitter threads, introduced in 2017. While those numbered threads had the ability to generate more engagement (e.g., reactions, replies), they were also incredibly hard to follow – especially spin-off conversations. What it looks like. In Twitter Notes, it looks like you will be able to add:
Notes also has a “Focus mode,” that makes the article composer full-screen. You can see some screenshots shared in a thread by @wongmjane. The continued homogenization of social media platforms. Just about every platform right now is trying to duplicate popular features from other platforms (especially TikTok) in an effort to stay relevant. Twitter is no exception. But this new-to-Twitter feature – if it becomes widely adopted – would basically put an end to what initially made Twitter unique: its reliance on brevity. Elon Musk approves. Earlier this year, in response to a long (and interesting) thread by former Reddit CEO Yishan Wong about Musk’s bid to buy Twitter, Musk pointed out that long-form tweets were long overdue on Twitter. Formerly known as Twitter Articles. This feature was first spotted in February. The post Twitter testing Notes, a long-form content feature appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://searchengineland.com/twitter-notes-testing-385960 Meta has unveiled a new community feedback policy in the U.S. It targets fake reviews that appear on its Ratings and Review or Question and Answers features on Marketplace and Shops. Why Meta created the policy. Meta said it wants reviews to be based on real purchase experiences from real customers and “to keep irrelevant, fraudulent and offensive feedback of our platforms.” The policy. Meta has put together a list of five things that could get reviews flagged:
You can view the policy here. How Meta will enforce the policy. Meta said it will use a mix of automation and human reviewers. And based on this passage from their announcement, it sounds like we can all expect some false positives – and more “Facebook jail” sentences – as Meta tries to figure this out.
Review sentiment shouldn’t impact reviews. “Our Community Feedback Policy is intended to provide equal voice for all viewpoints that comply with Meta policies, including the full range of positive, negative and neutral feedback. As such, we treat all positive and negative feedback equally. We do not subject negative feedback to greater scrutiny when reviewed for policy violations nor do we alter feedback in any way before publishing,” according to Meta. Fake Facebook reviews are an ongoing issue. It’s still cheap to get fake reviews, as one consumer group proved as recently as October. And Meta has been slow to take action. In April 2021, Facebook removed 16,000 groups dealing in fake and misleading reviews, but only after they were identified by the UK’s competition regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) Facebook agreed to make changes to its systems:
In March, Meta announced a lawsuit against one person who had provided a fake Facebook engagement service. Why we care. Fake reviews have long been an ongoing issue on all platforms, not just Meta. If you rely on, or have relied on fake reviews, tread carefully. Weigh your long-term success vs. some artificially inflated reviews. And even if all your reviews are legit, be warned: Meta’s review processes are heavily flawed. Suggested reading The post Meta unveils new policy to fight fake reviews appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://searchengineland.com/meta-community-feedback-policy-fake-reviews-385950 |
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