Tag Archive for: online ads

New LinkedIn Ads Study Finds What Makes The Most Effective Ads

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If you’ve ever wanted to know the secret to get the best response on LinkedIn Ads, Vidmob’s recently released report on global advertising trends on the platform may be exactly what you’re looking for. 

The report breaks down every element of LinkedIn ads to show which visual elements, text, and creative strategies performed the best on the platform for driving B2B engagement. 

The findings come from over 800 million ad impressions tracked by brands paying for video ad campaigns on LinkedIn within North America and the EMEA region (Africa, Europe, and the Middle East). 

What Elements are Most Effective?

The report says video ads containing the following elements performed better than those that did not:

  • Videos that display messaging in the first quarter of the video saw a 149% boost in views through the first 25% of the ad.
  • Ads that are 7-15 seconds long received a 54% lift in engagement rates.
  • Videos with high text contrast saw a 102% lift in views through the first 25%.
  • Videos featuring a person within the first quarter received a 175% increase to views through the opening 25%
  • Ads that include the phrase “Get a Quote” received 33% higher click-through rates.
  • When ads show a brand logo within the first 2 seconds, they see a 17% increase to click-through rates.

Key Takeaways

From all the data and findings, Vidmob has made 5 key points advertisers should be aware of:

Video: “While short and sweet is the usual go-to for video length, for awareness plays in the tech industry, audiences are engaged with mid-length content too.”

Color: “Don’t shy away from bright hues in upper funnel assets.”

Terminology: “Make use of Tech industry jargon and relevant imagery in creative assets, such as ‘Data,’ ‘Leader,’ ‘Expert,’ and ‘Demand.’”

Functional Benefits: “Focus on functional benefits and how the products or solutions can add efficiencies for the audience.”

Branding: “Make sure some reference to the brand appears upfront in the first 3 sec of the creative.”

For more interesting findings about the best elements to use at each stage of the customer awareness journey, download the full report from Vidmob here.

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AI Is On The Way To Google Ads According To New Test

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The rise of AI continues as Google Ads has started testing using artificial intelligence to help advertisers create the message for their ads. 

The feature seems to be a very limited test that uses AI to generate suggestions for headlines and description texts. Notably, when Google Ads Liaison Ginny Martin confirmed that the ad platform is testing AI tools, it is “unrelated to Bard”, Google’s recently released AI system. 

From user reports, the AI tool helps to create responsive search ads within Google Ads. 

Responsive search ads are a type of ad option that already uses machine learning to optimize your ad for those who see it using a premade set of headlines and descriptions. 

In this small beta test, users can instead let AI create headlines and descriptions suggestions based on information about your business. Specifically, the prompt asks you to “describe the product or service you’re advertising and what makes it unique in a few sentences.”

You can then select from the suggestions Google offers or decide to write your own.

It is unclear how soon you can expect to see this feature rolled out to more advertisers but it shows that Google is seriously working to utilize AI technology in every area of its platform, including Google Ads.

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TikTok Prepares to Introduce Sponsored Search Ads, Becoming a Competitor to Google and Microsoft

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TikTok is quickly becoming more than just a social media app for teens to showcase their dance moves and lip-syncing skills. It is becoming a lucrative platform for businesses to reach an increasingly diverse group of audiences, especially now that the company appears to be preparing to introduce sponsored search ads. 

This move aims to generate more revenue for TikTok and position the platform to be a direct competitor to Google and Microsoft.

The search ad market has long been dominated by tech giants like Google and Microsoft. The rise of social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram has driven a shift towards social media search ads in recent years, though. 

Now, TikTok’s entry into the market marks another step in this direction as the platform offers a chance for businesses to connect with a younger demographic who might not be as easily reachable through traditional advertising methods.

The new beta test of the advertising format on TikTok allows businesses to bid on specific keywords to appear at the top of search results. As usual, the search ads will be marked as “sponsored”, making it clear which results are paid and which are organic.

One thing that may help the ad option stand out is TikTok’s targeting capabilities. The app’s algorithm uses machine learning to personalize users’ feeds based on their behavior, search queries, and demographic information. 

This means that businesses can reach a highly specific audience with their ads, ensuring that their marketing strategies are more effective and efficient. This is particularly attractive to brands in a landscape where platforms like Facebook have gradually limited ad targeting options following criticism of its use of user data.

As with any new ad format, this move has the potential to be divisive. More ads in search results may potentially frustrate users. However, if search ads are relevant and engaging, they could enhance the user experience by providing relevant information.

Unfortunately, it is unclear when we can expect this ad option currently in a limited beta test to become available to all advertisers. In a statement to Search Engine Land, the company said:

“We are in the very early stages of testing search ads in select regions. For clarification – at this stage, advertisers do not have the ability to bid on specific keywords for advertising purposes. This part of our testing is managed by TikTok based on keywords that would be most relevant and impactful to the advertiser and their specific ad.”

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Microsoft Advertising Makes Predictions For Ad Trends in Early 2023

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Microsoft Advertising is helping you get ready for the new year with three new predictions for upcoming trends in digital advertising. 

