The COVID-19 crisis has cast a shadow over all interactions, including communications between businesses and their customers. While business goals should always be kept in mind, brands need to adapt their messaging and their offerings to turn this economic downturn into an opportunity to serve their audiences. During our PPC for B2B session of Live with Search Engine Land, Brad Geddes of AdAlysis and Michelle Morgan of Clix Marketing shared a few trends they’ve witnessed and why adjusting for our new reality is the most effective marketing strategy right now. High time to reevaluate the hard sell. “The smart [businesses] have really looked at the ads carefully to say, ‘What message are we putting out there? What needs to change? How are we more sensitive in an industry where we want someone to do something?’” said Geddes, explaining that he’s seen much softer calls-to-action now than before the pandemic. “Before, it was buy, buy, buy, do this now, etc. — you see a lot more softer education or engagement happening then you saw previously,” he said, using a commercial from toilet paper brand Cottonelle as an example. “It was, ‘Hey, stop hoarding toilet paper, we make enough to go around, share with your neighbor,’ and it wasn’t salesy, but because it was so timely and such a positive message, guarantee their sales are going to go up through a non-salesy ad,” he said. Help your customers, but don’t stop tracking campaigns. “We’ve got a couple of [clients] that are actually just offering content as their campaigns, so we don’t really have a cost-per-lead goal on it because the purpose is not really to generate leads,” Morgan said regarding the direction that some of her clients have taken in light of COVID-19 and its impact on their customers. “If you can provide meaningful content to people, they’re going to be more likely to buy from you down the line because you’ve already provided value, so doing that, especially during this time of extreme need, I think has been really helpful,” she added, noting that her agency is keeping an eye on these efforts and intends to remarket to those audiences. Many brands are creating educational content or expanding their free offerings to help customers, and while the primary objective may not be to market themselves, businesses need to keep tracking campaigns and should retarget those audiences to get a better idea of how effective their campaigns have been during this time. This information will be especially useful if, as some fear, the health crisis takes on a seasonal nature. Why we care. Adapting your messaging, products and services to address your customers’ pain points is at the heart of marketing, and failing to do so during a crisis such as this puts your brand at risk of coming off as insensitive and greedy. As Morgan said, brands that are able to weather the storm while continuing to serve their audiences are more likely to earn their loyalty and business in the future. Want more Live with Search Engine Land? Get it here:
More about marketing in the time of the coronavirusThe post Why updating your messaging is the best strategy right now [Video] appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2YiuAeb
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Facebook is expanding its test of in-stream ads in Facebook Live to more verticals, including “pre-vetted entertainment, news and sports partners,” the company announced this week. The test is designed to help evaluate whether or not the ad format is effective before rolling it out more broadly. For now, Facebook is piloting in-stream ads with only a select number of publishers. The limited test will help determine if pre-vetted content creators are able to successfully monetize their live video streams with in-stream ads. How it works. When watching Live content from a creator included in the test, viewers might see a range of ad formats, including:
Brand safety controls for advertisers. When setting up campaigns in Ads Manager, advertisers will have an option to exclude ad placements from live streams. Advertisers can also add certain publishers to a blocklist in order to prevent ad delivery on either Live or Video on Demand content from a creator. For further brand safety control, advertisers can enable the “Limited” Inventory Filter to block ads from more sensitive content. This option automatically blocks ads from appearing in live streams. Why we care. Up until now, Facebook has been testing the new in-stream product exclusively with gaming developers in Live. Now that it’s rolling out to more verticals (entertainment, news, and sports), advertisers across the spectrum could see an uptick in impressions with the in-stream Live format – especially now as people seek virtual ways to experience their favorite live moments. The post Facebook expands test for in-stream ads on Live appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2Sl2Od8 Microsoft Advertising (formally Bing Ads) has come a long way in the last year as they rebrand the advertising platform and look to let everyone know they are still an option. Plus a refresh of the Advertising Editor was a welcome change last year as well. What has been the biggest change since last year is updating the new UI within the ad manager itself. This UI update does not include the Microsoft Merchant Center platform, which is still only accessible through the old UI. However, you can still import from Google into Microsoft and that should not change when the Merchant Center gets an update. Bulk operations are also not available in the new UI but hopefully that change will come sooner rather than later. Changing any ad manager, let alone one that has stood the test of time is not an easy feat. Shout out to the Microsoft PM working on this because I can only imagine how hard this change is and all the code and backend fixes that need updating. So what has changed is what you want to know? I know I did when I came in one morning and saw the option to switch over to the new UI. I got a cool little popup/icon asking if I wanted to switch over. It was subtle I would say…I imagine they are doing this in phases for the rollout. Of course, I said yes because who doesn’t want to try something new and shiny? Overview sectionSomething we come to expect from Google, and even paid social platforms like Pinterest, is an overview tab that looks at performance for that ad account or across all your ad accounts in your Business Manager. I will be the first to admit I don’t use this screen and actively ignore it as I like to get into the trenches with ad accounts. Plus a general overview of all my ad accounts does not help tell me who is winning and who needs more TLC this week. However, I’m not everyone and I’m sure some will find this a useful addition to the ad manager. Account summaryThere has not been any major changes to the Account Summary section. All the buttons and dropdowns have the same name but maybe the order they are presented in has been tweaked. The search field box has been brought front and center, while options for custom columns, segments and downloads are all farther to the right of their usual spot. This is similar to other ad managers. That has been one thing Microsoft has tried to do well, knowing when