Pinterest’s Shopping Ads, which create ads directly from your existing Pins and content, have officially moved out of testing and been made available to hundreds of advertisers across the country.
Shopping Ads launched to a handful of major brands last year, including Ulta Beauty, Venus, Overstock, and Lowe’s. The ad format pulled images from product feeds to instantly generate ads.
“With Shopping Ads, businesses can seamlessly turn their product catalog into visual, actionable ads,” writes Shounak Simlai on the Pinterest Business Blog. “Since Shopping Ads pull automatically from an existing product feed, they’re especially useful for brands that want to scale their Pinterest advertising.”
This is a boon for marketers, as Pinterest says 90% of users make purchases through the platform and 70% of users saying they use the service to find new products.
To sign up to be a part of the Shopping Ads program, businesses must complete a Pinterest Propel Program sign-up form. Once you’ve done this, Pinterest says it will contact your business directly.
In addition to expanding its Shopping Ads to a wider range of businesses, Pinterest says it is already testing new ad designs intended to create “more visual shopping cues” and expanding its Shop the Look program to a number of countries, including France, Germany, and the UK.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2018-03-21 13:52:382018-03-21 13:52:38Pinterest opens its Shopping Ads to hundreds of businesses
Google has released its latest “Bad Ads” report, which shows the search giant is cracking down harder than ever on ads that violate its advertising policies.
In total, the search engine and ad platform has removed over 3.2 billion ads in 2017, nearly doubling the 1.7 billion ads removed in 2016.
79 million ads were taken down for sending users to malware-laden sites.
400,000 malware sites were blocked
66 million “trick-to-click” ads were removed
48 million ads that initiated unwanted software installation were banned
About a year ago, Google launched new brand safety controls for video and display ads. As such, they updated their policies to prohibit the monetization of inappropriate and controversial content. Reflecting these policy updates, Google reports it has removed 320,000 publishers that violate publisher policies, blacklisted 90,000 websites, and banned 700,000 mobile apps in 2017.
“After expanding our policy against dangerous and derogatory content in April 2017 to cover additional forms of discrimination and intolerance, we removed Google ads from 8,700 pages [that] violated the expanded policy,” writes Spencer.
Spencer says Google also recognizes that only a small number of publishers account for the vast majority of sites that misrepresent themselves or present themselves as another legitimate organization. Of the 11,000 websites reviewed for possible misrepresentation, 650 were blocked and 90 publishers were removed from Google’s ad network.
The report shows how Google’s latest policies have worked to cut-out ad fraud and policy breaking advertisements across their AdWords network, but they won’t be slowing down anytime soon. Search Engine Landreports that Google is poised to enact new restrictions for ads related to financial products later this year.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2018-03-19 11:33:472018-03-19 11:33:47Google says it is blocking more than 100 “bad ads” per second
Starting today, Google’s own web browser will start blocking troublesome ads across the net. The company has been warning they would be launching their own ad blocker since last June, and has officially started rolling out. By default, Google’s Chrome browser will remove ads from sites that use disruptive ad techniques.
“A big source of frustration is annoying ads: video ads that play at full blast or giant pop-ups where you can’t seem to find the exit icon,” said Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, vice president for Chrome. “These ads are designed to be disruptive and often stand in the way of people using their browsers for their intended purpose — connecting them to content and information. It’s clear that annoying ads degrade what we all love about the web.”
What is getting blocked?
The built-in ad blocker is designed specifically to filter out ads on any sites that repeatedly show offensive or disruptive ads. These include a wide swath of frequently used ad techniques including pop-ups, prestitial ads, and flashing banner ads.
Google is using the guidelines laid out by the Coalition for Better Ads (CBA) – a collective of advertising and media companies such as Facebook, Microsoft, and Unilever.
Rather than just block the offending ads, the tool will instead block ALL ads on any site that has broken the rules repeatedly. That means, all ads get stripped away is a publisher continues to let intrusive ads persist on their site after a warning.
Chris Bentzel, engineering manager for Chromium (an open-source version of Chrome), says Google is using this approach because webmasters are largely in control over what ads they choose to display.
“Although a few of the ad experiences that violate the Better Ads Standards are problems in the advertisement itself, the majority of problematic ad experiences are controlled by the site owner — such as high ad density or prestitial ads with countdown,” said Bentzel.
According to Bentzel, Google’s mission isn’t to block ads at all. They want to encourage webmasters to clean up their sites and deliver quality, unintrusive ads (like those offered by Google AdWords).
