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Good morning, Marketers, and where does your ad money go?
That’s what the Association of National Advertisers is trying to find out. The group is currently looking for consultants to help them figure out where search marketers’ money goes in the automated digital ad-buying process.
“A lack of transparency in automated digital ad buying, an increasingly complex process that requires participation from a number of ad, media and technology vendors, is costing advertisers billions of dollars in waste and making it difficult for them to plan their investments,” Bob Liodice, chief executive of the ANA, told Alexandra Bruell and The Wall Street Journal.
The Airbnb news from March (where they cut all their spending and saw — no change) makes advertisers think even more about this: where is our money going and is it being spent fairly for ads? What do you think? Do you trust ad exchanges and marketplaces? Or do you just operate within their rules because you have to? Let me know [email protected].
Carolyn Lyden,
Director of Search Content
Digital books can no longer be advertised on Google Shopping ads
“Beginning May 18, 2021, Google will no longer support the advertising of digital books globally on Shopping ads. This means that all Shopping ads for digital books will be disapproved at the offer level, including those running at the time the policy goes into effect,” according to a policy update announcement.
Physical books and audiobook advertisers will see no change. If your ads do accidentally get rejected, Google recommends requesting a review.
“This update only applies to Shopping ads for digital books. Buy on Google listings, which already prohibit the sale of digital products, won’t be affected. Listings for other types of books, like audiobooks or physical books, won’t change,” said the announcement.
Google’s launch of Core Web Vitals is just a month away; are your sites ready?
Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics used to measure a website’s loading, interactivity and visual stability. All three are related to site speed in one way or another, which is something we know has been important for both search engines and users for a very long time.
Knowing what Core Web Vitals are is one thing, but finding a way to audit and communicate Core Web Vitals issues to clients in a way that is both useful and actionable is a challenge that SEOs across the globe are facing. This audit process is designed to provide real details, examples and data to work with when tackling Core Web Vitals issues.
Twitter wants you to follow local news, Verizon sells AOL, and Google fails to stop ads violating its own policies
Twitter is launching a major campaign to encourage people to follow local journalists. “Amid the pandemic, local news companies have suffered devastating financial blows, resulting in thousands of lost jobs and newsroom cutbacks. At the same time, the crisis has served as a daily reminder of how critical local journalism is to keep communities informed and safe,” wrote Sara Fischer for Axios.
Verizon sells Yahoo and AOL businesses to Apollo for $5 billion. “The sale allows Verizon to offload properties from the former internet empires of AOL and Yahoo. Verizon will keep a 10% stake in the company and it will be rebranded to just Yahoo,” said Steve Kovach for CNBC.
Google has failed to stop “shyster” websites advertising on its search engine, despite promising to fix the problem, the BBC has found. “Adverts for unofficial services selling government documents such as travel permits and driving licences are against Google’s own rules. But the BBC found adverts for expensive third-party sellers every time it searched during a 12-month period,” wrote Chris Fox.
The keywords mapping cheat sheet for different types of sites
Keyword mapping is the process of organizing which pages on your sites should rank for which keywords. However, the mapping process may not look exactly the same for every type of site. Aleyda Solis has seen how the search journey differs based on the very different sales cycles of ecommerce vs SaaS vs local services and created a free Google Sheets template for each to help you with the mapping process:
“In E-Commerce sites users will be looking for product types with characteristics as well as product types along brand names, for which you’ll have (and will map) facets and different levels of brand products pages. On the other hand, these sort of pages won’t exist on SaaS sites, where users will be looking for products by their needs/features for their type of business,” she said.
Even if you’re not in each of these verticals, the Google Sheet can be a useful example of how to begin the keyword mapping process for your own industry.
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