Archive for the ‘seo news’ Category
Thursday, April 4th, 2024
Google is reportedly in talks about putting in an offer to acquire Hubspot.
The search giant has allegedly been in discussions with Morgan Stanley about how much it should offer to buy the online marketing software company, which is said to be valued at $35 billion. However, no offer has yet been made.
Why we care. Buying HubSpot would help Google expand its services in the growing CRM software market, enabling it to reach more enterprise customers with the budget to allocate to marketing and advertising.
Why now? Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has been exploring new ways to accelerate growth after the tech giant reported lower-than-expected ad revenue in the fourth quarter of last year. Google Search and YouTube are also facing increased competition for advertising budgets from platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Amazon.com.
Antitrust concerns. Google is reportedly concerned that antitrust regulators may not approve the acquisition. If the acquisition is successful, it would be a significant deal amidst increasing privacy regulations under U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration.
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What Hubspot is saying. A Hubspot spokesperson told Reuters:
- “As standard practice, HubSpot does not comment on rumors or speculation. We continue to focus on building a great business and serving our customers.”
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Thursday, April 4th, 2024
Google will soon recommend linking your Display & Video 360 advertisers to Google Analytics.
Once it detects an unlinked DV360 advertiser, you may start receiving these recommendations similar to the notification displayed in the image below:
Why? Linking the DV360 advertiser allows you to export Analytics audiences and conversions to DV360. Additionally, you can view campaign cost data and user engagement data in Analytics, enhancing campaign measurement capabilities.
Why we care. Monitoring campaign performance accurately is crucial for effective optimization and generating progress reports.
How recommendations work. Google says it provides personalized recommendations “to help you get the most useful and accurate data and take advantage of new, relevant features as they become available.” Recommendations are based on your property’s history, settings, and trends observed across Google Analytics.
If your property has recently started running, you may not see any recommendations initially. However, be sure to check back again soon, as Google Analytics regularly identifies and introduces new recommendations tailored for you.
Accessibility. Recommendations are displayed in the Recommendations section of the Home page and appear contextually throughout Google Analytics, positioned at the top or to the right of relevant pages.
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Deep dive. Read Google’s announcement in full for more information.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Wednesday, April 3rd, 2024
Facebook is launching an updated video player that provides a consistent design for all video lengths, including Reels, longer videos, and Live content, in one fullscreen.
This updated video player, which bears a striking resemblance to TikTok, will initially roll out on iOS and Android devices in the United States and Canada, with a global release scheduled in the coming months.
Why we care. The full-screen video player, with its improved features, is created to grab people’s attention and increase interaction with your content.
What’s changing? Now, whenever you tap on a video in the Facebook app, it will always open in fullscreen and be oriented vertically as demonstrated in the gif below:
Although videos will appear vertically automatically, you’ll notice a new fullscreen option on most horizontal videos that enables you to switch to landscape view for better viewing.
Previously, depending on the video’s length or where you were watching, you might have seen horizontal videos or videos playing in a Feed-like player.
Enhancements. Facebook’s updated video player will offer several enhanced features, such as:
- Improved recommendations for videos of all lengths, tailored to your interests. For instance, you might receive suggestions for Reels providing quick makeup tips or longer tutorial videos on DIY home improvements, curated from experienced homeowners.
- New controls offering you more flexibility in how you watch videos, which will be rolled out over the coming weeks.
- The ability to easily skip to the part you’re most interested in using the slider at the bottom of the player.
What Facebook is saying. Facebook said in a statement:
- “Outside the new player, you’ll also now see more relevant video recommendations, regardless of length, on Feed and on the Video Tab. And while Facebook continues to be the home for all types of video, we’ll show even more Reels to meet the growing demand for this format.”
- “These updates also mean that more types of creators will have more opportunities to tap into additional audiences they might not have reached before.”