“Our goal is not to filter any ads at all but to improve the experience for all web users.”
According to The Guardian, approximately 42% of sites that have received warnings from Google ahead of the ad blocker have since altered their ad displays.
Why start blocking ads now?
The news that Google was designing its own ad blocker raised eyebrows when it was first announced. Considering Google runs perhaps the largest ad platform online, it is a bit like the pot calling the kettle black for the search engine to complain about ads.
More likely, the decision to launch an ad blocker of their own was motivated by the growing use of third-party ad blockers across the internet. While some ad blocker companies have partnered with Google to “whitelist” the ads from the search engine, many also strip out ads published from AdWords. This cuts into Google’s potential ad reach and can cause ad spend waste in some cases.
“We’ve already seen more and more people express their discontent with annoying ads by installing ad blockers, but blocking all ads can hurt sites or advertisers who aren’t doing anything disruptive,” said Roy-Chowdhury.
Estimates from PageFair indicate approximately 11% of internet users have third-party ad blockers installed.
“By focusing on filtering out disruptive ad experiences, we can help keep the entire ecosystem of the web healthy, and give people a significantly better user experience than they have today,” Roy-Chowdhury said.
For now, Google estimates its ad blocker will only affect around 1% of all ads. So, don’t get your hopes up for an ad revolution. Most users are unlikely to notice a huge change online, and only those who are most egregiously abusing the rules are expected to be hit.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2018-02-15 11:31:252018-02-15 11:31:25Google launches its own ad blocker for Chrome
Facebook is making some tweaks to Page Insights that might make Page owners a bit frustrated but are actually valuable changes in the long run.
The biggest update is in how Facebook will calculate organic reach for content. In the past, reach has been measured based on how many times a post is loaded by a user’s device. However, this caused an issue where posts were counted as “viewed” despite never actually making it onto a user’s screen.
Now, Facebook has begun calculating reach based specifically on when a post is shown on a person’s screen. That means your view counts are likely to drop in Page Insights, but you’re only losing false-impressions.
The numbers you’re seeing now are a more accurate and consistent measurement of how often your content is being seen.
To help Page owners and administrators get used to the shift, Facebook is still showing the old metric in the Page Insights overview section. It is unclear how long it will remain present there.
In addition to the change in how Facebook measures organic reach, Facebook is also revamping the Page Insights layout for mobile users. The changes are mostly surface, focusing on adding the most commonly used metrics to the top of the screen, including:
General Page diagnostics, such as number of likes, reach and engagement
Results of actions recently taken, such as recent post performance
Preview of new Page engagement, such as demographic information on new followers
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2018-02-13 12:12:512018-02-13 12:12:51Facebook makes organic reach counts more accurate
Instagram has introduced a new way for brands to tell their Stories, with expanded photo and video carousels.
In the past, brands could only include a single photo or video in their Story ads. Now, a limited number of advertisers can triple that with three consecutive photos or videos, as the company announced today.
For now, the expanded ad unit is only available to 12 brands, such as California Pizza Kitchen, Netflix, and Paramount. However, it is also opening the format, which it is calling “carousel ads for Instagram Stories” to brands buying ads through automated ad-buying firms.
It is unclear when Instagram will be bringing the ad unit to self-serve advertisers, which include the vast majority of small businesses that advertise on the platform.
The expanded format should come as a relief for the advertisers who have access. In the past, the constraints of Instagram’s Story ads forced brands to squeeze in as much as possible within a single image or 15-second video. Now, they have more breathing room to tell actual stories.
The versatility of the new ad unit also offers new creative options for brands who advertise on Instagram.
Because you can mix-and-match, you might start a carousel with a short video showcasing the product, followed by an image highlighting features or details, with a link to your website on the final slide. Or, you might create thematically related short-videos that complement each other. You could also just split a 45-second video ad into three segments across the carousel.
“The goal is really to create ad formats that feel as native as possible to Instagram,” said Susan Rose, director of product marketing for Instagram.
According to Rose, one-third of the most-viewed organic Stories on Instagram are posted by brands, and 60 percent of Instagram’s organic Stories are viewed with the sound on.
While the expanded carousel gives you more room for telling stories with your ads, the individual limitations for each slide remain the same.
The maximum length of each video is 15 seconds, and photos only stay on the screen for up to five seconds. Users can also swipe past the ad to skip it.
