LinkedIn Launches New Event Ads and “Boosted” Organic Posts

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LinkedIn is expanding its advertising options for brands and entrepreneurs on the platform with new Event Ads and the ability to “Boost” organic posts from your brand’s page.

As the company said in this week’s announcement:

“We’re announcing new features to make your marketing life a little easier — helping you seamlessly reach more of your target audience and grow your brand community all while measuring impact each step of the way.”

LinkedIn Event Ads

Now that social distancing is coming to an end, many are eager to finally put on a big event for their brand. 

To help make your next in-person (or digital) event a smash hit, LinkedIn is introducing a new ad format which can appear in users’ feeds. Event ads include all the important details potential attendees may want to know, including the date, time, how to register, and if any mutual connections are also planning to attend. 

Along with this new ad format, the company is rolling out an Event Analytics tool that offers info on attendee/visitor engagement with your Event posts, your total number of attendees, unique event visits, the top jobs of attendees, and the peak number of viewers on livestreams. 

“Boost” Your LinkedIn Posts

Have you ever had a post that went over so well you wish you could re-run it to an even wider audience? 

Now you can, with the ability to “Boost” your post as an ad. Directly from your LinkedIn page, you can quickly turn an existing organic post into an ad for your brand which will run to a larger audience.

Simply click the Boost button underneath the post you want to promote, and select the objective for the post from this list:

  • Website visits
  • Post awareness
  • Event awareness
  • Post engagement
  • Video views

From there, you’ll be asked to choose how LinkedIn targets your ad based on either your profile, specific interests, or a LinkedIn audience template, along with some other basic targeting information. 

Lastly, you’ll be able to set your budget for the ad and how long you run, before you publish your Boosted post. 

Currently, the feature does have some significant limitations. Only events or posts with a single image can be boosted for now, and posts can only be boosted once. Other post formats, such as polls, documents, job listings, or Pulse articles are not eligible for boosting. 

The Takeaway

Though basic, these new features make it easy for small brands to test the waters with promoting their events and contents across the business-focused platform. Additionally, LinkedIn suggests this approach could help save money on advertising events, as 40% of beta customers saw their cost per registration decrease when testing the new ad format.

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Microsoft Advertising Moves To Treat Phrase Match Similarly To Google Ads

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Microsoft Advertising announced this week that it will soon start including broad match ad targeting for campaigns using phrase matching. 

The change will occur “mid-May” and is aimed to “simplify keywords and improve your relevancy when reaching customers,” according to the announcement. 

Notably, this means the ad service is keeping in line with Google Ads, who made a similar change in February. 

“So… What Does This Mean For My Ads?”

Essentially, this update means that your ads which are being matched with queries for phrases matching your targeted keyword will also be shown for searches related to the meaning of your keyword. 

For example, Microsoft Advertising says the new system would match a search for “winter vacation in Miami” to the targeted keyword “Miami vacation.”
The company also says it will respect the word order of your keyword “when it’s important – for example, it won’t match ‘milk chocolate’ to the keyword ‘chocolate milk.”

Broad Match Modified Keywords To No Longer Be Offered

With this adjustment, Microsoft Advertising says it will be removing the option to create new broad match modified keywords beginning in August of this year. Existing broad match modified keywords will be treated the same as phrase match keywords. 

With this in mind, there is no need to change over your existing campaigns or keywords.

Planning For This Change

While there is no action for you to take immediately, there are a few things to keep in mind as the update rolls out. 

With the more broad matching included in phrase match campaigns, it will be important to monitor what searches are connecting with your keywords. This more broad approach could lead to potentially irrelevant queries showing your ads. 

On the upside, this change means it should be easier for advertisers to manage their campaigns, especially if they are advertising on both Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising.

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Microsoft Reveals Several New Search And Ad Features

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Microsoft announced the upcoming release of a wide range of features, technologies, and advertising tools for brands at this week’s Microsoft Advertising Elevate conference. 

Among the tools are new ad units, a new take on private search, and a complete small business hub with built-in social tools. 

New Private Search Features Through Bing API

One of the biggest reveals of the conference is a completely revamped take on private search for Bing through Microsoft, Duck Duck Go, and Azure.

