Technology News and Industry Knowledge

Microsoft claims its attempts to sell Bing to Apple were blocked by Google. The tech giant’s CEO of Advertising and Web Services, Mikhail Parakhin, said he offered Apple more than 100% of the revenue or gross profit to make Bing its default search engine – but the proposal was rejected because of the company’s deal with Google. Speaking at the federal antitrust trial, Parakhin alleged this was despite Microsoft offering to pay Apple more than Google – which he claims was offering in the region of 60%. How much did Microsoft offer Apple? Tinter didn’t reveal exactly how much its offer to Apple was worth, but it was enough that the tech giant would have sustained a several billion dollar loss as a result. Tinter explained the company felt the short-term loss would be a justified investment because of the importance of default search engine status. Why we care. Apple’s decision to reject Microsoft’s higher monetary offer for Bing as the default search engine implies that the Google ...

Reddit is getting rid of the ability to opt-out of ad personlization based on users’ activity on the platform. The change, which is being rolled out over the next few weeks, won’t increase the frequency of ads, but users can expect better targeted ads. “Select countries” will still feature opt-out controls for Reddit users, however, specific locations have not yet been confirmed. Why we care . This change enables Reddit’s models to better predict which ads may be most relevant to users, helping brands to reach higher-value consumers. Advertisers should prioritize reaching their target audience to enhance campaign effectiveness, improve cost-efficiency, and increase the likelihood of engagement and conversions. Why now? In June, the platform’s CEO, Steve Huffman, told The Verge that monetization has become an increasing priority for Reddit: ” “Getting to breakeven is a priority for us in any climate.” This change will enable Reddit’s models to identify relevant audiences more eff...

TikTok has launched a new AI-powered tool to help advertisers create more effective campaigns. Creative Assistant, which is located in the platform’s Creative Center, can be used to analyze data, offer suggestions, brainstorm ideas and provide advice on the platform’s best practice guidance. Why we care. Creative Assistant can help make content creation easier and faster by acting as your virtual assistant. By leveraging TikTok creative insights, it can suggest data-led ideas to help you create more effective and engaging campaigns. What is TikTok Creative Assistant? TikTok Creative Assistant is an AI-driven virtual assistant that you can chat with and work alongside while you create ads or videos for the platform. By harnessing TikTok-specific creative knowledge, it ensures you get the most relevant suggestions and guidance, ultimately helping advertisers craft compelling and effective content for their TikTok campaigns. How it works. You can access Creative Assistant on the t...

YouTube has confirmed the global launch of video view campaigns (VVC). This new campaign type leverages AI to help advertisers target relevant audiences more efficiently and effectively by serving ads in the right place at the right time to drive interest and intent. Why we care. Serving your ads to a more relevant audience optimizes campaign impact and efficiency, increasing engagement, leading to a better ROI. This approach ensures resources are used effectively and contributes to building stronger brand-consumer connections. What is VVC?  This campaign type leverages AI to strategically deliver the best-performing creatives to audiences more inclined to engage with the brand, helping to maximize views. VVCs combine a variety of formats to get the most out of a budget, including: Skippable in-stream ads. In-feed ads. Shorts ads. VVCs help advertisers achieve 40% more views and 30% lower cost per view than in-stream skippable CPV campaigns on average, according to a Goo...

The key to local SEO data is in its name – it’s local. Without it, a campaign may not receive crucial insights to adjust its central strategy. If you’re targeting Manhattan, N.Y., but 80% of your users are visiting from devices in Brooklyn, N.Y., you’re missing something. But how do you find these gaps in Google Analytics 4? Insights previously accessed through Universal Analytics are scattered across several dashboards in GA4, with new processes on the platform for filtering and accessing local data. Additionally, certain settings and configurations must be enabled to ensure local data collection. A local SEO practitioner should regularly analyze information about organic user locations, behaviors, and landing pages accessed from search results. Through these key reports in GA4, we can review organic data that reflects key local behaviors: Demographic details Traffic acquisition and user acquisition Landing page Library (custom reports) Explore However, none of these repo...