To provide better insight into how these carousel ads are performing, Instagram says it will record analytics data for views and swipes on each post in an ad. However, the impressions for the ad will only be counted once when the ad is served.
Retargeting is undeniably a powerful way to reconnect with potential customers and remind them to take action on something they were interested in. Unfortunately, when done poorly, it can also be terribly annoying.
Now, Google is giving users the power to mute ads from brands who abuse retargeting or remarketing ads.
Retargeting ads – or as Google is calling them, “reminder” ads – are designed to gently nudge someone into taking action on a product or service they previously looked at on a website. They work by tracking what pages a user has looked at but not taken action on, then reserving that content in ads afterword.
The problem is that many fail to monitor just how frequently these ads appear to users. This causes a problem where people see an annoying number of repetitive ads that seem to follow them all around the internet.
With the new section in Google’s ads settings, called “Your reminder ads,” you can now see who is retargeting ads to you with Google display ads. You can also mute these advertisers individually is they are showing repetitive or excessive retargeting ads.
If a user mutes an advertiser, their ads will entirely disappear across all of Google’s apps and websites – not just a specific offending ad or campaign. Google says it will soon be expanding this to include YouTube, Search, and Gmail.
The advertiser will be muted for 90 days and can be muted again if desired.
Google also says it has updated the mute feature to sync across devices for logged-in users. This means ads muted on laptop will also be muted on a phone or desktop, and vice-versa.
While users will likely be glad to see this feature, advertisers should take the move as an indication to check their retargeting campaigns. Make an effort to find the “sweet spot” between showing your ads enough times to have an impact without being overbearing. Otherwise, you risk being muted.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2018-01-29 14:06:332018-01-29 14:06:33Excessive retargeting may get your ads “muted” on Google
After a few weeks of testing, Google My Business has officially announced that all business owners can now upload videos to their Google My Business listings.
Business owners can “view videos added by customers and upload videos about their business for customers to view,” said Google’s Allyson Wright.
Videos can be up to 30 seconds in length and may take up to 24 hours to become visible on the business listing in Google Maps and local search results.
Because others like Google’s “Local Guides” can also upload videos to business listings, GMB will also soon give businesses the ability to mark offensive or inappropriate videos on their listings.
To get started adding videos to your own listings, open your Google My Business Dashboard and click “photos,” followed by the “video” tab at the top of the page. From there, select the option to “Post Videos.”
Just drag and drop your video to the box.
Let it upload.
And wait for it to appear. Within about a day, the video should become visible for you and anyone who sees your listing.
Wright also provided these notes about the new feature:
Videos will appear in the overview tab of the Google My Business Dashboard.
Customer uploaded videos can be found in the “customer” tab.
Merchant uploaded videos can be found in the “by owner” tab.
All videos can be viewed together in the “videos” tab.
After upload, it could take up to 24 hours for the videos to appear. Once live, they will display where local photos do.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2018-01-16 13:43:242018-01-16 13:43:24Google My Business officially launches videos in listings
People have been proclaiming that organic reach on Facebook is dead for years, thanks to moves that increasingly prioritize paid ads over regular Page posts. However, now might really be the time to start grieving. Facebook has announced sweeping changes to its News Feed that will make organic Page content even less likely to be seen.
According to Facebook, the change is ostensibly to prioritize the “social” part of their platform by putting posts from friends and family at the top of the News Feed. As this happens, “public content” (or content shared by Pages, rather than individual accounts) will be removed or pushed deeper down the feed.
However, there is a caveat that Page content that “spark conversations” will also be prioritized.
It is unclear exactly how this will be measured or enacted, but it implies that brands or publishers will have a harder time reaching users unless their content regularly receives a large number of comments.
“Because space in News Feed is limited, showing more posts from friends and family and updates that spark conversation means we’ll show less public content, including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses…Page posts that generate conversation between people will show higher in News Feed. For example, live videos often lead to discussion among viewers on Facebook – in fact, live videos on average get six times as many interactions as regular videos.”
Facebook is largely trying to downplay the impact on businesses or publishers, but Zuckerberg’s own blog post acknowledges that he expects “some measures of engagement will go down” for publishers and small businesses.
Unsurprisingly, this creates more incentive for brands to buy into Facebook’s ad platform to ensure their content actually reaches their audience.
Facebook’s Adam Mosseri recommended several steps small business or brands can take that rely heavily on video content – particularly Facebook Live.
