The so-called Cyber Five days — Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday — are nearly upon us. In a year unlike any other, we wondered what marketers have planned for their PPC routines this week through Cyber Monday. What will paid search and paid social marketers be looking for, monitoring, launching, adjusting this week? What have they learned from past years about how to manage their time and successful campaigns? Are they planning to do anything differently this year? Here’s what we heard. Not everyone will be trying to manage multiple holiday promotions. “I don’t have many clients that are doing significant discounting this year, so my routine will be the opposite of most people,” said paid media consultant Pamela Lund. “I’ll be monitoring conversion rate and CPA daily and reducing spend or pausing campaigns altogether if we see a decline in performance while people are deal-seeking. Other than that, my schedule isn’t changing much this week.” Lund says her clients do MAP pricing and have resellers that they allow to discount, “so there’s no market reasons that they aren’t discounting.” For other brands, the pandemic has changed their approach to sales this holiday. Feeling the effects of supply chain disruptionShipping and warehouse challenges have led many retailers to start holiday promotions earlier than in past years. Many Black Friday sales are now well underway, which means holiday management routines have kicked in, too. “Most of our retailers have pulled promotions forward to help with constraints on distribution centers, so we pulled all of our holiday monitoring forward to start last week. This includes our hourly campaign capping reports, promo messaging, and competitive monitoring cycles,” said Keri Boerner, associate SEM director at digital agency PMG. “The biggest difference this year is brands launching promos earlier than last year or in years past. We used to launch on Thursday/Black Friday and now this year some brands we work with launched Sunday or Monday,” said Duane Brown, founder of performance agency Take Some Risk. “We are in the accounts and looking at sales, revenue and performance. How is our targeting going, can we spend more money on X, etc?” Ongoing supply chain challenges from the pandemic mean there is less inventory to sell this season and more stock-outs are expected. “Some clients are not doing any BFCM sales and we support that move,” said Brown. For those brands, there may not be daily flash sale campaigns to manage this week, but there are other considerations. “Due to COVID this year, stock is definitely a piece we will be monitoring more closely,” said Shannon Cross, senior manager of eCommerce at Nestlé Purina North America. “We’re also focusing solely on larger pack sizes to ensure higher returns [on investment] and catering to the stock-up behaviours of consumers.” Cross’ attention will largely be on Purina’s Amazon search campaigns this year. “Our focus this week and going into Cyber Five will be Amazon search. We are glued to our screens monitoring stock status for both our products as well as competitors, monitoring CPCs for priority keywords, ROAS above 100% and share of search to ensure we are the dominant share of voice in our category. We will be busy making agile adjustments, swapping ASINs in and out throughout the weekend as competition and stock status changes.” For the company’s Google search campaigns, said Cross, “I don’t anticipate needing to make too many adjustments to our strategy, however we will be monitoring CPCs, impression share and top performing brand campaigns.” Ready for the payoff after weeks of audience build up“Our strategy was to build reach in the weeks leading up to the sales to maximize the audience that we can address with the sale message directly: broadening audiences in display, social and search, spending more on DABA [Facebook Dynamic Ads for Broad Audiences], discovery and video formats, and allowing for a lower ROAS on search and shopping campaigns,” said Nathalie Bojkow, global team head performance marketing for shoe brand PUMA SE. (Bojkow will be speaking on “Aligning Brand And Performance For Full Funnel Success” at SMX on Dec. 9.) The team also launched “lead gen campaigns for early sale access to provide additional direct reach for direct targeting, as well as similar audiences and lookalikes.” “Now with the sales going on,” said Bojkow, “we are able to make up for the ROI impact of the previous weeks and for higher CPCs by prioritizing our spend by audiences first, tightening and accelerating our retargeting cycles. Optimization routines focus on audiences as well, budgets are monitored more closely and we also need to keep an extra eye on stock levels and adjust spend dynamically as options sell out at a very fast rate.” Ad features, alerts, bidding prep are doneEarly preparation for successful Cyber Five search campaigns is detail-oriented. That includes having “everything needed to set up automated rules, Shopping promotions, Promotion extensions, ads with dedicated landing pages set to go live, etc. before this week even gets here,” said Kirk Williams, founder of