to minimic other ad managers and knowing when to chart their own path. One great thing to know is your custom and modified column views should get ported over to the new UI. They did for me at least! Whoever the PM is on this should get an air high five. Such a small detail but tons of time saved! Double sidebar navigationEvery ads manager from Facebook to Google has been working hard to make their UIs easier to use in the last few years. Some have fared better at it than others and I know this is not an easy change to make. You may have even seen me tweet my love for the Snap Ads manager. It’s honestly the easiest paid social ad manager to use out there right now. Very intuitive and makes logical sense. Totally not sorry Facebook. I ended up telling my Pinterest AMs to just copy Snap and be done with it on our last team call. I digress. What does this all have to do with Microsoft Ads Manager? They are nailing all the small details that take you from good to pretty bloody awesome for an update. The double sidebar is here! Love it or hate it; this makes context switching a lot easier as you move between ad accounts or from other search engines. Plus when you move from an open to a collapsed view in the sidebar. All the little icons just make sense across Search, Shopping and Dynamic Ads. Really love the little shopping bag icon for Microsoft Shopping Ads. Microsoft Ads toolsThis is similar to Google Ads but a few things that make it different is that the Merchant Center link is in a different spot. There is also a link to Microsoft Ads Editor, intelligence tool and of course the naming convention is all Microsoft! Plus the Import and Reports options are still giving you the same features you are used to in the old UI. One thing I don’t see in the new UI is the Opportunities button, which may be getting a new home in this UI. That is waiting to reveal itself….as I don’t see it in the new UI right now. ConclusionThis is just a taste of what is changing the Microsoft Ads Manager. There are a lot more changes coming in 2020 when you consider Merchant Center needs a new UI and other areas of the ad manager. What do you think of the new UI? The post Microsoft Advertising UI: What is new so far appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2yas1A5 “Use proper link markup, do not use fragment URLs for links you want crawlers to discover and follow, and you should be building websites that work well with JavaScript and the links will be found,” Martin Splitt, developer advocate at Google, summed up on Google’s Webmaster Conference Lightning Talk Wednesday. The right way to create links. Using the HTML <a> tag with the destination URL in the href attribute is the most straightforward way to create a link. For example, <a href=”https://ift.tt/2Wdzkiv>. You can also add JavaScript to a link, allowing you to upgrade its functionality. One example of this might be when a user clicks on a pop-out hamburger menu on one of your pages — the JavaScript could be used to intercept the href and display the hidden hamburger menu. Don’t leave out the href attribute. It may be tempting to eliminate the href attribute and “clean up” your code, but doing so means that the link will only work if your JavaScript is also functioning properly. Crawlers only access content pointed to with href attributes and if there’s a bug, users can’t access the content the JavaScript is pointing to. Think twice about fragment identifiers. Fragment identifiers, which are distinguished by a “#” symbol within a URL, point to subsections of a given page, not necessarily a different page. For example, example.com/FAQ#subsection would take the user to a specific point on the page example.com/FAQ. “Because fragments aren’t meant to point to different content, crawlers ignore them; they just pretend that the fragments don’t exist,” Splitt said. This means that if you build a single-page application with fragment identifiers, crawlers will not follow those links. Why we care. Creating links that Google can crawl will help it understand what your site content is about and increase your chances of ranking well for relevant queries. And, while it is not common, some users may choose to browse with JavaScript turned off; when that’s the case, adhering to these practices will ensure that your links still function correctly. More development tips for SEOsThe post The right way to apply JavaScript to your links for SEO appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2SjeL2N The post SEL 20200429 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2YgB3Gv Building a YouTube presence has many benefits. Creating video content is one of the best ways to build authentic relationships... The post How to Grow Your Personal Brand on YouTube appeared first on Copyblogger. via Copyblogger https://ift.tt/2SygjGD
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via ShoeMoney https://ift.tt/3f3whSr Google reported Q1 earnings this afternoon, beating analysts’ revenue expectations that were partly moderated by the COVID crisis. The company announced $41.16 billion in revenue compared with $40.3 billion expected. Significant slowdown in March. Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat said, “Performance was strong during the first two months of the quarter, but then in March we experienced a significant slowdown in ad revenues.” Based on strong performance during the first two months, revenue was up 13% year over year, while earnings per share were down. Here’s the revenue breakdown for key segments:
Ad revenue on YouTube was up more than 33% year over year but down 14% sequentially. Advertising still constitutes 82% of Google’s total revenue. Positive spin. There are different ways to react to Google’s earnings report: a) it could have been much worse or b) this confirms that the industry faces a major ad slump or c) Google, Facebook and Amazon will be ok, others not so much. Ad forecaster eMarketer characterized the results as “in line with our relatively optimistic scenarios for digital advertising in Q1.” Indeed, some people are putting a very positive spin on the company’s earnings. Wall Street also likes the results and Google’s stock is up in after-hours trading. In March eMarketer revised its ad forecast to account for anticipated revenue declines, but still expects spending to grow this year by 7%. Others, such as Magna Global, expect 2020 ad spending to shrink. But both eMarketer and Magna Global said they believe ad spending will come back (to varying degrees) in the second half. Why we care. Marketing budgets were disrupted in March, as reflected in Google’s earnings. But, historically, paid-search has been more “recession-proof” than other forms of digital advertising. We won’t truly know until later in the year. The key to recovery is consumer spending and confidence in the economy. If consumers begin to spend again that will trigger more investments by advertisers. For now, Google’s Q1 results are something of an ink blot that can support both bullish and bearish views of the rest of the year. The post Google Q1 earnings offer hope ad slump won’t be as bad as some expect appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2Yfgl9Z |
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