As we enter the final month of the year, many are already planning their marketing and ad campaigns for the start of 2023. Unsurprisingly, many of these campaigns will be focused on health and self-betterment as consumers make their New Year’s resolutions.

According to a recent study by Opeepl, approximately 60% of people reported making a New Year’s resolution in 2022 with the most popular resolution being to get healthier.

Even more interestingly, almost half (49%) of those who didn’t make a resolution reported that they still made changes to their lives to improve their wellness around the beginning of the year.

To help you take advantage of this with ads that will connect with health-minded consumers in the start of 2023, Microsoft Advertising shared three predictions for upcoming trends in Health and marketing:

‘Organic Food’ Will Spike In Interest

Microsoft believes clicks for ads related to organic food may leap up to 20% during the week of January 14 compared to the same week in December.

With that in mind, Microsoft recommends planning ahead:

“Target users searching for healthy, nutritious food options in January with In-market Audiences. Our internal forecasting data suggests that clicks will peak during the winter on January 14, so although you should ramp up your budget after the holidays end, make sure you don’t run out midway through the month.”

Target Sports Apparel From Now To Late January

The predictions indicate that searches for sports apparel are likely to surge beginning early this month and lasting through January, creating an opportune time to target customers with related shopping campaigns:

“Use Shopping campaigns to showcase your sports and fitness apparel products late November and early December during holiday shopping sales. Microsoft internal data estimates that consumers will be most heavily searching for gear between the weeks of and November 26 and December 3, but activity will remain high until January.”

‘Fitness & Nutrition’ Searches Regularly Surge In Interest

While it is true that searches for fitness and nutrition-related topics are likely to increase in the new year, Microsoft Advertising also notes that this trend is likely to pop back up throughout the year. Because of this, it may be better to take an “always-on” approach to targeting these areas:

“Using 2021 data as a comparison for what to expect activity wise over the next year, we can assume clicks for nutrition and fitness will peak in January, May, July, and October. Consider an always-on approach since Audience Ads are shown to drive users down the funnel to search tactics.”

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Google Introduces Frequency Targeting For Youtube Ads

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Google is officially rolling out frequency targeting controls for video ads on YouTube according to a new blog post from the company.

With this move, advertisers can now take control and set limits for how often individuals see their ads.

In the past, the only way to do this was through connected TV campaigns in Google Display & Video 360 – more advanced advertising tools and features.

What Is Frequency Targeting For Ads?

Frequency targeting lets advertisers set a target number of times their ad will be shown to specific users.

This helps make the most of ad budgets by preventing ads from being repeatedly displayed to unreceptive audiences.

As the announcement for the feature explains:

“This will help advertisers optimize towards more precise reach and frequency, while ensuring that we continue to provide a suitable advertising experience for viewers. Target frequency allows advertisers to select a frequency goal of up to four per week and our systems will optimize towards a maximum unique reach at that desired frequency.”

Why Set a Frequency Target For Your Ads

Though there may be times when repeatedly seeing the same ad may be beneficial to motivate potential customers, there is a limit. Most studies indicate that repeatedly seeing ads is much more likely to contribute to diminishing returns and bad will with consumers.

For example, one Google-commissioned study found that TV advertisers see a decrease in ROI of 41% when the frequency of their ads was more than 6 views per week. Based on the data, more than 46% of ad impressions were above this threshold, making nearly half of ad impressions wasted.

The study says:

“Almost half of the linear TV impressions in our study were considered waste but the same study from Nielsen shows that brands can increase their average weekly frequency from one to three on YouTube with a consistent ROI.

“This is a huge opportunity for marketers to maximize their impact across the same set of people they are already reaching today.”

Final Details

Frequency targeting is now rolling out to all Google Ads users around the globe. 

Google claims that over 95% of all campaigns using frequency targeting hit their goal using the tool in testing.

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TikTok Reveals Its Future Plans For Ads, Shopping, and More

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TikTok is still considered a niche social media site by some, but the platform has grand ambitions to keep growing into an even bigger platform in the future. 

In TikTok’s first-ever company event, held as part of the 2022 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the company’s leadership spoke about the challenges facing the platform and their plans to overcome them.

Company leadership addressed a range of topics, including shopping across the platform, user safety, iOS 14’s impact on online advertising, and more. Let’s go over some of the highlights:

Advertising Updates

Though it has already amassed hundreds of thousands of advertisers, TikTok’s president of global operations solutions, Blake Chandlee says the company’s current goal is in the millions.

To do this, TikTok is expanding its advertising toolset and creating new features to help advertisers measure the quality of ads.

Managing director and global head of monetization product, strategy, and operation, Ray Cao, also addressed the impact of Apple’s iOS 14 on its advertising operations. 

This update made it difficult to target and track ads to many users as it gave users the option to block many forms of online tracking. However, Cao says the social network will overcome this by increasing the options for contextual ad targeting.

At the same time, TikTok is working to improve brand safety by better assessing what type of content an ad may be associated with. 

As Francis Stones, head of European brand safety explained, the company’s review process now analyzes sounds, text, emojis, and imagery to ensure brands do not become associated with something problematic.

TikTok Shopping Features

Along with these updates to TikTok’s advertising services, the platform is also continuing its efforts to develop its live shopping functionality.