search agency ZATO Marketing. Earlier this year, Google rolled out more badges and annotations for curbside pickup and in-store availability. “Depending on client availability, we ensured that all relevant badges and call outs were applied to our campaigns,” said Keri Boerner. The team also launched more dynamic search ad (DSA) campaigns ahead of this week “due to the increase in variation of searches and decreased visibility of search queries that could limit our ability to mine keywords,” and more clients are using auction-time bidding solutions this year than last. Additionally, Boerner said, some client brands “have also focused on diversifying inventory through partnerships such as Narrativ and Yelp to expand search footprints and efficiencies into additional avenues.” That means the teams are managing more channels, making clear processes even more important. Accounting for last-minute scrambles and problem solvingWhen all the prep is done, “this week is preserved for the inevitable changes or last-minute troubleshooting, and you really do magically have the time for those things without overworking yourself,” said Williams. “Overall, we have found with earlier preparation, creating space, and focusing on only what actually needs to be done, this week is one filled with excitement and not unnecessary stress.” It seems no matter how early you try to prep, marketers who are running display and paid social campaigns face the perennial challenge of getting last-minute ad creative set up and approved. Monday and Tuesday “are really making sure everything is ready/scheduled as a lot of our clients haven’t launched yet, so it’s hectic briefing and reviewing final creative and copy and building out the campaigns, which is a lot more work than I think clients realize (or they wouldn’t send creative at the last minute!),” said Gil David, founder of Run DMG, an agency specializing in Facebook advertising. “Then as every sale launches it’s like sending your kids off for their first day at school.” “The key really is that for our accounts running bigger sales, the prep actually started months ago and now is where we reap the benefits of investing in building large warm audiences in Q3 and early Q4. So it’s very satisfying seeing that pay off,” said David. Be flexible, have back up plansThe build up to this point has often been months in the making, but we know about the best laid plans. One of the key lessons David said he has learned from prior years “is the need to be flexible and adapt quickly to performance, no matter how much you predict and plan, things won’t always go that way and you have to roll with it,” he said. Not every Facebook Ads promotion catches on or performs as you anticipate. “And although most sales start off hot, even if they don’t you shouldn’t panic,” said David. “Try to see why it’s not going as expected, and we always make sure we have backup copy/creative/strategy ready to go. Plus if ads start burning out in retargeting you need to be quicker to act than you would do in ‘regular’ times.” “If sale campaigns do start hot, we’ll usually let them run for half a day at least before touching them, then if performance holds we will start scaling budgets to really try and max the BFCM opportunity out,” David said. “For us, this means checking in every 3-4 hours and kicking budget up by anywhere from 20-50% multiple times a day (or down a little if performance is dropping off). Automating this to some extent using rules and especially to cut unprofitable ads takes some of the weight off our shoulders and means I can sleep a little easier! This is where it’s really important to have set clear goals with clients for what success looks like and what kind of returns we should either be scaling or bailing at, not forgetting to factor in delayed attribution which is worse this time of year than any other.” Create breathing room for yourselfThis is a busy week for many marketers, but it doesn’t have to be chaotic. “For many of us working in e-commerce or with DTC brands, this is the single biggest week of the year in revenue as well as workload,” said Kirk Williams, founder of paid search agency ZATO Marketing. “However, over the years I have learned that it doesn’t have to be exhausting, even though it is still a lot of work. The key is to (1) create space, (2) invest your time wisely, and (3) for next year, prepare even better in previous weeks.” Williams said he and his team have been able to create space in their schedules this week “by moving our normal optimization procedures to the weeks before and after. We, of course, will still make any decisions ad hoc as needed, but we’re holding off on most ad testing, large bid adjustments, audience experiments, etc. for these four days (the fifth being a holiday that we do, actually, take off as a team). We also block out this week from non-emergency scheduled meetings, and limit our own internal meetings. It is surprising how much these things take up in a work-week, and what you will find is that removing these suddenly frees you up with hours you weren’t aware you needed. This creates space, for the inevitable last minute