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Deep dive. Read Meta’s announcement in full for more information.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Wednesday, April 3rd, 2024
Sixty percent of citations on AI search engine Perplexity overlap with the top 10 Google organic search results, according to a new analysis.
- Healthcare had the highest result overlap – 82%. Both Perplexity and Google cite authoritative sites like the Mayo Clinic and the National Institutes of Health.
- Restaurants had the lowest overlap – 27%.
Why we care. This finding may seem a bit surprising considering an analysis that found 94% of Google Search Generative Experience links are different from its own organic results. But it’s also good news that if you’ve prioritized SEO for Google and have focused on building a notable brand, you should be off to a good start on optimizing for Perplexity.
Where they differ. BrightEdge compared SGE and Perplexity to see where they differed. Of note:
- Reddit was a citation in seven of the nine industries analyzed, the two exceptions being in Healthcare and Finance.
- In Ecommerce, Perplexity and Google cited Wikipedia and Amazon. But after that, Google cited Quora and Consumer Reports while Perplexity cited Reddit.
Why they differ. It’s all about data. Google has collected a lot of this data.
- Google has a treasure trove of data from reviews, ratings, location information, and business hours. Perplexity cites Yelp for this type of data.
- Google has Google Finance. Perplexity cites Yahoo, MarketWatch and Barrons.
Perplexity growing. Perplexity has grown to 15 million monthly active users. With this growth, referrals have also increased 40% month-over-month from Perplexity to brand sites since January, according to enterprise SEO platform BrightEdge and its Generative Parser.
- Perplexity’s organic share rate is growing at 39% per month, according to BrightEdge.
Citations. Perplexity provides 5.28 citations, on average, per response. Also of note: Perplexity shows “drastically” more citations in Restaurant and Travel responses.
- “In a post-generative AI world, citations are the new rankings. For brands to win, they need to be the cited source,” said Jim Yu, founder and Executive Chairman of BrightEdge.
The report. BrightEdge published its research as part of its resource, The Ultimate Guide to Perplexity.
Dig deeper.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Wednesday, April 3rd, 2024
Google issued a reminder that it will be discontinuing all Universal Analytics (UA) services and APIs on July 1.
With Google Analytics 4 (GA4) properties fully replacing UA, access to UA properties through the Google Analytics front-end and APIs will no longer be available starting in July.
If you haven’t fully migrated to GA4 properties, Google advises following the migration guide to begin transitioning as soon as possible.
Why we care. If you do not download or export your data before UA sunset completely, your data will be permanently deleted by Google and, unfortunately, will not be recoverable, which could impact campaign performance.
Exporting your data. To retain access to your data from your UA property, follow one of the methods outlined in the Google Analytics Help Center. If you plan to utilize the BigQuery integration for exporting historical data from your Universal Analytics 360 property, Google strongly advises starting this process immediately.
What is changing? When Universal Analytics services stop, you won’t be able to access or use any data or settings through advertiser, publisher, or other product integrations. For example:
- Once Universal Analytics services end, new conversions, including goals and ecommerce transactions, will no longer be measured. This includes conversions within linked advertising accounts. This change could impact the performance of ad campaigns, especially if those conversions are used alongside Smart Bidding strategies.
- Universal Analytics audience lists will be closed. This closure could impact the activation and performance of ad campaigns that rely on these lists for targeting.
- API requests associated with Universal Analytics properties will fail. This includes requests for deleting Universal Analytics data via the User Deletion API. Consequently, tools dependent on this API, such as Looker Studio, will not display any Universal Analytics data.
- You can request BigQuery export and backfill of historical data from Universal Analytics 360 properties only until June 30. Any data already exported will remain accessible in BigQuery.
- Attribution Projects that were part of Attribution (beta) in Google Analytics will be deleted.
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Deep dive. Read Google’s step-by-step GA4 migration guide for more information.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Wednesday, April 3rd, 2024
Instagram shed light on why your posted videos may not be reaching all of your followers on the platform.
