Google’s Danny Sullivan has confirmed with us that Google has not yet rolled out passage indexing. Initially we expected, based on the original announcement, that Google would roll out passage indexing by the end of the year – 2020. But since it is not rolled out yet, I suspect Google will hold the launch until early 2021. The confirmation. I asked Danny Sullivan on Twitter if it rolled out yet and he said “it is not.” Here are those tweets: What is passage-based indexing. “Very specific searches can be the hardest to get right,” said Google, “since sometimes the single sentence that answers your question might be buried deep in a web page. We’ve recently made a breakthrough in ranking and are now able to not just index web pages, but individual passages from the pages. By better understanding the relevancy of specific passages, not just the overall page, we can find that needle-in-a-haystack information you’re looking for.” Google said passage-based indexing will affect 7% of search queries across all languages when fully rolled out globally Ranking change, not indexing. This is a reminder, despite Google calling it “passage indexing,” this is a ranking change, not an indexing change. So indexing really has not changed here. It is more of a ranking change, how Google ranks content, based on what it finds on your web page. Google is not, I repeat, not, indexing individual passages on the page. It is however better at zoning into what is on the page and surfacing those passages better for ranking purposes. Why we care. There has been some speculation that passage indexing is currently live – it is not. Google will likely confirm with us when it does go live and when it does, we will let you know. Do note, that this will affect 7% of search queries across all languages when fully rolled out globally. So there should be a noticeable change when this goes live. Until then, keep doing what you do and you can see what changes you need to make to your site, if any, after it launches. The post Google confirms passage indexing is not yet live appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2WC59BZ
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Google has reenabled the request indexing tool, within the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console. The tool was disabled on October 14, 2020 – 69 days ago – and it was expected to come back before the holiday shopping season. That came and past but it is now back before Christmas and New Years. It’s back. Here is a screen shot of the feature in Google Search Console: The announcement. Google announced this on Twitter saying “ee’re glad to announce that ‘Request Indexing’ is back to the Google Search Console URL Inspection – just in time for the new year!” Google also “reminded” us that if you have “large numbers of URLs, you should submit a sitemap instead of requesting indexing” via Google Search Console. Google also said that the “requesting indexing does not guarantee inclusion to the Google index.” Why we care. When this feature was disabled, SEOs and site owners were very much so missing it. Google has said normal indexing is not impacted but the tool was still very much missed. Google has now brought it back and you can use it to expedite crawling and potentially indexing of important URLs. These URLs might be old URLs with updated content or new URLs that you want to get into Google Search fast. But like Google said, just because you use this tool, it does not mean Google will index the page or rank it. The post Google Search Console brings back request indexing tool appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3rosXrd Ready to transform your data into actionable insights that drive more awareness, leads, and revenue? Join us online at SMX Report — February 23! This exclusive one-day event delivers proven strategies and actionable tactics for measuring search marketing success. After attending, you’ll be able to:
You’ll also take a deep dive into Google Analytics 4’s new capabilities, featuring its sophisticated cross-channel view into the customer life cycle. Attend live for the chance to ask speakers your specific analytics questions, or access all sessions on-demand to train at your convenience. Bonus: You’ll also receive a Certificate of Completion and a digital badge to demonstrate your commitment to continued analytics training, beef up your CV, and showcase your involvement in the search marketing community. Register by February 6 to secure your All Access pass for just $99! P.S. Check out the rest of the 2021 SMX lineup, featuring brand new deep dives on creative copywriting and conversion optimization, plus the first-ever 100% virtual SMX Advanced! The post Unlock actionable tactics to measure search marketing success appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2WAGPjV SMX Overtime is part of our SMX speaker series, in which SMX presenters answer questions from attendees on a variety of topics. Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of presenting at the fall virtual SMX. Though nothing replaces the ability to network in-person, SMX did a great job creating an experience that facilitated the discussions and networking that we’ve all been missing, in addition to the excellent content! In my session, “Eternal Testing: The Key to Facebook Ads Success,” there were several excellent questions that we weren’t able to get to, so we decided to put together this post as a means of answering those questions. I’ve also included the questions that we were able to answer because all of the questions were so on point that I thought it would be beneficial to share the answers all at once. “How long should it take to contact a lead who filled out an instaform?” How long to wait before responding to a lead depends on a few things:
If the answer to either of those questions is yes, then that indicates a sense of urgency and I would recommend reaching out as quickly as possible. For someone that requests a demo or a call, the best chance you have of converting them to a sale is at that moment. The longer you wait to follow up, the more time they have to shop around or even to become distracted or change their mind. If the lead is a higher-funnel lead and they are reaching out for content, I don’t recommend trying to push a sale right away, as they likely won’t be ready for that type of commitment. But, I do recommend creating a first touch fairly quickly while they still have brand recall, so that they’re more likely to engage with your follow-up content. I suggest dropping these folks into an email nurture campaign so that they are being engaged in an automated way until their behavior indicates that they are ready to be contacted by sales. If you can make the content they requested the first piece of content, that creates a really seamless way of creating a quick follow-up without seeming overbearing. “How long is Facebook’s learning curve? If we test something, should we let it run for at least 30 days?” This is tough to answer — I hate to give an “it depends” answer but this is a scenario where that response applies. Facebook’s learning curve is better defined by the time it takes to get to 50 optimization events, which can vary from one account to the next — even from one ad set to the next within the same account. The struggle with Facebook is that if you draw out the test too long, you can hit creative fatigue, which can negatively impact your results as well. The length of time before you hit creative fatigue seems to vary across a lot of different factors, which also vary from one campaign to the next. Audience size and frequency play a role here. So, an ad set with a large audience and low frequency will typically hit creative fatigue slower than an account with tiny audiences. All that to say, it’s ideal to get out of the learning phase, which means achieving at least 50 optimization events. The goal should be to get out of the learning phase (ideally within a week) and also to collect enough data to where you can achieve statistical significance in your results. There are a lot of free statistical significance calculators out there — this one from CXL allows you to estimate how many more days you need in your test to achieve statistical significance based upon the current results and the number of days that the test has been running. “Why would learning be limited on an ad campaign that has a bigger budget and more conversions than the other ad campaigns? The audience is large, from the client’s email list, with a lookalike audience.” Facebook’s learning phase requires 50 optimization events and any changes that are made can send it back into learning mode. So, there are a few things that could be happening here:
“What is your take for learning phase status of Facebook Ads? Will it affect the testing scenario?” The learning phase definitely can impact testing. Until you’re out of the learning phase, results can vary wildly. It’s best to get out of learning phase before calling a winner. Realistically, though, some ad sets never make it out of learning mode and, in those cases, you have to try to get a statistically significant result even if it’s still in learning mode. Not only does the learning phase impact the results of tests you run, it also ultimately impacts long term performance of the ad set and ads. For the betterment of performance, I recommend trying to identify ways to get out of learning mode, even if it means finding creative ways to expand targeting while still remaining relevant. “How do you find Facebook’s ‘Budget Optimization’ versus set budgets for ad sets?” I want to love Facebook’s Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO) because, as much as it pains me to say this as a semi-control-freak, Facebook’s bidding algorithms are pretty good. By the same logic, you’d expect CBO to perform better than manual intervention, right? Unfortunately, I haven’t really seen that to be the case. There have been a few times that I’ve used CBO (similar to the instances where it makes sense to use Shared Budgets in Google —because each individual budget would be too restrictive to get good results on its own). I typically find, though, that it doesn’t prioritize well for the goal of the campaign and doesn’t spend as efficiently as I can by setting ad set budgets. “Facebook interest and targeting options are quite limited, especially on B2B. Do you have any suggestions on how we can optimize targeting of audiences?” I love questions about B2B for Facebook because so many folks are resistant to the idea of using Facebook for B2B, so I am always excited when that isn’t the case! The audiences are limited but I’ve seen Facebook work really well for B2B. My favorite audiences of all audiences, for B2B and B2C, are lookalikes. I typically find that they outperform any of Facebook’s interests. If you have first-party data by way of pixel or email lists, that’s where I would start. The more qualified audiences you can create (MQLs instead of just leads, closed won opportunities are better, being able to segment out enterprise clients, etc., the higher value list that you can create, the better). I would start with those as a means of testing. I would also take a look at your Facebook audience insights and see what comes up there as far as your page followers’ interests. Sometimes Facebook has interests around associations, in addition to some data around industries and loose job titles, which can also be good options. “A huge issue we have on the B2B side with FB ads are prospects filling out bogus contact info on lead gen forms and on site lead gen forms.” I’ve seen this to an extent, as