Global head of business marketing, Sofia Hernandez explained that the new feature is being developed to allow brands to take advantage of user-created content quickly and easily, though further details were unavailable.

As TikTok grows into a major force on today’s internet, it is working to provide brands and advertisers with the types of features they have come to expect from social networks. While this is just a small look at the platform’s direction for the future, it shows that the newly popular social network intends to keep growing with its userbase.

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Google To End Support For Expanded Text Ads This Month

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As announced last August, Google is set to stop allowing advertisers to create, edit, or start running expanded text ads across the search engine’s ad network starting June 30, 2022.

Though expanded text ads have been a popular way to make your ads stand out and increase click-through rates, the company says it plans to replace the ad format with responsive search ads.

The goal, according to Google, is to simplify running ads while using automation to improve ad performance. 

According to the announcement, advertisers who have already made the switch from expanded text ads to responsive search ads saw an average 7% increase in their conversions.

Why Google Is Switching To Responsive Search Ads

Things are shifting all the time online, including the ways we are searching. According to Google, at least 15% of all search queries are never-before-seen searches. With responsive search ads, Google is trying to help brands keep up to date with these ever-changing trends and to always be where their audience is.

How To Prepare

For the time being, existing expanded text ads will be largely unaffected by the change. Though they cannot be edited, existing ads in this format will continue to run as normal. However, no new expanded text ads can be created.

To help you prepare for the upcoming change, Google recommends taking these steps:

  • Repurpose high-performing text ad content into responsive search ads and focus on improving ad strength.
  • Apply changes suggested in the account’s Recommendations
  • Pin headlines and other copy in specific positions to ensure they always show.
  • Use variations to test different ad versions.
  • Review assets in cross-campaign reporting based on performance to identify the most effective messaging.
  • Evaluate incremental growth in impressions, clicks and conversions at the ad group and campaign levels.

For more information, you can read the full announcement here.

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Google Shopping Ads Are Getting a “Swipeable” Makeover

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As part of its big Google Marketing Live event this week, the search engine announced a big makeover is coming to some shopping ads in the near future.

Initially limited to apparel-related shopping results, Google is revamping both online ads and organic listings to be more visually exciting and drive more engagement.

You can get a  preview of what to expect below:

Swipeable Google Shopping Ads

The revamp brings shopping ads more in-line with the more visual organic listings which have been rolling out since last year.

Google is accomplishing this using Search or Performance Max ad campaigns, though the images or graphics must be provided by advertisers.

As the company described the makeover:

“These will be clearly labeled as ads and will be eligible to appear in dedicated ad slots throughout the page. We’re also rolling out new ways to showcase multiple product images within Shopping ads in the U.S., along with information such as product descriptions, reviews, and product availability, with no further action required of advertisers.”

Though it is unclear when this revamp will be rolled out, advertisers should be excited by the more stylish and engaging presentation when it arrives.

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Google Ads Tests Using Favicons To Make Ads Standout

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Google Ads is testing including small favicons next to links in ads shown on search results.

Over the weekend, some users noticed that ads for food delivery service UberEats were including a small icon of a pizza slice when they appear in search results. 

Google Ads Testing Favicons With UberEats

This was particularly notable because the icon looks like a typical emoji for pizza when emojis are “invalided or unsupported characters” according to Google Ads policies.

Thankfully, Ginny Marvin, Google Ads’ product liaison, has clarified that the icon is actually a favicon – a small visual icon associated with a URL. These icons already appear on many search results, as well as within many browsers when visiting a website.

Marvin went on to confirm that the company is testing using these icons in ads on search results to make advertisers more identifiable:

Currently, the test appears to be limited to a very small number of advertisers on a small number of search results for some users. Still, the immediate interest in these ad favicons across social media likely reinforces that these icons not only make it easier to recognize advertisers. They make ads more attention-grabbing for users.

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Best Buy Launches Its Standalone Online Ads Service

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Best Buy is taking a page from the playbooks of Google and Amazon, announcing this week that it has launched its own service to sell online ads on search results across the web.

Best Buy Ads, the new in-house media company, will sell traditional search ads and sponsored product listings across Best Buy’s online marketplace, as well as offsite and in-store.

The service will focus largely on consumer electronics and related products, staying in line with the products already offered by the company.

While the announcement may seem odd, it is clear that e-commerce is becoming a major part of today’s retail market, and advertising is a major component of that. 

Best Buy is also not the only company to take a similar step. In October 2021, Lowe’s announced it was opening its own advertising company – not the mention that Amazon drives huge amounts of revenue through its ad platform. 

As for what makes this platform unique, Best Buy is highly emphasizing its direct connection to customers through their long-established brand:

“We interact with our customers three billion times a year — in our stores, in their homes, and online. These relationships last longer and run deeper than most. Knowing our customers on this level means we can help other brands cut through the clutter with advertising that won’t waste our customers’ time.”

The announcement continues:

“We have spent the past few years building a business that can analyze the data from our customer relationships and recommend relevant ways to connect with customers based on cutting-edge data science and analytics.”

For more information about Best Buy Ads, read the complete announcement here.

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