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, explained that “nobody” reaches every single one of their followers due to two primary reasons:
- Many of your followers may not open the app on the particular day you published your new content.
- Those followers who do log into the app that day are presented with far more posts than they have time to scroll through on Instagram. As a result, they may not scroll down far enough to see every post.
What Instagram is saying. Sharing these insights on Threads, Mosseri followed up his comments by advising content creators to not blame the platform’s algorithms for poor reach. He wrote:
- “Before some of you say ‘the algorithm’ is the culprit, understand that ranking and recommendations *increase* the amount of posts people get to, and therefore the amount of reach to go around, more than any thing else we’ve ever done.”
Focus on views and likes. Mosseri also encouraged content creators to prfioritize view and like counts over follower counts in their reporting. He added:
- “I understand why people focus so much on follower counts; they’re prominent and they’re easy to find. But if you actually want to get a sense for how relevant an account is, look at their how many likes they get per post and how many views per reel instead.”
Reaction. Content creators did not take too warmly to Mosseri’s advice and accused Instagram of implementing poor algorithms that were negatively impacting reach. Many creators shared analytics screenshots to support their comments. Piques, who has 2.1 million followers on Instagram, wrote in response:
- “Stop gaslighting the people who built your platform and who put a roof over your head.”
Award-winning author Diana Urban replied on Threads by sharing a screenshot of her analytics five days after sharing a post with her 9,000 followers:
She wrote: “I understand what you’re saying @mosseri but I find it hard to believe that only 200 of my followers opened the app in the past 6 days and didn’t scroll down far enough to see this post. And while I appreciate that this one went viral, I mostly just want my followers to see my usual posts *which they opted into*. I hope what so many of us are saying makes sense.”
Why we care. If you are following Instagram’s guidelines and are still not seeing a boost in terms of reach, it may offer some reassurance that plenty of other successful content creators are in the exact same boat.
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Deep dive. Read the Threads discussion in full for more information.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024
YouTube unveiled three new updates for content creators, intended to provide them with a deeper understanding of their audience and enhance the user experience they offer. These updates include:
- Live stream reaction analytics.
- New and returning viewer impression breakdown.
- The ability to live stream to YouTube in HDR.
Live stream reaction analytics. YouTube is introducing new real-time analytics for live streams, enabling creators to monitor viewer reactions as they happen. This data reveals the number and types of reactions received, for example, emojis like love hearts or party poppers.
To access this information, simply visit your content and navigate to the overview tab. Note that this feature is currently exclusive to Studio web and mobile.
Impression breakdown. YouTube is rolling out a new filter that allows you to see the number of impressions segmented by new and returning viewers. This feature aims to help you gain a deeper understanding of your audience, enabling you to adjust your content strategy to attract both new and returning viewers if you so wish. You can access this feature in YouTube Studio Analytics under advanced mode.
HDR live streaming. You can now live stream to YouTube in HDR. Conor Kavanagh, Lead for Monetization Policy at YouTube, explained the advantages this new functionality offers:
- “With HDR, you get crisper whites, inkier blacks and better-looking colors that pop. HDR also allows you to capture much more detail in your stream because fine-grained color gradations are preserved instead of being smeared out, resulting in hyper-detailed, hyper-realistic streams for your viewers.”
With the latest OBS 30.1 release, you can now stream in HDR to YouTube via RTMP. This allows you to use your existing RTMP workflows and provide your viewers with the highest quality experience that YouTube offers. Additionally, you can live stream in HDR for gaming if the game you’re playing supports HDR. To do this, ensure that your monitor supports HDR and that your camera, if applicable, also supports HDR for PQ or HLG.
Please note that currently, you can use the hevc Codec to stream in HDR, but streaming HDR with ab1 is not yet supported.
Why we care. Live stream reaction analytics and breakdowns of new versus returning viewer impressions offer deeper insights into your audience, allowing you to adjust your content strategy accordingly. Additionally, HDR live streaming provides higher-quality videos for your viewers, which could potentially help boost engagement and create a better user experience.
