Technology News and Industry Knowledge

The majority of American households now include pets, and recent global quarantines have only brought us closer to them. In today’s blog, Miriam outlines eight ways you can honor the relationships your customers have with their animals, plus tips for weaving those efforts into your local business marketing strategy.

I won’t stand on this soapbox for long, but while I’m here, I want to take a second to advocate for something counterintuitive coming from someone with the title of Sr. Analyst, Paid Search: you should pause paid search.  Not outright. Not all at once. But with the right structure and parameters, pausing paid search can be an invaluable source of data for us as PPC professionals.  The incrementality question When it comes to demonstrating return, I’d wager most of us measure some variation of total revenue over total cost. If it’s high, we’re doing well. If not, we rethink and rework until we hit the ROAS we want. That’s not inherently bad. It’s a quickfire estimate of efficacy, and I find myself doing the same thing. The problem is that number doesn’t tell us much. It doesn’t tell us if we actually lost money buying users who would have converted anyway. And it doesn’t show what might have happened if we simply didn’t spend. Admittedly, brand spend usually gets the heat ...

During its Marketing Livestream event, the tech giant detailed expanding opportunities around data and partnerships with WooCommerce, GoDaddy and Square. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/google-scales-data-driven-ads-e-commerce-push-in-preparation-for-cookie-de/600987/

Microsoft Advertising is now rolling out Facebook Import, enabling advertisers to carry over their campaigns, ad groups, budgets, creative assets and more from Facebook into the Microsoft Audience Network, the company announced Friday. Why we care Facebook Import allows advertisers to extend their campaigns to Bing and the Microsoft Audience Network without spending extra time reconfiguring them, much in the same way the Google Import feature does. Enabling advertisers to get more out of the work they’ve already put in on Facebook Ads or Google Ads makes Microsoft Advertising an easy option for marketers who want to scale their campaigns. More on the news The feature was first announced as a pilot program at Microsoft’s Advertising Elevate event in April and is currently rolling out to advertisers in the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France and Germany. Facebook Import enables advertisers to import up to 10,000 campaigns for each account. Only one Facebook Ads acco...

Email has long been one of the most reliable marketing channels for getting your messaging in front of your customers. Whether it’s content in the form of a weekly newsletter, a personalized promotion or an important account update, marketers need to trust that their message will be delivered and that they’ve optimized those messages to get maximum engagement. That is why MarTech is releasing today an updated Email Marketing Periodic Table that tells you everything you need to know about sending emails that your customers want to receive and that inboxes won’t block. Because email is one of the most complex ways you can communicate with customers and prospects – through different mail clients, different ISPs, mobile and desktop, etc. – there are a lot of obstacles that can get between you and your intended recipients.  Each element in this table represents a factor that you need to consider to be successful in email. The elements are gathered into categories based on their rela...

Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily. Good morning, Marketers, and did you watch Google Marketing Live yesterday? The overall reactions from the PPC community were mixed at best. Some outrage, some resigned acceptance, but overall, the crowd goes mild. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ We’ve got the full coverage on feature releases and updates for you below, but some of the highlights include new options for local search marketers, new travel ads, shopping partnerships, and a lot of expansions of existing products.  Plus Microsoft’s new platform to help SMBs manage search and social ads in one place includes organic social media management, as well, which would be HUGE for businesses just getting started with advertising. P.S. You won’t see a newsletter from us on Monday in honor of Memor...

With gaps persisting, the trade group recommended marketers be more open to new ways of conducting business, including relaxed payment terms. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/ana-89-of-marketers-put-higher-premium-on-supplier-diversity/600960/

We hope you’ve enjoyed this series on SEO and accessibility. In the final installment, Cooper shows you how the technical SEO strategies you implement across your site can help make it more perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.