The tools allow publishers across the web to provide more privacy-focused experiences including a completely private search process.

Private Search works by using a proxy between a private search tool, app, or site and Microsoft’s private search API. 

By sending the search request through the private proxy, which removes all individual identifying information, to Bing’s Private Search API, Bing can then return relevant results without technically even seeing the actual search term. 

Price Comparison Beta

Microsoft is launching a new feature for its Edge browser which will deliver available discount codes in a built-in panel. Though the feature is not ready for a final roll-out, the company announced a beta for all eligible individuals using the browser’s shopping features. 

In addition to this, users will be able to save products to Collections, enabling them to later compare prices of similar products elsewhere online. 

Best of all, brands who have already uploaded their product data to Merchant Center will automatically have their products integrated into these new tools. 

“The price comparison feature in Edge is a great example of where Microsoft is trying to provide a great experience for users (find the best deal!) and gain additional exposure for the products in advertisers’ feeds. Consumer research shows that most folks comparison shop at some level and price comparison surfaces this information automatically. It’s a win/win.” – John Lee, Microsoft Evangelist

Video Extensions for Ads

The company announced it is launching a new beta which will allow advertisers to include videos and animations in their ads. These videos appear as a small thumbnail along with other ad extensions, and expand when a user clicks the thumbnail or ad.

Advertisers are then charged if a user clicks on either trigger, though they will only be charged once if an individual clicks on both the video extension and ad unit in the same session. 

Currently, the placement is only available on desktop, though Microsoft says mobile integration is coming soon. 

New Specialty Ad Formats

Property Promotion Ads

Microsoft Ads announced a new ad format specifically for promoting places to stay, including hotels or Bed and Breakfasts. 

The ads currently appear on desktop when users search for hotels or properties with specific amenities in a town or area. 

Once clicked, the ads display information about available dates and prices, with a button to proceed directly to a booking page. 

Advertisers are only charged if users click through to the booking page. 

To be eligible for the new ad format, advertisers must have set up Hotel Price Ads, have at least five images, and have enabled the star rating. 

Tour & Activities Ads

Along with ads for places to stay when traveling, Microsoft is launching ads for local experiences and activities to enjoy. 

Tour and Activities Ads are triggered by searches with travel intent or travel experience-based intent and highlight specific things to do in a location. 

The ads can appear in both Bing Maps and directly in search results.

The new ad format could be a great choice for brands driven by tourism, including theme parks, museums, outdoor attractions, and local food or dining. 

Notably, the ad format is also arriving right as many are finally getting out and exploring again as the Coronavirus pandemic winds down. This could be a valuable tool for standing out among the countless other brands that will be vying for travelers’ attention in the near future. 

As most of these tools and features are currently limited to beta programs, you will have to take some special steps to be eligible to try them out for yourself right now. To sign up for any of the betas, brands or their marketing agencies will need to reach out directly to Microsoft Ads support. 

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Find The Latest Industry Trends With Google Ads’ New Insights Page

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After a prolonged period of testing, Google Ads has officially launched the new Insights page to all advertisers. 

As the company announced, starting April 14th, 2021, “the Insights page is available to all advertisers globally.”

The Insights tool allows for advertisers to easily track and explore emerging trends in your industry to create more effective ads. 

The latest announcement gives an example of how a brand could use the tool:

“Let’s say you’re a pet store looking to reach more customers. With the Insights page, you can see rising demand for ‘dog subscription boxes’ and ‘dog toys’. You can then act on these trends by creating campaigns to reach new pet owners, or even explore selling dog care packages.”

“The Insights page surfaces trends tailored to your business, so you can see if you’re keeping up with demand for trending products or services,” continued the statement.

How Google Ads Insights Works

The new tool pulls data from your account’s performance history and campaign settings, before combining them with search trends across Google to automatically show you relevant trends and insights. 

Currently, the Insights tool only provides one type of data, showing search trends to help you better understand the most recent patterns in search behavior and identify relevant trends in your market. 

However, Google Ads says it will be rolling out more types of insights in the future. 