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Deep dive. Watch YouTube’s announcement in full for more information.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024
Instagram released a series of tips and tricks to help creators enhance engagement for their Stories.
The latest guidance from Instagram doesn’t introduce any new features but does offer presentation tips, along with a couple of sharing notes to create more impactful Stories.
Why we care. When you get more people engaged with your stories, you increase your chances of turning viewers into potential customers. This can lead to more sales and help you grow your following.
1. Add Yours stickers and templates
Using custom prompts and public responses on social media provides an interactive way to connect with others. With the “Add Yours” sticker, you can invite others to contribute to your Stories and see their responses. When you see the “Add Yours” prompt in someone else’s story, just tap the sticker to easily add your own story to the responses.
In addition, Add Yours templates bring more creativity to the table. They allow you to include GIFs, text or images in your story, providing a structured framework for responses. This feature not only boosts your content’s visual appeal, but also encourages others to join the conversation in a clear and organized manner.
2. Mention someone after you post a story
You can still mention friends even after your story was posted, allowing them to share it to their own story. Just tap the three dots, select “More,” and then choose “Add Mention.”
3. Make a collage using Layout
You can include multiple photos in a single story and assemble them into a collage using Layout. To do this, just tap the Layout 
icon before taking a photo. You can tap “Change grid” to change the layout of your photos. Then, you can take a series of photos with your camera or select pictures from your camera roll.
4. Fill the background with a solid color
Instagram also suggests filling the background of your story with a solid color to make it more eye-catching. You can use the pen tool to do this, simply:
- Take a photo.
- Tap “Draw.”
- Select a color.
- Press and hold on the screen to fill.
You can enhance your story by adding a translucent overlay using the same process. Simply choose the highlighter icon before tapping the screen to fill. To select a color, press and hold on the color options to access a gradient view for more choices.
5. Turn live photos into a Boomerang
You can easily transform live photos into Boomerangs for your story with just one tap. Start by selecting a live photo from your camera roll — these will feature the boomerang icon in the corner. Then, press and hold on the photo to instantly convert it into a Boomerang.
6. Make emojis glow
Instagram also suggests adding a glowing effect to emojis on your story to make it stand out. To do this, follow these simple steps:
- Use the text tool to type out the emoji you want.
- Select the neon cursive font.
- Toggle on the background text color option.
- Your emoji will now have a soft glow around it.
- You can also customize the color of the glow using the color picker.
Deep dive. Read Instagram’s blog post in full for more information.
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Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024
DMG Media is set to launch a new social-first video advertising product called Edits.
Edits offers advertisers the chance to target the Daily Mail’s expanding audience on platforms such as TikTok, YouTube and Facebook, as well as on its own platforms like Metro and Mail Online.
Edits explained. Edits was designed to simplify the video production process and decrease entry costs for advertisers. The product assures marketers that their ads will reach their target audience through DMG Media’s combination of organic video placements on its platforms and paid distribution.
How it works. During an initial consultation with DMG Media, advertisers can select from a menu of five customizable video formats tailored to different industries. Once the setup is agreed upon, Edits videos will be produced by DMG Media and could be live within as little as two weeks. DMG Media will then use its customer ID solution, dmg::ID, to serve ads to high-value consumers on platforms like Facebook and TikTok, based on their interests.
Although DMG Media creates Edits videos on behalf of advertisers, the media giant hopes that each video will be strong enough to stand alone as an independent piece of editorial content.
Why we care. By handing over the video production process to DMG Media, Edits capitalizes on the media giant’s deep understanding of its audience, which could result in more effective content and engagement for this specific consumer demographic. However, as Edits is a brand new product, we’re yet to see what results it’s really capable of achieving.