“Page posts that generate conversation between people will show higher in News Feed. For example, live videos often lead to discussion among viewers on Facebook — in fact, live videos on average get six times as many interactions as regular videos. Many creators who post videos on Facebook prompt discussion among their followers, as do posts from celebrities. In Groups, people often interact around public content. Local businesses connect with their communities by posting relevant updates and creating events. And news can help start conversations on important issues.”
These changes and the continually decreasing organic reach across Facebook may make it tempting to try to manipulate or goad users into engaging, but Mosserri says this will get you in even worse trouble.
He says “using engagement-bait to goad people into commenting on posts is not a meaningful interaction, and we will continue to demote these posts in News Feed.”
The popular “Stories” feature that has expanded from its SnapChat origins into Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter has always been known for its short-term lifespan. Stories have always been something that disappears sometime after sharing.
Now, Instagram is changing this with new ways to save and reshare your Stories long-after they’ve vanished from people’s feeds.
Instagram recently launched two updates to its Stories feature that gives users the ability to add Stories to its Archive feature and include Stories in the “Highlights” section of users’ profiles.
In a blog post, Instagram said that Stories will be automatically saved to users’ private Archives once they expire. From there, you can view or reshare your old Stories as a normal video post or add them to highlights.
The feature is turned on by default, but you can opt to turn off the Archive feature if you like.
Instagram explained, “To access the Stories in your Archive, tap the Archive icon on your profile. From there, you can easily switch between your Posts Archive and your new Stories Archive. In your Stories Archive, your stories will appear in a grid with the most recent Stories at the bottom. The first story from each day will show a date indicator to help you navigate your archive as you scroll. Only you can see your archived stories, and you can choose to turn off auto-archiving at any time in your profile settings.”
At the same time, Instagram has launched the new Stories Highlights section, where users can add Stories to their profiles.
Stories Highlights can be created by simply tapping on the New circle on the far-left side of the app. After that, just choose which Stories you want from your archives, select a cover for the Highlight, and give it a name.
Once that’s all done, the Highlights will appear as circles on your profile where they can be viewed.
You can add as many Highlights as you want, and they will remain on your profile until you delete them by tapping and holding on the circle.
In the blog post, Instagram said: “Over the past year, Instagram Stories has become a key part of how you express yourself—but there hasn’t been an easy way to keep your Stories around for more than 24 hours. Now you can more fully express your identity by grouping Stories you’ve shared into Highlights and featuring them on your profile. Story Highlights lets you show all of the sides of your personality, and you can make highlights out of anything you’ve shared to your story in the past. From the best moments of your ongoing soccer season to all the stories you capture of your loved ones, the interests and activities that matter most to you have a home right on your profile.”
Brands and marketers will likely find these new features provide a number of ways to make Stories a more powerful marketing tool. In an email to Social Pro Daily, Instagram suggested brands can take advantage of the tools by:
Extending campaigns and promotions beyond 24 hours.
Showcasing immersive video and behind-the-scenes content on the increasingly significant profile page.
Re-engaging people around best-performing Stories content.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2018-01-08 14:53:592018-01-08 14:53:59Instagram lets you keep and reshare Stories with new features
Business owners may be able to upload videos to their Google My Business accounts in the near future, based on a new feature popping up for some account owners.
Several others have since reported seeing the option appearing in their own accounts, however, not everyone says they can use the feature quite yet.
For now, it is unclear whether the feature is just one of the many tests Google runs on a regular basis or a slow rollout of a widely anticipated feature. Google has yet to release a statement on the issue.
It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time videos have started showing up in GMB accounts. During the earlier years of Google My Business, Google included a similar video upload option. The tool disappeared long ago.
Since then, Google has allowed “Local Guides” – volunteers who help Google gain in-person information about businesses – have been able to upload videos to local listings. Actual business owners or account operators have not been able to until now, though.
While many can already upload videos, few have reported actually seeing their videos show up on their listings yet. When they do appear, videos are likely to be shown under the photos tab, as they do in the listing for Voodoo Doughnut in Portland:
Business owners using GMB have been asking for the ability show videos for years because they can provide a more complete view of both their stores and their products. Hopefully, the appearance of this feature for some is a sign of a much wider roll-out coming soon.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2018-01-05 12:06:342018-01-05 12:06:34Google My Business starts letting some upload videos to their listings
Now, Facebook has begun calculating reach based specifically on when a post is shown on a person’s screen. That means your view counts are likely to drop in Page Insights, but you’re only losing false-impressions.