Google’s three pillars of E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness) is the Search Engine’s quality control to protect searchers from low-quality content. While it is an important initiative to evaluate subject matter, most content creators find it challenging to measure E-A-T objectively. This can bring significant implications on how you manage your SEO initiatives. Join iQuanti’s Ajay Rama as he discusses how to use the Topical Authority metric to improve your organic rank, and much more. Register now for “ How to Measure Google’s E-A-T Criteria and Improve Your Organic Results, ” presented by iQuanti. The post How to measure Google’s E-A-T criteria and improve your organic results appeared first on Search Engine Land . Via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/1BDlNnc

Two in three people who said they would use branded lens for shopping also agree they're likely to purchase after interacting with an AR experience. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/ars-role-in-shopping-poised-to-swell-in-next-5-years-publicis-and-snap-fi/600839/

The partnership builds on the brewer's responsible consumption efforts through destination-based messaging and Uber credits. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/heineken-deploys-mobile-ads-on-waze-to-discourage-drunken-driving/600913/

As marketers seek to reach consumers on their phones, including iPhone users who aren't opting into tracking, contextual targeting has taken precedence. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/location-based-ads-can-rebound-despite-apples-privacy-changes/600888/

Google is rolling out integrations with more e-commerce platforms to enable retailers to show their products for free across Google, the company announced Thursday. It is also testing a new checkout experience that shows shoppers all the purchasing options offered by a merchant in one place. Shopping partnerships with more platforms. Expanding on the Shopify integration it announced last week at I/O , Google has launched partnerships with WooCommerce, GoDaddy and Square to enable retailers on those platforms to list their products for free on Google. Consolidated buying options. When customers discover a product on Google, they’ll be shown a summary of all the purchasing options offered by the seller (as shown below). This can include purchasing via the retailer’s site, picking up the item at a nearby location or Google’s native checkout flow. Buying options for products on Google. Image: Google. The buying options screen is currently being tested in Google Search and the Sh...

The overhaul arrives in tandem with the quick-service marketer's first athlete partnership, a national campaign starring tennis pro Naomi Osaka. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/sweetgreen-refreshes-brand-identity-to-spotlight-sustainability-focus-on/600916/

The company's third tech acquisition this year can be used with third-party food delivery partners and allows diners to track their orders. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/yum-to-acquire-ai-based-company-dragontail-systems-for-723m/600932/

Google expanded the capabilities of numerous existing features and products at its Marketing Livestream event on Thursday. The company is removing the spend threshold for its Customer Match feature, which should make it useful to more businesses. On the automation front, the Google Ads Insights page is getting a new Demand Forecast that predicts relevant changes to search behavior over the next 90 days, and Performance Max campaigns are rolling out globally as an open beta. Businesses using Google Merchant Center or Manufacturer Center can now use their product feeds in Video Action campaigns as well as Discovery Ads. And, both Video Action campaigns and Discovery Ads now support tROAS bidding. Customer Match Customer Match, which allows advertisers to use their first-party data to remarket to customers on Google Search, Shopping, Gmail and YouTube, is now generally available to all advertisers worldwide. Previously, there was a $50,000 total lifetime spend requirement to be eligi...

With the unpredictability of travel last year, Google Ads made adjustments to help both advertisers and searchers adapt. Now, travel- and tourism-related businesses are expecting a dramatic increase in search volume and bookings due to the pent-up demand for … well, just getting the heck out of our houses after a year in lockdown. At Google Marketing Live, Google announced three new travel ads products and updates to help partners capture this increase in demand. Vacation rentals now showing in Hotel results. Google searches for “beach rentals” and “staycations” grew by over 100% globally since last year. Many searchers felt that smaller vacation rentals gave them more control over their environment and safety precautions. As a result, Google Ads will now include vacation rental listings in the Hotel results page for a given listing. Image: Google. This option offers a great opportunity for vacation rental property owners but could increase competition for Hotel listings withi...

Google is announcing a number of new local ad-based features at its Google Marketing Livestream event today. These include new ad formats for local campaigns and a new option for “pickup later” in the local inventory ads. New local campaign ad formats Auto Suggest ads. Google launched a new ad format for local ads named Auto Suggest ads. Auto Suggest ads show ads based on the searcher’s location. When a searcher is nearby and looks for a related product or service in Google Maps, the ad will auto-suggest the advertiser’s nearby location to that searcher. The example Google gave for this one is that if you search for [oil change] in Maps, Google might show an ad for an auto garage that is near your current location. Image: Google. Navigational ads. Google also launched the new Navigational ad format for local ads. Navigational ads are shown while you are using Google Maps driving directions. This allows businesses to show their ads while a user is en route to a destination. S...

Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily. Good morning, Marketers, the possibilities are endless. Perhaps that’s why it doesn’t always occur to us to explore them — that applies to a lot of topics but today I’m talking about MUM , the technology that Google previewed at I/O last week. It’s purportedly 1,000x more powerful than BERT and capable of multitasking to connect information for searchers. “A huge limitation of accessing information is the language it’s written in,” Google’s Prabhakar Raghavan said at I/O, “There are insights about Mt. Fuji in Japanese you might not know exist if you don’t search in Japanese, but MUM can transfer language across multiple languages to give you a richer, more comprehensive answer.” To me, that means that, if MUM can deliver on Google’s p...

Co-op Studios will produce stories across films, podcasts and editorial programs that seek to shift perceptions of the outdoor experience. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/rei-opens-content-studio-to-support-climate-action-dei-efforts/600833/

As it seeks to break into the Canadian market, the Molson Coors brand will spotlight four artists as part of a larger visibility initiative. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/vizzy-hard-seltzer-recruits-drag-queen-priyanka-to-promote-lgbtq-represent/600817/

It’s an understatement to say that the martech landscape is crowded. In fact, the most recent martech LUMAscape acknowledges over 8,000 solutions and a few thousand may classify themselves as ABM technology players. Why so much hype on ABM? Thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic accelerating a migration to a digital-first approach, many Sales and Marketing teams turned to “flipping the funnel” and focusing on their target accounts as the path to higher conversions rates and closed sales. But it has its limitations in both its scope and its technology. Scott Vaughan, recently wrote that ABM shouldn’t be a replacement for your demand strategy , and I would argue that your tech shouldn’t follow suit either. In today’s digital landscape where everything is interconnected, you should take a closer look at how your technologies can come together to maximize your efforts. This means broadening your horizons beyond ABM into something more sophisticated and harmonious – Precision Demand Marketing ...

In an effort to make paid search and social media advertising accessible to businesses of all sizes, Microsoft Advertising announced the pilot program for a single streamlined place to manage all of a business’s advertising campaigns. Interested parties can complete the online questionnaire to get early access. For businesses just starting out with advertising, paid search marketers can enter the business URL and their advertising goals, and Microsoft will automatically create a campaign based on the website content. Before the campaign goes live, advertisers can review key elements like when ads are shown, suggested keywords, suggested budgets, and more. Text ads are automatically created but can be edited by the advertiser at any time. The ads will show up on Microsoft’s Search Network, but advertisers can also choose to display their ads on Google, as well. Manage social media ads in the same platform. Along with search ads, the single point of management also allows advertise...

Announcements at Google I/O last week include those by the Google Chrome Team about the availability of technologies in a session titled: “ What’s new for The Web Platform .” It’s no coincidence that the two primary speakers of the session, Ben Galbraith & Dion Almaer, co-wrote a book about AJAX and Web 2.0 back in the early days. The Web Platform consists of open web technologies that allow the web to function as a virtual stand-in for an operating system and browsers delivering application-like experiences, something users have come to expect from the likes of Google. Other important sessions have gotten coverage, including the “ What’s new in Web Vitals ” session. We’ll review important points from any session that relate to SEO development work. Chromium Google’s Chromium powers more than Chrome alone as a leading Web browser. It also powers Microsoft’s Edge and others. Chrome’s browser market share lead over its rivals is now like that of Google Search’s lead over its oth...

MozCon Virtual 2021 is right around the corner! Read on to see what this year has in store, and don't forget to purchase your ticket!

Building on prior tie-ups with artists like Travis Scott, the chain is looking to extend engagement with fans of the K-pop group through its mobile app. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/mcdonalds-hypes-bts-menu-collab-with-in-app-content-merch-drop/600836/

The SMX single-day learning journey events, SMX Report and SMX Create, have been a hit with attendees eager to learn an end-to-end approach on in-depth search marketing topics. The third event in the SMX learning journey series will be SMX Convert taking place on August 17th, which will continue in the same format. The event will offer search marketers both a PPC and SEO track with learning segments focused on the different stages of the customer journey from awareness to conversion–whether that be a sale, a reservation, a filled-out lead form, webinar signup or any other ways attendees define a conversion for their business. The SEO track will tackle keywords and copy that convert, content marketing and link building, navigation and CTAs, as well as testing. The PPC track will cover copy that converts, audiences and targeting, landing page design and CRO. If you specialize in any of these areas and are interested in speaking, please submit a pitch on one of these topics right away...