For more information about the new page, Google Ads has published a help document to get you started tracking the latest trends in your industry. 

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Amazon Now Gets More Than 10% Of All Digital US Ad Revenue

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For years, two names have ruled the online ad game – Google and Facebook. Currently, that is still true, though a new analysis suggests Amazon is steadily expanding its ad business to be a sizable challenger to the Big Two.

Research firm eMarketer’s latest annual digital ad report shows that Amazon’s share of digital ad revenue broke two digits in 2020, earning 10.3% of U.S. online ad revenue. That’s a significant jump from 7.8% in 2019.

In actual dollars, the online retail giant’s ad revenue reached $15.73 billion, an increase of more than 50% from the previous year.

Should Facebook and Google Be Worried?

Amazon still has some ways to go before it’s ad platform is the size of Google or Facebook’s – both of which receive more than 20% of U.S. digital ad spend.

Still, eMarketer predicts the company will continue to increase its share of online ad revenue over the next few years until it is on par with the other two giants.

For Facebook, this might not be a big concern since much of Amazon’s advertising is driven by Amazon Prime video advertising and product ads. In their current form, both platform’s ads largely serve different purposes.

Google, on the other hand, might be getting a little nervous. Over the past few years, the search engine has been investing heavily into its online shopping services, as well as expanding YouTube’s advertising platform.

What Does This Mean For Brands?

Though this might have significant implications for the future of online advertising, nothing has really changed for the majority of brands who might use these platforms for their ads. 

However, it does serve as a reminder that there are more than just the Big Two online ad platforms. Many of the others out there may be a better fit, provide less competition, and allow you to reach your potential customers at a more ideal time. This is why it is important to know what each has to offer and invest your ad budget into the platform (or platforms) which make the most sense for you.

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How To Drive Offline Sales With Online Marketing and Ads

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It can be easy to forget that online marketing can have a much wider effect than just “online”. These days, it is also one of the most powerful tools businesses have to drive in-person and other types of offline sales.

The key is knowing how to optimize specifically for local searches to help those nearby find you and your products or services at the most effective times.

To help smaller businesses do this, Google recently published a small guide with 4 tips and ideas for driving offline sales using your online ads and marketing.

Creating In-Person Sales With Online Marketing

Establish Your Digital Storefront

The first step to using your brand to drive local sales is establishing your Google My Business profile. This allows you to appear in the prime search results placements for relevant localized searches. 

As Google says:

“Stand out when people search for your business, products or services. Getting your business on Google is the essential first step towards driving and measuring visits to your stores.”

2) Measure Your Offline Impact

These days, the search engine’s analytics tools can measure a lot more than online traffic and conversions. Using metrics like Store Visits and Local Actions, you can see exactly how effective your online ads and marketing are in the real world.

“Getting the full picture of how your ads drive impact across channels is important to refine campaigns, make budgeting decisions, and inform your overall business strategy.”

3) Optimize For Online AND Offline

Use ads and optimization to highlight what you have online and what you have to offer at your brick and mortar locations. Not only can you use Google Shopping to showcase your products in search results, you can specifically promote your in-store inventory using Local Inventory ads.

The guide suggests:

“Make the most of your marketing investment and grow revenue for your stores, whether customers ultimately purchase online or in-store.”

4) Showcase Your Locations

Use local campaigns to highlight your local stores and send online searchers straight to your door. 

“Machine learning makes it easier and more efficient to promote your physical business locations at scale across Google properties. It can help you reach customers throughout their purchase journey and optimize for those who are most likely to visit your business.”

For more about how you can use Google and online marketing to drive both online and offline sales read the full Google Ads Help guide here.

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Google Explains How To Get Your Products Featured In Search

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If you are an online retailer, you are no doubt familiar with Google’s wide array of special features built for online shopping. You are also probably aware of how confusing it can be to get included in these unique search results.

To help clarify this process and make it easier to get your products highlighted in Google’s search results, the search engine recently revealed some technical tips and tricks for e-commerce sites. 

Why It Takes Extra Work To Get In Google Shopping Results

The first question most business owners or site managers might have when they start trying to get their products included in Google Shopping results is “why do I have to do all this extra work?”

