July 31, 2016

This Week in Digital – 29th July 2016

Short on time, but dying to know the latest news from the digital marketing world? Don’t worry; we’ve got you covered. Here’s a roundup of the biggest stories from the past seven days:

AdWords is Releasing Three New Reports

Three years ago, Google AdWords made a leap to help advertisers measure cross-device conversions, now the search giant will go a step further. Google AdWords is introducing three new reports to the Attribution section. Inside AdWords reports these as:
‘Devices – see how much cross-device activity is happening in your AdWords account
Assisting Devices – inform your device bid adjustments by learning how often different devices assisted conversions on other devices
Device Paths – examine the top conversion paths for your customers using two or more devices’
The changes will be rolled out over the coming weeks and should be found under the Tools tab.

Text Ads Are Expanded and Native Ads Changes Imminent

Google expanded its text ads this week, providing marketers with precious extra space. Two headlines are now available, each holding up to 30 characters, as well as an 80 character description. It is hoped that this extra information will boost mobile CTRs.
These expanded text ads (ETAs) will appear alongside regular ads until October 26th 2016, when the long-form versions will take over. In the meantime, it’s time to start A/B testing!
Alongside Tuesday’s changes, it also announced the availability of device bidding and responsive display ads for native. Google will auto-generate these from a headline, description, image and URL, and will serve all devices with the GDN.

Google Reveals Redirects Do Not Affect PageRank

Earlier this week, Gary Illyes, a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, announced that using 301, 302 or 30x redirects will not affect PageRank in any way. There has been much debate over the years, so this message really does cut through the rumours to get to the truth.

Facebook Made $6.3billion in Ad Revenue During Q2 2016

According to recent reports, Facebook’s ad revenue increased considerably in Q2 to $6.2billion. This is a 63% change year-on-year and mobile accounted for around 84% of the total revenue of $6.44billion.
Facebook has also revealed it now has 1.7billion monthly active users, up 15% from last year, with 1.57billion mobile monthly active users. That’s more than double the population of Europe!

Facebook ad revenue
Say Goodbye to Converted Clicks

Google has revealed that as of September 21st 2016, AdWords users will no longer be able to track converted clicks as it claims it is now an ‘outdated metric’.
Instead, the data found under the ‘Conversions’ column will become the default way to analyse these actions. This means you will be able to track desired actions only and not all clicks (intended or not), providing detailed insights into how effective your ads are.

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