well, unfortunately. We had a few interests that drove a ton of volume but also quite a bit of junk, and then that contaminated the pixel-based audiences that we were building lookalikes off of and they became a bit junked up, too — for lack of a better word. If your audiences are big enough, this is a good case for making sure things are segmented so that you can monitor performance at the targeting level — whether it be through on-Facebook leads or through an integration with your CRM. HubSpot, for instance, allows us to monitor lead quality at the ad set level, which allows us to make decisions from there. Sometimes a decision we have to make is whether we’re okay with a little bit of noise in order to get more lead volume at an acceptable cost or if we need to ensure there’s no noise, which may mean moving toward smaller, more narrow audiences, but that might also mean a higher cost per lead due to having lower volume/less data powering the bidding algorithms. Unfortunately, with bad data, lookalikes just make the problem worse — so, we usually either would move to a lookalike model off of only custom audiences from uploaded lists of the quality leads, or look for a different way to build a better pixel-based audience than all leads, if possible, such as a login if a portal exists, or taking the next step to schedule a demo on the calendar from a follow-up email. “How would you update your testing strategy for an ad campaign that tends to get automatically disapproved any time it is updated? The ads follow policy and are typically reinstated after manual review.” This is such a frustrating situation and I feel it in my bones because we, at Cultivative, have a client whose ads are automatically (and incorrectly, I might add) disapproved as soon as we launch them or make any edits. Depending on how many there are, I usually wind up reaching out to support with the campaign ID because individually submitting them for review takes so long. All that said, usually the process looks like this:
“In your opinion, what is the best way to have Facebook and PPC search work hand-in-hand?” Oh, I love this question. There’s a ton of ways that Facebook and PPC can work hand-in-hand. In so many ways that this could even warrant its own article! Depending on how long you’ve been running each channel, and what you’re running in each channel, you often will see an increase in branded search traffic when you activate higher funnel campaigns — such as Facebook prospecting campaigns to new audiences, so look out for that! Monitoring Facebook impression and traffic trends against branded search trends is one way to look for impact outside of monitoring the direct conversions that come from Facebook, if you’re interested in understanding the impact outside of immediate direct response. One of the easiest ways to coordinate campaigns cross-channel is by setting up audiences built on UTMs to monitor the performance of each. You can set up audiences off of traffic from Facebook campaigns and layer them as observation only on your search campaigns. You can also set up audiences off of UTMs to remarket folks who visited from your search campaigns with Facebook remarketing. And you can set up both audiences in Google Analytics to get better visibility into how folks in each audience come through other channels. The nice thing about audiences is that they tell you something about the traffic that you may not have otherwise known, such as who they are (targets and demographics) and what actions they’ve already taken on your site. For example, in Facebook, you have a lot of targeting options that you don’t have in Google Ads and vice versa. If you know that they came from a specific ad set in Facebook, that likely tells you something about their demographics or interests that you might not have otherwise known. In both cases, you can customize ads to the audience to make sure you’re taking full advantage. You can also add negative audiences to avoid sharing the same content that they’ve already downloaded to get them to a different, lower-funnel CTA. There are also so many ways that PPC & Facebook Ads can learn from each other — for example, shared learnings from messaging testing. “What about restricted ad categories, such as housing? Do you have any recommendations on segmenting audiences since options are limited?” Good question, with special categories such as housing, credit and employment, you do have a little bit less targeting segmentation options but there are still quite a few ways you can segment the data — if you have the audience size. One of the bigger struggles I find with housing and real estate is that, if you’re only targeting one city (especially a small one at that) it can be tough to get a big enough audience pool with some of the individual interests even without attempting to segment by age or gender (which wouldn’t be allowed anyway, of course). If you have the data, there are still quite a few ways to segment data, keeping in mind all segmentation should still take into account whether the individual lists can still achieve 50 optimization events on their own (if not, then it probably doesn’t make sense to segment as performance may likely be better if they remain as part of a larger audience). Those segmentation opportunities could include:
“For testing targeting, would you recommend the A/B testing feature on Facebook? Also, what is the ‘ideal budget’ to set for testing?” The Campaign Experiments tool in Facebook is another one that I want to love but haven’t had the greatest of experiences with. I find that often the A/B tests that I run through the tool are skewed in the same ways that they would be without using the tool. For that reason, I often find that using the tool doesn’t necessarily reduce any of the limitations of testing within Facebook. I would love to see this change and am still hopeful that it will, as they have been investing in the tool. The main benefit that I’ve found, other than that it is nice, is that it gives a readout versus using your own statistical analysis tools. That said, there are some things that you can do through the newer campaign experiment tool that you can’t do on your own without the tool, such as holdout tests and brand surveys. Technically, you could set up a holdout test on your own, but their tool makes it easier and gives a cleaner read than what many advertisers have the capability to do on their own, without access to other tools or data partners. As far as budget goes, this varies from advertiser to advertiser. Because it takes 50 optimization events to exit the learning phase, you want to be realistic about budgeting enough to meet that threshold and then still have budget available for testing outside of the learning phase. That will vary from advertiser to advertiser, depending upon their cost of acquisition. The learning phase can be a bit volatile, so I recommend accounting for some extra budget as your cost efficiency may not be as optimal in that time. The post SMX Overtime: Eternal testing, the key to Facebook Ads success appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/34xJ8sm In this week’s video interview, I spoke with Joe Beccalori, the CEO of Interact Marketing, about how SEO has changed over the years. Joe explained that with the changes to the search results page, the value of organic search has diminished and now you need to blend your organic search efforts with other forms of digital marketing in order to get your best bang for your SEO buck. At the start of the video we also spent some time about his history and how he may see things differently as a business owner versus being an employee. It was a fun look back at the SEO space over the years and this is only part one of a two part video series. Here is that 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: Joe Beccalori on the diminishing value of organic appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3nQDlpq 6 events, actionable tactics, affordable for all marketersDecember 21, 2020 (Edgartown, MA): Search Marketing Expo – SMX – the world’s largest search engine marketing conference series, announced it’s 2021 North American schedule, which features six topic-specific events. All will be offered online and at affordable rates, making cutting-edge search marketing education accessible to professionals at companies of all sizes. “The pandemic has profoundly changed how search marketing professionals will learn the latest SEO and PPC strategies and tactics. Getting that training won’t require hours of planning, a week out of the office and an investment of thousands of dollars,” said Chris Elwell, CEO of SMX producer Third Door Media, Inc. “The online editions of SMX we produced in 2020 proved the viability of providing an outstanding educational experience that’s interactive and measurable,” Elwell added. The lineup features six unique, 100%-virtual training opportunities priced between $99 and $249 — each with its own focus and target audience:
All sessions are available for both live and on-demand viewing so attendees can balance their professional and personal lives with their commitment to continued training. Deep-dive workshops will be available during select events for an additional fee. “SMX has always been about offering the best search marketing education for staying on top of this always evolving discipline,” said Henry Powderly, VP of content for Third Door Media. “With virtual events making it far easier for marketers to attend, we saw this as a great opportunity to offer more actionable intelligence to the community through targeted shows that go deep on concentrations like search analytics, content strategy, and code-based optimization. “The pandemic economy has caused businesses to embrace the importance search in connecting with customers,” he said. “The Search Engine Land experts who program SMX see it as our mission to raise the skill set of all marketers who find themselves leaning on this essential channel.” In addition to the aforementioned 2021 events, region-specific SMX events will be produced by Third Door Media’s European partner, Rising Media of Starnberg, Germany, in Germany, the UK, and France. About Third Door Media and Search Marketing Expo – SMX Third Door Media was founded in 2006 with the mission of empowering digital marketing professionals by providing trusted content and community services they need to be successful. Third Door Media produces the global Search Marketing Expo – SMX® conference series. For over a decade, more than 100,000 search marketers from around the world have trusted SMX to deliver actionable tactics and expert-led training that drive awareness, traffic, leads, and revenue. In addition, Third Door Media produces the MarTech® Conference series, which equips senior-level marketers with proven strategies, tactics, and technologies to overcome marketing and operations challenges, and is the publisher of Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, and MarTech Today. “MarTech” and “SMX” are registered trademarks of Third Door Media, Inc. The post SMX 2021 will provide the most comprehensive search marketing education available appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3awiMuX The marketing landscape has shifted since HubSpot introduced the concept of inbound marketing in 2005. Instead of relying on interruptive tactics like cold calling and commercials, inbound marketing focuses on drawing customers to your business through content and channels such as blogs, social media, and video. Plenty of factors continue driving the shift to inbound marketing, but two stand out from our perspective. The first