Google’s whole thing is analyzing sites and automatically delivering that information in its search results, right? Why can’t they just pull your product info when your pages get indexed?

The simple answer is that Google knows online retail changes very quickly and shoppers get very frustrated with out of date or inaccurate information. If this became a frequent problem, users would likely stop paying attention to Google’s product-related search results. 

While the search engine regularly re-indexes updated webpages, it can’t guarantee pages will be indexed fast enough to ensure information is up-to-date for searchers. 

Additionally, there are some features which online retailers tend to provide to help shoppers which can make things a little confusing for search engines to understand. 

For example, Google says it still struggles with accurately telling the difference between these types of information:

  • Original Price vs. Discounted Price
  • Related Products vs. The Main Product Being Sold
  • Taxes or Shipping Costs vs. The Actual Product Price

This is why the search engine asks online retailers to help provide this information for Google Shopping results.

Now, let’s get into the advice from Google Developer Advocate Alan Kent and how you can get your products into Google product showcases.

Two Ways To Give Google Your Product Data

In the latest Lightning Talks video, Kent discusses two different ways site managers can get their product information to Google. 

The first method is by using structured data. This is essentially using special coding embedded into pages to provide Google with additional information typically not provided through regular site code or markup. 

This is generally seen as the advanced approach because it requires significant knowledge of coding and the latest structured data techniques. 

The other method covered by Kent is by directly providing product data through Google Merchant Center, which can be done with:

  • A feed of all product data manually submitted to the search engine.
  • An API developed to update products individually as changes are made on your site. 

For more information, check out the guide provided by Google.

Conclusion

While providing product data to search engines is essential for appearing in these specific product-centric search results, the company emphasizes that these practices don’t replace traditional SEO.

“Remember that SEO still matters for organic search. Make your product details, such as images and descriptions, appealing to your customers.”

If you want to watch the full explanation from Kent, it is available below:

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Almost 65% of Google Searches Don’t Lead To A Website Visit

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Throughout 2020, approximately 65% of searches made on Google were “zero-click searches”, meaning that the search never resulted in an actual website visit.

Zero-click searches have been steadily on the rise, reaching 50% in June 2019 according to a study published by online marketing expert Rand Fishkin and SimilarWeb.

The steep rise in these types of searches between January and December 2020 is particularly surprising because it was widely believed zero-click searches were largely driven by mobile users looking for quick-answers. Throughout 2020, however, most of us were less mobile than ever due to Covid restrictions, social distancing, and quarantines.

The findings of this latest report don’t entirely disprove this theory, though. Mobile devices still saw the majority of zero-click Google searches. On desktop, less than half (46.5%) were zero-click searches, while more than three-fourths (77.2%) of searches from mobile devices did not result in a website visit.

Study Limitations

Fishkin acknowledges that his reports do come with a small caveat. Each analysis used different data sources and included different searching methods, which may explain some of the variance. Additionally, the newer study – which included data from over 5.1 trillion Google searches – had access to a significantly larger data pool compared to the approximately one billion searches used in the 2019 study.

“Nonetheless, it seems probable that if the previous panel were still available, it would show a similar trend of increasing click cannibalization by Google,” Fishkin said in his analysis.

What This Means For Businesses

The most obvious takeaway from these findings is that people are increasingly finding the information they are looking for directly on the search results pages, rather than needing to visit a web-page for more in-depth information.

It also means that attempts to regulate Google are largely failing.

Many have criticized and even pursued legal action (with varying levels of success) against the search engine for abusing their access to information on websites by showing that information in “knowledge panels” on search results.

The argument is that Google is stealing copyrighted information and republishing it on their own site. Additionally, this practice could potentially create less reason for searchers to click on ads, meaning Google is contributing to falling click-through rates and making more money off of it.

Ultimately, Google is showing no signs of slowing down on its use of knowledge panels and direct answers within search results. To adjust to the rise of zero-click searches, brands should put more energy into optimizing their content to appear in knowledge panels (increasing your brand awareness) and diversify their web presence with social media activity to directly reach customers.