Fall is here, and that means holiday sales are right around the corner. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two of the largest online shopping days of the year, with Cyber Monday 2022 breaking records with almost $12 billion in sales . These consumerist holidays are huge opportunities for businesses to rack up sales, so it’s important to be prepared.  There are many different ways to prepare your marketing funnel for Black Friday and Cyber Monday . This article will focus on one specific aspect: paid search.  Having a well-built paid search strategy is critical for most growing businesses but can be a fantastic way to boost sales during key times of the year with promotions.  Promotions are a fantastic way to get your ads to stand out from the crowd on a normal day, but they’re a must on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  Here are three ways to use promotions and discounts in paid search to help you boost sales and capitalize on the holiday rush.  1. Create n...

Google today announced a new “standalone product token,” Google-Extended, that lets you control whether Bard and Vertex AI can access the content on your site. This seems to be the end result of a “ public discussion ” Google initiated in July, when the company promised to gather “voices from across web publishers, civil society, academia and more fields” to talk about choice and control over web content. Bard is Google’s conversational AI tool. Vertex AI is Google’s machine learning platform for building and deploying generative AI-powered search and chat applications. The announcement. In a blog post, Google said: “Today we’re announcing Google-Extended, a new control that web publishers can use to manage whether their sites help improve Bard and Vertex AI generative APIs, including future generations of models that power those products. By using Google-Extended to control access to content on a site, a website administrator can choose whether to help th...

Google today is adding its About this result feature to the AI-generated answers in the Search Generative Experience (SGE). What it does. About this result is meant to “give people helpful context, such as a description of how SGE generated the response, so they can understand more about the underlying technology,” according to Google. What it looks like. Here’s a GIF showing how this feature works: In this example, the description says: “This overview was generated with the help of AI. It’s supported by info from across the web and Google’s Knowledge Graph, a collection of info about people, places and things. Generative AI is experimental and info quality may vary. For help evaluating content, you can visit the provided links.” For individual links (soon). About this result will “soon” be added to individual links in Google SGE as well. Here, the purpose will be to give people more information about webpages that backup the SGE answers. About About this result . Googl...

Ad fraud will cost marketers $84 billion this year – 22% of all online ad spend. This figure is expected to soar to $170 billion in five years’ time in 2028, according to a new in-depth study from Juniper Research. Why we care. Ad fraud could be costing your brand money, hurting campaign results, leaving you with fewer genuine leads and poor advertising ROI. With this in mind, it may be worthwhile exploring fraud-blocking technology or reallocating some of your ad budget to your SEO strategy. Key findings. Juniper’s study analyzed digital advertising in 45 countries across 8 regions, using a dataset of over 78,700 data points from 2019 to 2028. The research found that: 22% of all online ad spend is lost due to ad fraud in 2023. 30% of mobile ad spend is lost to ad fraud in 2023. $172 Billion of ad spend is projected to be lost due to ad fraud by 2028. $23 Billion per year can be recovered by using fraud mitigation platforms. Solution. Fraud detection technology, such as F...

Advertisers have been encouraged to reevaluate their match type and bidding strategies to effectively optimize costs and maximize campaign performance. The advice was published in a new report conducted by Optmyzr that investigated broad match type vs exact match type. Although researcher and Optmyzr evangelist Navah Hopkins previously strongly supported broad match in favor of exact match type, the study found that exact match outperformed broad match for the majority of accounts in terms of: Cost Per Click. Click Through Rate. Cost Per Acquisition. Return On Ad Spend. Conversion rate. Why we care. For advertisers, it’s crucial to test new strategies in your campaigns before making decisions. This ensures enhanced performance. Evaluate costs and adjust your approach based on budget and targeting goals, exploring more cost-effective networks or top-of-funnel options to optimize spending. The study. The Optmyzr report analyzed 2637 accounts to compare the effectiveness of b...

Most SEOs know the difference between short-tail and long-tail searches. In local SEO , we take it further by giving these search term types another name: implicit and explicit searches.  Applying this concept to your local search strategy can help improve your local rankings and drive leads from Google Maps with arguably less effort. Here’s how knowing the difference can help you get better results in local search. Implicit vs. explicit search in local SEO: How do they differ? An explicit search is a search where the user adds a location in their search phrase, such as “car accident lawyer Philadelphia.”  While an implicit search is when the user does not add a location modifier to their search phrase, such as “car accident lawyer.” Simply put: An implicit search is a short-tail or general search. An explicit search is a location-modified, long-tail search. Google can show radically different search results depending on the location modifier a user adds to their s...