Black Friday requests, disapprovals, ad changes, etc. that are sure to occur.” This allows them to spend time on the critical tasks of the week and be able to spot and react quickly to problems. “When a client promotion has an issue on the website which suddenly causes a Shopping Promotion to become disapproved, we now have the space to focus our time on getting that back up and running instead of now having to choose between this non-urgent meeting and that sale,” said Williams. “Too often in agencies, that looks like the employee having to do both and then making that time up by working later and longer hours over this week.” A sample daily PPC routineAt PMG, over the next few days, the search and social teams will be “focusing on agility and identifying trends that have shifted from our forecasts. This includes responding to shifts in search volume, reforecasting and reporting updates for clients, and working to capitalize on opportunities as they arise throughout the week,” said Boerner. They’ll be relying heavily on the agency’s internal automated solution, called Alli, for a streamlined alerting process to help teams prioritize issues as they arise. The daily routine at PMG this week will look something like this:
“We are working with clients to increase fluidity of budgets between November and December due to the holiday timing and the strong performance that we are seeing going into this week,” said Boerner. “We anticipate that performance will drop off more dramatically later in December and are working to maximize coverage for early shoppers.” Looking aheadThis week, keep notes of how processes are working, how communication flows, problems that arise, hours worked and other thoughts that come to mind. This will help you capture the moments when it’s time to reflect and plan for improvements next year. Should you start earlier? Should you consider diversifying to more channels? What else can be automated? Was your reporting efficient and useful? Did you “create space,” as Williams suggests, to be able to respond to changes and issues effectively? Good luck this week and may you have many happy returns on investment. The post A peek into PPC routines during Cyber Five week appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/33e7qqU
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Google has shared some details around search features it has launched throughout the year that helps searchers search for what it thinks they are looking for. In short, Google is giving us more context around some of its newer contextual search features. Google did this around the Thanksgiving theme, which is timely in that sense, but these features have rolled out slowly throughout the past year or so. Suggestions based on recent activity. Back in May, we first covered the suggestions based on previous search history feature. Google has said it “can determine that you’re looking to learn more about preparing and serving a turkey and we’ll provide you with a helpful suggestion at the top of your search results page to get you to what you were actually looking for.” So since your previous search was related to turkey, Google will suggest that with a little addition to the search results: Related to carousel. This related to carousel is also not new but Google is now talking about it publicly. Google credits its “new language understanding” to be able to provide related carousel that combines two recent searches into more ideas for you. Here is how it looks: People also ask. Here again, the people also ask is not a new feature. But what Google is doing inside of it with it being able to understand the context of your searches is pretty cool. Google said “prior to introducing these features, if you had searched for “how to make a napkin fan,” Google might have helped you discover additional information by showing you similar questions such as “How do you make a cone napkin?” But now, Google “can source even more relevant questions in the “People also ask” section, like “How do you make a turkey out of a cloth napkin?” Now, after searching for turkey recipes, your upgraded search results can help you find more relevant follow-ups faster and up-level your Thanksgiving tablescape.” Here is what it looks like: Why we care. Google has given us statements about these search features in the past, but this is one of the first times Google has written about them. In addition, while some of the features are not 100% new, what may be newer is that these features rely on relatively new language understanding models (maybe like BERT) specific to leveraging conversational context. The post Google puts some contextual search features in context appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3nU3BPC Google has announced the launch of a new crawl stats report in Google Search Console. You may be able to access this report over here but keep in mind Google is rolling this out now and it might generate an error for you. What’s new. Google said the new report makes it easier for developers, webmasters, SEOs, etc to find issues with Google crawling. What is new is:
New crawl stats report. This new chart shows your crawl stats over time, showing you the total crawl requests over a time period or by day, total downloaded data and the average response time. Google also has a way to break it down into “grouped crawl data.” The report provides data on crawl requests broken down by these groups: (1) response, (2) file type of the fetched URL, (3) purpose of the crawl request, (4) and Googlebot agent. Hosting issues are also uncovered with this report. So Google can show you why it had issues accessing your site. Google said “host status details in the report let you check your site’s general availability to Google in the last 90 days.” And for domain properties with multiple hosts, you can check the host status for each of the top hosts presented in the report summary view. Why we care. Google has supported the legacy crawl stats report for years and with the new Google Search Console here, Google has not yet migrated this feature. Not only has it really improved on the reports, it has given us actionable and useful data to use when debugging crawling issues. To learn more about this report, see this help document. The post Google launches new crawl stats report in Search Console appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3nNu0yg The SEO industry holds opportunities galore to gain leadership skills, work with top companies, and earn a good salary. However, a recent study by Nicole DeLeon shows that in 2020, 70% of SEOs identify as male. We can do better than that. By supporting and encouraging women, we can work to increase women’s representation in this industry. But often, the question is, “Where do I start?” Great question. I asked a variety of female-identifying search marketers – from industry veterans to recent grads – to offer their tips on how we can all better support women in SEO. Here’s what we suggest: 1. Provide mentorshipTo mentor simply means to advise or train. A common misconception is that mentorship has to be a structured relationship, or a huge time commitment. But mentorship can actually be as simple as making yourself available to offer advice. Receiving personalized guidance can give women the confidence and information they need to achieve their career goals. Whether you can give an hour a week or 30 minutes a quarter, consider becoming a mentor to help women and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) grow as marketers. “Try to start small with a weekly 30 minute meeting for 2-3 months. In my experience making the commitment time bound might make it easier to sign up for. In addition to it being the right thing to do, I also think mentoring is great karma points. I’m a big believer in karma and I think you get what you put out in the world, so I try to put goodness out there!” “When I started out in SEO, I felt isolated because I didn’t know other SEOs in the international community who looked like me or faced the unique challenges of being Black, Female and African. I had to figure out a lot of stuff on my own, which meant that growing, upskilling and scaling took more time than if I had someone to guide me. It would be awesome if we had communities like Women In Tech SEO, but for African SEOs where we could enjoy support and upskill more quickly than if we were playing solo. I also think there should be more mentorships to encourage black women to embrace SEO. I have a similar program where copywriters from developed countries offer copy feedback and mentorship to copywriters from developing countries. A program like this in SEO could be the game changer that bridges the gap and helps more women gain the needed visibility and shatter glass ceilings only touched by male SEOs.” “As a recent graduate, I’ve found the field of digital to be more conquerable because of my serendipitous encounters with professional women who were so enthusiastic to share their experience and help me along in mine. Mentors are everything. It can be direct as an actual mentorship or having a one-time conversation on LinkedIn – both have helped me greatly. For professional women to open their doors to those just starting, it means tremendous support, and it also means taking an industry as vast as this one and creating communication and community out of it, two things I believe are very important in the world of digital.” 2. Offer a flexible work environmentWhen workplaces offer flexibility in hours and location, they help women create a better work-life balance. This can also allow more women to return to work and remain productive after starting a family, which can keep them on track for salary increases and promotions. At the same time, companies benefit from holding onto their talent and reducing turnover. “Statistics across industries show that when push comes to shove, women breadwinners still do more housework and childcare than men. And the pandemic has only exacerbated this disparity. While employers can’t change what happens at home, they can make it easier for women to meet more of their responsibilities by allowing for a less structured work environment. Many women are willing to put in hours before their kids wake up or after they are in bed. Let