is customer preference. Millennials, on pace to outnumber baby boomers by 2030, prefer to self-educate when reaching buying decisions. They often do so on their mobile devices, turning to search engines and reaching out to friends on social media. Those habits, combined with their demand for personalized experiences, means millennials aren’t afraid to hide their annoyance at outbound marketing tactics when online. In fact, 84% report “leaving a favorite website because of intrusive or irrelevant advertising.” The second reason lies in the value of inbound marketing. According to Kapost, “Inbound Marketing yields three times more leads per dollar than traditional methods.” But how strongly has the shift toward inbound marketing been? Which industries have experienced the highest volume of inbound calls to date? And how effective is inbound marketing at driving leads to call? To put some data around these questions, we studied 129,393,520 calls made over 10 months in 2020 (January 6 to October 8). We tracked the percentage of calls that came from inbound marketing methods for each industry. The figure “call volume” refers to calls with leads that were tracked through CallRail’s platform. These calls came from CallRail’s customer base of 150,000 small businesses and agencies. This sample represents 12 industries ranging from healthcare and real estate to home services and legal. The results, soon to be published on the CallRail blog, show inbound marketing has become a strategy small businesses must invest in — but you probably already knew that. What’s more compelling is how the results show that call-tracking software is one of the best tools available for measuring attribution and optimizing the effectiveness of your inbound marketing and phone calls. The Importance of Call Tracking for Inbound Marketing Call-tracking software adds unique phone numbers to your marketing campaigns that lets you 1) see caller data and 2) attribute calls by source and channel to understand campaign effectiveness. Here’s a deeper look at how call tracking impacts your inbound marketing. A homeowner decides it’s time to fix their leaky faucet. They do a Google search, then click on a plumber’s landing page. From there, they visit the plumber’s Facebook page and watch a few videos. After that, they read reviews about other customers’ experiences with that plumber. The customer may call at any point through this self-education process. When they do, you, as the business owner, want to know what source prompted them to call. That’s where call tracking comes in. Through tools such as dynamic number insertion (DNI), call tracking generates and displays unique phone numbers to your potential customers, which forward to your main business line. That builds data on what inbound marketing channels drive your calls, arming you with information to fine-tune your marketing strategies to drive better results. Industries that stand to benefit most from call tracking In 11 out of 12 industries we studied, the data shows that more than 91% of leads came from inbound calls. Companies that handle such call volumes have a wealth of data to work with. Call-tracking software can help them use that data to find what inbound marketing channels effectively attract, convert, and close new customers. Based on our review of 129 million calls, we found that these industries would especially benefit from investing in call tracking. Read on to find out why. Advertising and Marketing AgenciesAdvertising and marketing generated the most calls among the industries we studied with 45 million (29 million more than healthcare, which generated the second-most calls). That volume includes inbound calls made to the agencies, plus inbound calls agencies handled for their clients. This presents a big opportunity for advertising and marketing agencies to become even more valuable as strategic partners. Clients, especially small businesses with limited time and budget, rely on agencies to show them the most cutting-edge and cost-effective marketing tactics. By using call tracking to attribute and optimize their own marketing, agencies can enhance their existing services and offer new ones. For instance, agencies can use call tracking to deliver more accurate pay-per-click (PPC) data or even run call tracking on behalf of clients. As our 2021 Digital Marketing Agency Outlook Report shows, the agencies who did best in 2020 were those who reevaluated and expanded what services they could offer, including call tracking. Real Estate and Real Estate InvestingThe industries of real estate and real estate investing (that is, individuals or small groups who flip homes for a profit) have long relied on outbound marketing tactics. But the shift to an increasingly millennial marketplace makes it a prime opportunity for real estate professionals to focus on inbound marketing today. That aligns with our findings, which showed that 87% of real estate calls and 67% of real estate investing calls were inbound. And it makes sense. Consider that purchased leads are the number one item real estate agents spend $100+ a month on, yet only 16.5% of agents have success with them. That’s not surprising since most millennials ignore incoming calls. Cold outreach is inherently risky from a quality perspective, too. Atlanta-based realtor Lee Davenport shared why on Follow Up Boss: “The pro of purchasing real estate leads is to give you some IMMEDIATE action in your pipeline if you are a new or returning agent, particularly if you are someone without a local sphere of influence, an established marketing plan, or an existing database of clients. Is this activity the best use of time? Not always, depending on the quality of the lead source, which can make this a con if the lead source is not reputable.” Call tracking can help real estate professionals reduce their reliance on lists (and the ongoing expense that comes with them). By attributing leads to their marketing efforts, real estate professionals figure out what inbound methods will bring high-quality leads with less guesswork. Say a real estate investor produces a video series on how they remodel homes. With the attribution from call tracking, those videos may deliver enough leads to justify cutting back on list buying. Industries with Long Sales CyclesThe more complexity involved in buying a product or service, the more inbound marketing efforts such as blog posts, explainer videos, and even chatbots aren’t enough to address all of a customer’s concerns. In those cases, it’s important companies in these industries use call tracking to continually gather data on their leads:
Call tracking shows you who’s calling, lets you route calls to specific people at your company and compiles an archive of all conversations with each customer. So, no matter if a lead came from an inbound or outbound call, you have the context in front of you to continue developing the relationship and help the customer reach a buying decision. As the above graphic from Gartner shows, complex sales cycles mean businesses have to be ready for multiple conversations with multiple people over a long period of time. Think about the complexity of buying servers, which would likely mean exploring a range of solutions (data tiers, backup service, security configuration) and having conversations with multiple stakeholders. With a call tracking tool like CallRail, you capture each of those conversations. Now you have a record that helps you anticipate customers’ needs and guide their journey to a solution. Call Tracking Software Improves Marketing ROI Across the BoardBy giving you visibility into which online and offline marketing efforts drive your calls, call tracking helps you incrementally drive improvements across all of your campaigns. You can attribute calls to sources such as your customers’ Google searches to direct mail pieces, giving you an at-a-glance view of what channels to invest more in — and which to pull back on. You can drive even deeper insights, too, by adding tools such as Conversation Intelligence. With it, you can do things like automatically qualify calls and track lead values by channel. See for yourself with a free 14-day trial of CallRail. The post What can 219 million calls tell us about inbound marketing? A lot, it turns out appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3aw6uTd Ten state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against Google on Wednesday, alleging that the company has illegally used its monopoly over the online advertising sector to force out competition via a range of exclusionary tactics. “Plaintiff States seek to restore free and fair competition to these markets and to secure structural, behavioral, and monetary relief to prevent Google from ever again engaging in deceptive trade practices and abusing its monopoly power to foreclose competition and harm consumers,” the filing reads. Extracting fees from publishers, advertisers, and as the middleman. The complaint claims that the fundamental change in Google’s advertising business came in 2007, when it acquired DoubleClick, giving the company access to DoubleClick’s ad management software and its base of web publishers, advertisers and ad agencies. Using its new position as the middleman between ad exchanges and publishers, Google required that publishers license Google’s ad server and to make transactions through the company’s own exchange in order to access the 1+ million advertisers that were using Google to buy ad inventory, the complaint alleges. “So Google was able to demand that it represent the buy-side, where it extracted one fee, as well as the sell-side, where it extracted a second fee, and it was also able to force transactions to clear in its exchange, where it extracted a third, even larger, fee,” the plaintiffs stated in their filing. Forcing the competition out. Once Google became the dominant player in the display ad space, it imposed a one-exchange-rule on publishers, preventing them from sending their inventory to other ad exchanges, the plaintiffs also alleged. When header bidding threatened to undermine Google’s position, it introduced Exchange Bidding, which, according to the accusations, was programmed to exclude competition from exchanges in a number of ways, such as by diminishing the ability of other exchanges to identify users associated with publishers’ ad space in auctions and charging publishers an additional fee for selling inventory in a non-Google exchange. “The idea is Google is able to exercise control over the entire process, and it’s massive scale enables it to get more revenue, but also reduce competition,” said Greg Sterling, VP of market insights at Uberall and former contributing editor at Search Engine Land. Collusion with Facebook. In 2017, Facebook announced that it was opening up the Facebook Audience Network to header bidding platforms, which stood to provide publishers with an alternative to Google’s services. One of the ways Google may have been able to halt the momentum of header bidding, effectively eliminating the threat of it chipping away at the company’s ad revenue, was to cut a deal with Facebook. Ultimately, Facebook curbed its involvement with header bidding and, in return, Google gave Facebook “information, speed, and other advantages” in the auctions that Google operates for publishers’ mobile app ad inventory in the US, the complaint alleges. Facebook was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit. Google’s response. When contacted for comment, a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land: “Attorney General Paxton’s ad tech claims are meritless, yet he’s gone ahead in spite