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Google Opens Hotel Booking Links To All For Free

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Google is making its Hotel Booking Links program available to all hotels and travel companies for free, as the company announced this week. 

What Are Free Hotel Booking Links?

The new program, which was previously only available through the Hotel Ads system, essentially creates an entirely new organic list of hotels and travel agencies with available bookings below the existing paid results in relevant searches. 

As the company said in the announcement:

“We’re improving this experience by making it free for hotels and travel companies around the world to appear in hotel booking links, beginning this week on google.com/travel. With full access to a wider range of hotel prices, users will have a more comprehensive set of options as they research their trip and ultimately decide where to book.”

Additionally, the search engine says it will continue to expand the free marketing opportunities within the Google Travel platform in the future:

“Over time, we’ll continue building this open platform, so that all partners will have even more opportunities to highlight their information and help people book a flight, find a place to stay, or explore a new destination.”

What’s The Difference Between Free And Paid Hotel Booking Links?

The main distinction between the new program and the paid Hotel Booking Links program is obviously that paid links are essentially ads. They are bought through the Google Ads system.

However, this clear difference also influences how Google selects which hotels appear in the listings. 

Paid Hotel Booking Links are ranked based on the traditional Google Ads ranking system, which considers several details including how much the advertiser is paying, how relevant the ad is, and the quality of the page you are sending users to. 

The new free booking links, however, will be ranked using a system more similar to Google’s search algorithm.

As the announcement explains:

“Hotel ads are paid links, ranked according to Google’s ad auction, whereas free booking links are unpaid links, ranked according to their utility to users”

Where To Sign Up

If you’d like your hotel or travel company to appear in these new listings, all you have to do is click here to sign up.

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Snapchat Says Its Users Include 70% of 13 to 24 Year Olds

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Snapchat has exploded in popularity over the past few years, and now the company claims its content reaches over 70% of 13 to 24-year-olds across the countries making up more than half of all digital ad spend. 

This reveal came as part of Snapchat’s first-ever investor day, this week.

Snapchat Details User Growth In Surprising Demographics

As The Wall Street Journal reports, Snapchat unveiled several key statistics to shareholders.

Broadly, the company says the “Snapchat Generation” includes up to 40% of consumers around the world.

Despite the perception that the social network’s users are overwhelmingly young, Snapchat also says approximately 80% of its audience is over the age of 18. Based on this level of growth with new audiences, the company believes it will see 50% annual growth in revenue every year for the foreseeable future.

Although most of the information provided focused on big-picture statistics like revenue and audience growth, the shareholder presentation did disclose a few more specific details about how users are interacting with the app. Specifically, they said that Snapchat users open the app 30 times a day on average, every day. 

Additionally, the company shared that users who try AR filters to try on products are 2.4 times more likely to convert, implying an interest in further investing in this area.

The Future of Snapchat Advertising

One of the main ways Snapchat aims to meet its goal of 50% YoY revenue growth is by continuing to expand its advertising platform.

In its current state, Snapchat’s revenue largely comes from the standard vertical video ads which appear between Stories. However, increasing the number of these ads could drive away users.

Instead of increasing the number of vertical video ads, Snapchat says it plans to find new areas of the app which can be monetized, including placing ads in the Snap Map and Spotlight sections.

With over 35 million businesses already present on the Snap Map, Snap Inc.’s chief business officer, Jeremi Gorman, believes they will see massive interest when rolling out ads in this area of the app.

Driven by the existing success of AR filters, Snapchat also plans to incorporate new augmented reality features and AR-based ad options.

Perhaps most importantly for smaller brands who can’t work directly with Snapchat for the more customized ad options (such as AR or custom filters), the company also says it will be investing in more comprehensive and easier to use tools to buy and run ads through its self-service ad platform.

This means smaller brands will potentially be able to get their hands on some of the more effective and exciting ad options which have only been available to a select few brands on the platform in the past.

Overall, the presentation from the company gives a very optimistic view for the future. With its user-base beginning to age into adulthood, Snapchat is positioned to directly connect brands with some of the most active and engaged users on any social platform out there.

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