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What DMG Media is saying. Mail Metro Media chief revenue officer Dominic Williams told Press Gazette:
- “With a long heritage in creating seriously popular content, editorially and commercially, we know how to produce engaging stories that make people and brands famous.”
- “We’re incredibly excited to now be offering a full 360 approach to video, offering exciting new video formats that ensure we can guarantee outcomes for our clients.”
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024
I’ve worked in the field of marketing analytics for nearly two decades. Lately, more and more programs are investing in more complicated and arcane measurement strategies.
This is ultimately a net positive for programs and the industry in general, but an incomplete understanding of analytics leads to ripe ground for getting deceived.
Whether it’s auditing accounts run by other agencies or hearing marketing partners give poor advice on joint client calls, I’ve seen plenty of instances where platforms, agencies and even internal teams are juicing their stats to twist “performance” for their benefit.
What’s the antidote?
Knowing the measurement terms cold – their definitions, significance, examples of them at work and ways bad actors commonly manipulate them.
In this article, I’ll put some of the most common terms in focus.
What is attribution?
Before we get into the ways attribution can be manipulated, let’s define attribution itself:
Attribution is the process of assigning credit for a conversion to a specific marketing channel or touchpoint. It helps you understand which marketing channels drive the most conversions so you can allocate your marketing budget accordingly.
Now, with that said, internal teams, departments and agencies are all heavily incentivized to show as big an impact as possible and some use sketchy techniques to pump up numbers.
Here are seven attribution models and related factors you need to know to be on the lookout.
1. Multi-touch attribution (MTA)
This method of attribution assigns credit for a conversion to multiple marketing touchpoints. Common attribution models are last-touch, last-touch, linear, decay and the always popular black box, data-driven.
Why it is important
Multi-touch attribution can help you understand the impact of all marketing channels that contribute to a conversion.
Example
Let’s say a customer clicks one Google ad on Monday and another on Tuesday and converts on the second ad. The first click will credit Monday’s ad, last click will choose Tuesday’s ad and other models will give values to each depending on their logic.
How it is gamed
Usually, this happens when you just flip through different models until you see numbers that fit your story.
- If you are running upper-funnel campaigns, move to more early-touch attribution.
- If you are running retargeting, email or branded search campaigns, move to later attribution models (including the still-too-common last-touch model).
Note: Be skeptical of any black box models because they’re ripe for subjectivity. For example, Google’s data-driven option in Google Analytics has every incentive to give Google more credit than other paid media channels. And remember that although MTA is much better than single-touch attribution, it doesn’t account for incrementality.
Dig deeper: Google’s attribution model shake-up: 3 solutions for advertisers
2. Marginal efficiency vs. avg. return
Marginal efficiency is the additional revenue you generate from each dollar you spend on marketing. Virtually all media spend follows a log-shaped return curve.
Why it is important
The point at which marginal cost equals marginal revenue minus operational cost is when conversions stop being profitable. Knowing this number helps you get smarter about the CPAs you’re willing to accept.
Example
If a program spends $100 for 10 conversions, you have an average CPA of $10, but each conversion costs more than the previous one.
This means that conversions start cheaper and get more expensive – so, although the ratio doesn’t have to be exact, something like half of your conversions are less than $10 and half are higher.
How it is gamed
Back in the day, I heard a VP at Google claim, “Hey, if you make $50 per conversion, you can make money until your average CPA is above $50, so push up to that point!”
However, since we know that half of that spend is going toward conversions over $50, those more expensive conversions are being bundled with cheaper ones.
3. Non-incremental conversion measurement
Non-incremental conversions are conversions that would have happened even if you had not run any marketing campaigns.
Why it is important
Identifying non-incremental conversions helps you accurately measure the impact of your marketing campaigns – and allocate budgets more effectively.
Example
If you have a loyal customer base who regularly purchases your products, then some of the conversions you generate from your marketing campaigns would have happened even if you had not run the campaigns.
The same is true of many direct response marketing campaigns for brands that have built positive awareness with upper-funnel marketing: many customers would have purchased even without seeing the direct response ads.