of all the facts. We’ve invested in state-of-the-art ad tech services that help businesses and benefit consumers. Digital ad prices have fallen over the last decade. Ad tech fees are falling too. Google’s ad tech fees are lower than the industry average. These are the hallmarks of a highly competitive industry. We will strongly defend ourselves from his baseless claims in court.” If the case goes to a trial, “It could be several years before there’s an outcome, and if there’s an unfavorable outcome for Google, it will appeal the decision and that could add further time onto the whole thing,” Sterling said. Meanwhile, the landscape for advertisers and publishers will remain unchanged. How Google’s alleged practices are impacting businesses and consumers. “What the case is saying is there’s really nobody in the position to compete with Google, and that harms publishers because there are just fewer places for them to go, and as a result, prices can increase,” Sterling said, and if prices are artificially inflated, that harms both businesses and consumers. “The monopoly tax Google imposes on American businesses . . . is a tax that is ultimately borne by American consumers through higher prices and lower quality on the goods, services, and information those businesses provide. Every American suffers when Google imposes its monopoly pricing on the sale of targeted advertising,” the complaint asserts. If this goes poorly for Google. If internal documents suggesting collusion between Google and Facebook do exist, then they paint a damning picture of Google and lend more credibility to the claims outlined in the complaint. If a judge renders a formal decision, it may include damages, or the above-mentioned “structural” changes, which can mean that Google sells off certain parts of its ad business or changes certain ad policies. However, Google has vast resources at its disposal and will do whatever it can to win, and if that’s not a possibility, it may attempt an appeal or negotiate a settlement. “The collection of these suits against these big companies [Facebook, Google and other large tech companies] reflect the consensus in political circles, in Congress and at the state level,” said Sterling, “While these companies have so much money and can delay any reckoning, I can’t imagine that they escape completely unscathed, but at the same time, it’s hard to imagine there will be major structural changes in the market as a result.” The post Google accused of collusion and abusing monopoly power in new lawsuit appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/37qSdVQ Google is launching a digital “try it on” experience for some cosmetics-related queries using augmented reality, the company announced Thursday. It is working with data partners ModiFace and Perfect Corp to visualize thousands of eyeshadow shades and lipsticks from brands such as L’Oreal, MAC Cosmetics, Black Opal and Charlotte Tilbury. The feature is launching this week in the US. How it works. When you search for certain eyeshadow or lipstick products on the Google app, the knowledge panel may contain a swatch of shades, which can be viewed on different models of varying skin tones. You can also try the products on virtually. The experience uses your mobile device’s front-facing camera and augmented reality to apply the cosmetics to your face. Product recommendations in Shopping and Discover. In the announcement, Google also said that product recommendations from beauty, apparel, and home and garden enthusiasts and experts may appear in the Google Shopping section and Discover feed for mobile users. The company provided two examples of what that may look like, featuring professional makeup artist Jonet and candle brand Homesick Candles (both links are only viewable on mobile devices). The recommendations contain paid ads for the associated products. Why we care. This augmented reality feature may make the Google app a more appealing shopping destination for users researching cosmetics to buy. It also presents marketing opportunities for cosmetics manufacturers. The product knowledge panel itself contains organic shopping listings, which may facilitate traffic to online retailers. Zooming out a bit, this application of augmented reality showcases a practical use for the technology, bringing a “physical experience” of a product to digital and giving customers a more detailed idea of what they’re buying. The recommendations that may appear in Google Shopping and Discover feeds could apply to a multitude of sectors, and may enable brands to leverage influencers within the mobile Google Shopping experience and in Discover feeds. The post Google uses augmented reality to let users try on cosmetics appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3ajVMPv Google has announced it released version 1.5 of the Google Ads Editor. Google Ads Editor is downloadable application for managing your Google Ads campaigns. Some advertisers find it more efficient to use the Ads Editor to manage their campaigns over using the web interface. Google said “this release includes new tools to help you improve your ad strength, support for additional recommendations, and image extensions.” What is new. Here is a list of what is new in version 1.5 of Google Ads Editor.
You can learn more about all the changes over here. Why we care. These may be welcomed updates to the Google Ads Editor if you use any of these features in the web interface. As Google said this “release includes new tools to help you improve your ad strength, support for additional recommendations, and image extensions.” This was actually released in November but Google just announced it today. The post Google releases Google Ads Editor v1.5 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3r666kj |
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