them.” 3. Prioritize diversity in speaker line-upsWhen we hear from the same voices, we miss out on an incredible opportunity to learn. Make diversity in your speaker line-ups and keynotes a top priority. And instead of viewing it as a box to check, invest time into connecting with potential speakers with different experiences and points of view, and not just by title or reputation. “If you’re in charge of organizing a speaker line-up, then please offer opportunities for new and diverse speakers. If you’re a speaker yourself and used to having the spotlight, consider recommending an underrepresented person rather than taking the opportunity for yourself. If you’re keen to speak yourself then before committing to being a part of an event, always ask what the speaker line-up is and provide recommendations if it doesn’t feel diverse enough.” 4. Build up women’s confidenceImposter syndrome is oh so real, with an estimated 70% of individuals experiencing the phenomenon at least once in their career. This feeling of inadequacy meets its match when we foster confidence in our peers’ work and abilities. “How can you help? If you’re lucky enough to have achieved this fuzzy feeling of confidence, I would really encourage you to do all you can to offer a helping hand to those female-identifying SEOs who struggle with this. Start by identifying your strong points and use that for good (like a wonderful, nerdy superhero). Have some experience talking at conferences? Offer support for those willing to give it a try by providing test-runs or presentation feedback. Consider yourself technically savvy? Be a sparring partner for someone who is unsure of their assumptions and audits. Enjoy making people smile? Give some praise to those around you who have shared knowledge and done something that was trying to help their fellow SEOs. Even a quick 30 minute – 1 hour break a week to do these things can make such a positive impact. If you keep working to empower those around you, it not only helps make this community more welcoming and accessible, but it means we have even more smart minds contributing to creative ideas and strategies that help us tackle SEO challenges in better ways.” “Being the “outsider” can be intimidating; even asking a question can make me insecure at times because I don’t want to seem like I don’t know what I’m doing. I think that in order to close the gender gap in this field, women can be supported by developing more confidence. They have just as much of a right to be there as men, but I think that self-doubt can be a roadblock at times.” 5. Work with different communication stylesThere is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to communicating. Taking time to learn each team member’s communication style and preferences can offer the foundation they need to succeed. “Ask your employees what their natural communication style is, and find a way to work with that. As an immigrant, there are many things I used to say or ways I used to communicate in Australia that just don’t work in the United States. My style of communication is relaxed, but to the point – I don’t mince words, but I like to talk seriously over coffee. In the US, I’ve always felt the need to couch my words, be a little nicer, and to always have serious conversations in the conference room. Having the room to communicate in a style that works for me – at least internally – makes it easier for me to get my work done and increases the enjoyment I get out of my work. Communication is key.” 6. Advocate for gender and pay equality when hiringDon’t accept the outdated adage, “There just aren’t as many women candidates.” Consider if there are any barriers for women in your hiring process. For instance, say the main promotion method for your job posting is sharing with your network, but your network is composed mostly of men. Or, consider if your job description contains exclusive or masculine language like “rockstar,” “expert” or “assertive.” Overly-masculine words suggest an overly-masculine culture, which can be uninviting to women as well as minority groups. There are many barriers that contribute to a candidate pool mostly void of women. By becoming aware of the often unconscious biases that create these roadblocks, we can start to break down that outdated assumption for good. “I think the first step in supporting female-identifying professionals in the search industry is to continue to bring awareness that there are inconsistencies in important areas like pay and hiring of women. Unfortunately this is common in many industries. After awareness is brought to the issue, I think it’s really important for prominent people and organizations (both in-house and agencies) to speak out in support of equal pay and the importance of gender equality in hiring for SEO roles. Having supportive communities like Women in Tech SEO (huge props to Areej AbuAli) is also so important for giving women a safe space to talk about the struggles they are having and get advice from other women.” 