How it is exploited
We often see brand search campaigns and retargeting campaigns over-credited for conversions that would have happened without users seeing or interacting with those ads.
Other scenarios that get over-credited include:
- Facebook prospecting without visitor exclusion.
- Retargeting in general.
- Campaigns that include view-through conversions in optimization targets.
- Email.
- Branded search.
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4. Halo effect
Also known as non-tracked conversions, this is the positive impact that marketing has on sales that are not tracked.
Why it is important
The halo effect can be a significant source of revenue for businesses. It is important to be aware of the halo effect and take advantage of it.
Example
If you run a branding campaign that increases awareness of your brand, then you may see an increase in sales even if you cannot track the specific conversions generated by the campaign. (Think of campaigns like highway billboards or TV commercials.)
How it can affect search campaigns
Positive marketing without clear tracking can show up in other metrics, specifically increased brand search volume. The stronger your halo effect, the more important it is to understand non-incremental conversions, which may impact some budgeting decisions in search campaigns.
5. Marketing mix modeling (MMM)
This is a statistical technique used to measure the impact of marketing variables on sales. What’s nice is it doesnt need any attributed channel/campaign conversions.
Why it is important
MMM can help you understand which marketing variables have the greatest impact on sales so that you can allocate your marketing budget accordingly. It relies on a significant amount of historical data to be effective.
Example
MMM can be used to measure the impact of factors such as advertising spending, pricing and distribution on sales.
How it is exploited
MMM is a great tool to combine non-incremental/non-tracked and marginal performance, but it isn’t a perfect tool.
As you would expect, these models correctly recognize upper-funnel investment, but they have difficulty distinguishing between channels if all spend rises equally.
The majority of acquisition budgets rise and fall with seasonality. It is important to rerun these analyses after deliberately introducing and controlling variance.
Dig deeper: Exploring Meridian, Google’s new open-source marketing mix model
6. Click-through versus view-through attribution
This is a method of attribution that assigns credit for a conversion to the ad the customer clicked on or viewed.
Why it is important
Click conversions are more meaningful than view conversions. The engagement means that there was more of an impact on the user. There is some value of view-throughs – not least in providing data density when it’s hard to come by – but that is more difficult to measure.
Example
If a customer sees a Facebook ad and then visits your website but does not click on the ad, you would attribute a view-through conversion if you are using a view-through attribution model. However, if you are using a click-through attribution model, you would not attribute the conversion to the Facebook ad because the customer did not click on it.
How it is gamed
Giving view-through conversions the same value as clicks is disingenuous. Worse is just having one bucket of conversions that are a combination of clicks and views.
This might be more common than you think if you don’t know how to look out for it. For instance, YouTube performance does not cleanly differentiate between the two. It is common for advertisers to use one-day view-through lookback windows in Facebook campaigns.
7. Cookie window or lookback window
This refers to specifying the time after a customer sees or clicks on an ad during which you will attribute a subsequent conversion to that ad.
Why it is important
The length of your cookie window can significantly impact your performance. A longer cookie window will give you credit for more conversions but there is also a higher chance that there are other influences.
Example
If you have a cookie window of 30 days, then any conversions that occur within 30 days of a customer seeing or clicking on your ad will be attributed to that ad.
How it is gamed
The longer the window, the more conversions are attributed – but the higher the chance that other factors will have influenced the conversion without getting credited.
The truth about marketing attribution models and metrics
Even if some of these forms of measurement are simply applied incorrectly by marketers with good intentions, it’s still your brand’s budget that takes the hit.
If your campaign management involves any of the initiatives or measurement techniques listed above – or if you start hearing other, new-to-you terms put into play – make sure you’re up to speed on the actual definitions and the optimal use cases before making any decisions based on the “data” presented to you.
Dig deeper: 5 outdated marketing KPIs to toss and what to reference instead
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