7. Make diversity initiatives a regular part of your businessHiring women and equal pay is a great step, but it certainly shouldn’t stop there. Once women are hired, invest resources in them to help them continue to grow. In short, don’t let diversity be a one-time conversation. When it’s an ongoing consideration in all business initiatives, from holiday celebrations to leadership positions, you offer real support. “If you have a platform, amplify, and support diverse professionals. If you run a team or company, increase representation with who you hire, mentor, or promote. If you run an event, solicit a diverse panel of speakers. Make diversity initiatives a part of regular business, not just de rigueur.” 8. Speak to the new generation of marketersIt’s so important to introduce female-identifying professionals to this field. If universities don’t cover it in their curriculum, that leaves a gap of women who may not know enough about SEO to consider it as a career. Pursue thought leadership opportunities like speaking for universities or a local organization that supports students and/or recent graduates. By speaking about the topic and chatting one-on-one with the new generation of marketers, we create a space for them to get interested in the field and seek to learn more. 9. Publicly support women on social mediaThe more we see and can relate to those who have success, the more confidence we have to pursue those same roles. By increasing the reach of women across social media, we show the rest of the world our place at the SEO table, so to speak. Some easy ways to do this?
While we’re on the topic: Please be KIND on social. If you disagree with someone else’s opinion and feel you must speak up, aim to have a respectful and open-minded discussion that leads with questions rather than opinions. And consider having these conversations privately; it can be intimidating for new creators to see criticism commented across many posts. 10. ListenThis final tip goes beyond SEO. If you haven’t come up against this firsthand, imagine you experienced an injustice at work, and you were ignored. That could tarnish your view of your workplace – and the industry as a whole – forever. If an issue is raised by a woman or person of color, please don’t shrug it off. Listen, and together we can create an industry that honors and respects every person. The post 10 ways you can support women in SEO appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/33fdXBz I’m not going to be one of those annoying people who asserts 2020 has been splendid. It’s insensitive and perhaps... The post Permission to Get It Wrong appeared first on Copyblogger. via Copyblogger https://ift.tt/3m1CXnd The post 20201124 SEL Brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/399iQjx YouTube to show ads on channels that aren’t in the Partner ProgramIn it’s latest terms of service update, YouTube creators agree to allow the service to monetize their content with ads (or by charging users for access) but are not necessarily entitled to revenue sharing. To be eligible for YouTube’s revenue sharing Partner Program (YPP), channels need to have more than 4,000 watch hours in the past 12 months and have more than 1,000 subscribers among other requirements. “This is part of our ongoing investments in new solutions, like Home Feed ads, that help advertisers responsibly tap into the full scale of YouTube to connect with their audiences and grow their businesses,” said YouTube. Why we care. For advertisers, the change means there’s more advertising inventory on YouTube, which as the company noted, it has been focusing on. That begs the brand safety question. Do you want your ads on these channels? YouTube says its brand suitability controls have gotten better since many advertisers boycotted the platform over ads running alongside objectionable content in 2017. “Over the past three years, we improved our ability to identify appropriate placements for advertisers, in part by working closely with our advertising partners and industry organizations,” the company said. For creators, of course, it means YouTube can start earning revenue from your content before you become eligible for YPP. YouTube gets into audio adsAlso from YouTube: Audio ads. Audio ads are now in beta on YouTube along with new “dynamic music lineups” of channels across music genres such as Latin, K-pop as well as lineups aimed at moods and interests like fitness. “Music lineups and audio ads make it possible to be there, at scale, whether YouTube is being watched front and center or playing as the backdrop to daily life,” YouTube wrote in a blog post this week. YouTube’s 15-second audio ads are accompanied by an image or simple animation and include a link to the advertiser’s site. They are largely aimed at driving brand awareness and are available to advertisers now in Google Ads and Display & Video 360 on a CPM basis. Why we care. YouTube’s scale makes its entry into digital audio advertising particularly notable. There are more than 2 billion monthly music listeners on YouTube, according to the company. Spotify, by contrast, reaches 185 million monthly users with its ad supported product. Internet audio advertising revenue reached $2.7 billion last year, up 21% from the previous year, the IAB reported. YouTube says more than 50% of logged-in users who listen to music content in a day consume more than 10 minutes of music content on the platform. Update for Instagram Branded Content ads: New workflow, product tags and moreInstagram advertisers can now create Branded Content ads without creators having to post organically first. Branded content ads on Instagram have been around since June 2019. With the new workflow, advertisers request ad creation access from creators. After a creator approves the request, they’ll then be notified to approve or decline branded ads that appear from the advertiser under the creator’s handle. In Stories, Branded Content ads can now include tappable elements — mentions, hashtags, location. In addition, Instagram will begin testing Product Tags in Branded Content ads. Currently, creators’ branded content posts that have product tags can’t be promoted by brands as ads. Why we care. The new workflow streamlines the process for both brands and creators. Product Tags are potentially a big opportunity as Instagram becomes a bigger driving force in commerce. “More and more, people are shopping directly from the creators they love on Instagram – this new ad format is another way brands can provide a seamless shopping experience on Instagram,” the company said. Twitter launches Fleets, tests social audio featureTwitter has launched Fleets, the company’s version of Stories allows users to post content that vanishes after 24 hours. “You can Fleet text, reactions to Tweets, photos or videos and customize your Fleets with various background and text options,” Twitter explained. Twitter is also testing an audio feature with which users can come together for live conversations, similar to the Clubhouse app that’s still in pilot. In an effort to avoid the moderation challenges that Clubhouse has found, Twitter said, ““We are going to launch this first experiment of spaces to a very small group of people — a group of people who are disproportionately impacted by abuse and harm on the platform: women and those from marginalized backgrounds,” TechCrunch reported. Why we care. Twitter has been slower to develop new product features commonplace on other platforms — even LinkedIn had Stories first — but Fleets and audio features could bring interesting new ways of engaging users on the platform beyond 280 characters. Twitter also continues to work on voice tweets for Android and is testing audio DMs. Facebook injects more machine learning in content moderationFacebook is now using machine learning to power how it prioritizes content slated for human review. Currently, flagged posts are largely reviewed in the order in which they were flagged. “In the future, an amalgam of various machine learning algorithms will be used to sort this queue, prioritizing posts based on three criteria: their virality, their severity, and the likelihood they’re breaking the rules,” The Verge reported. Why we care. Conspiracy theories, misinformation and extremist content have been able to spread rapidly on Facebook. Leaning on more machine learning to take these three criteria into account cloud help the company respond to harmful content faster. That, in turn, might help improve brand safety on the platform. The post Social Shorts: YouTube expands ad inventory, Twitter launches Fleets, more appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3nQQQVT DuckDuckGo is a search engine that was founded in 2008 with a focus on protecting searchers’ privacy, notably showing all searchers the same search results and refraining from building profiles of its users. Its search volume has risen steadily over the years, and in October 2020 was up to nearly 60 million queries daily. This rise could be evidence that Google’s dominance is not prohibitive to the rise of competitors, and that a search engine focused on user privacy can succeed in building a real business. However, smaller search engines like DuckDuckGo benefit from the expansive network of advertisers bidding on Google search ads. Here’s how. Smaller engines rely on ease of campaign duplication to pull Google advertisersThe second-largest search business in the US, Microsoft Advertising, is built on query volume coming from Yahoo and Bing as well as other search partners, including DuckDuckGo. Bing and Yahoo account for about 3.5x and 5x as much organic search traffic as DuckDuckGo, respectively, according to Statista. The benefit to using a platform like Microsoft Advertising to DuckDuckGo is that Microsoft can attract many more advertisers with its aggregate volume than DuckDuckGo could hope to at this stage in its business. This is because, in addition to the cost of actual paid search clicks, there is a cost to managing campaigns on different platforms in the form of additional time and effort to launch those campaigns and optimize them correctly. By joining Microsoft Advertising’s network, then, DuckDuckGo is able to garner ad dollars from advertisers that wouldn’t be able to profitably launch ads on DuckDuckGo if it required entirely separate management. However, the same is also true of Microsoft Advertising, which leans into its own tools developed specifically with the aim of making it as easy as possible to duplicate Google campaigns to its platforms. To quote Microsoft’s own literature on Google Import: ‘If you’re already using Google Ads, you can save a lot of time by importing your campaigns directly into Microsoft Advertising…The less time you spend managing your ads, the more you can focus on serving your customers.’ No such capability exists when it comes to importing Microsoft Advertising campaigns into Google, because Google, as the dominant search engine, is able to attract the largest pool of advertisers in the US. Microsoft Advertising knows that, while the aggregate volume of the properties in its network is absolutely meaningful, many businesses would not be as active on its platform if there were significant differences in how campaigns were launched and managed relative to Google. Again, campaign launches and management take time, and if advertisers are able to tap into 90% of the paid search opportunity by focusing on just Google, many would only launch on Google were it not very easy to port those campaigns and settings over to Microsoft Advertising. Microsoft understands this, which is why a tool like Google Import exists. DuckDuckGo, by way of being a part of the Microsoft Advertising network, also benefits from Microsoft making it as easy as possible for Google advertisers to duplicate campaigns into its platform. Were DuckDuckGo to launch its own platform, it would likely also have to create a similar import tool to either port over campaigns from Microsoft Ads or Google itself in order to maintain the pool of advertisers it has benefitted from in its business so far. ConclusionThe purpose of this column is not to take sides on the question of searcher privacy or the pros/cons of Google’s dominant search position. It is merely to unpack the economics of how smaller search engines are able to monetize their results, and how that has largely relied on making it easy for Google advertisers to reach searchers on those properties with as few obstacles as possible. Google itself also ostensibly benefits from this arrangement in a sense that it can point to legitimately viable competitors that are able to make money in search even without Google’s expansive volume. This is potentially even more important to Google now that it faces a DOJ investigation into its search dominance. For better or worse, Google’s dominant search volume gives it more data to use in producing search results and attract more advertisers to its platform with bigger opportunity. Yahoo itself, now a part of Microsoft Advertising, indirectly acknowledged how powerful that flywheel can be when it decided to reenter a deal with Google in 2015 to power some of its ads that lasted until early 2019. Whether Google has abused its position to further diminish competition is a more complicated question for another day. For now, it seems clear, to me at least, that other search engines have relied to an extent on Google’s advertiser base to help propel their own advertising businesses. That’s true even of DuckDuckGo. The post How DuckDuckGo (and Microsoft) benefit from Google’s sprawling advertising business appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2J4lgoE Are you and your search marketing colleagues asking these difficult questions as you plan for 2021?
Get actionable answers to these and more essential SEO and SEM challenges at Search Marketing Expo, online December 8-9. (Can’t attend live? All sessions will be available on-demand immediately following their live broadcast.) Don’t miss your chance to discover actionable SEO and SEM tactics that can help you drive more traffic, conversions, and ROI for just $249. Register now! Psst… Hungry for more? Bundle your All Access pass with a two-day search marketing workshop for just $479. (Workshops take place online December 15-16.) The post Don’t miss Search Marketing Expo online December 8-9 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/339SHwZ The next SEO I sat with to interview is named Elie Orgel, he is the Director of Marketing at Rosenblum Law Firm. He has been doing SEO for about ten years now and works in a pretty competitive space now. In part one of our conversation, we spoke about his career and experience and then got into a fun SEO topic. We spoke about how he uses data sources that are on the web but not indexed by Google to create rich content pages that attract links from the industry and news organizations. Elie calls this pages link bait pages because they easily attract links. You can learn more about Elie Orgel on LinkedIn or ElieOrgel.com. Here is the video: If you’re a search professional interested in appearing on Barry’s vlog, you can fill out this form on Search Engine Roundtable; he’s currently looking to do socially distant, outside interviews in the NY/NJ tri-state area. You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel by clicking here. The post Video: Elie Orgel on using data to create pages that get links appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/338I4e1 |
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