Click Through Reads #52: Limited Targeting for Children

Welcome to another week of news Click-Through-Readers! Two of our top stories this week are about new limited targeting for children on Google and Facebook. We cover the details of the changes aimed at protecting children under the age of 18. In Twitter news, they released a new updated Agency Playbook that has all the best practices a marketer needs to know. In other top stories we review new updates to Google Editor as well as new Bing Automated Bidding options. There are so many things to cover in the news so without anymore intro, let’s get into it!

Google Rolling Out Limited Targeting for Children

Google will soon be implementing new restrictions aimed at protecting those under 18. The safeguards designed to make the Google environment safer for minors include:

• Image removal - anyone under the age of 18, or their parent or guardian will be able to request the removal of their images from Google Image results
• Advertising - Google  will block ad targeting based on the age, gender, or interests of people under 18.

Facebook Announces Targeting Limitations for Younger People

Last week, Facebook announced that they will be introducing new restrictions for how advertisers can target youth on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. In the next couple weeks, advertisers will only be able to target users under the age of 18 based on age, gender, and location. Options such as interests and online activity will no longer be targetable, though it is still ambiguous on how this will apply to audience types such as lookalikes. This decision came from building concern over the susceptibility of young people and their ability to make decisions about ad privacy. Once users turn 18, Facebook will notify them about the targeting options and tools available to advertisers to reach them so that they can choose if they want to opt in to personalized ads. 

Google Issues Warnings and Strikes for Policy Violations

Starting September 2021, Google is launching a new program to test a warning and strike system for repeat Google ad policy violations. This program will be issued for specific policies that include Enabling Dishonest Behavior, Unapproved Substances, and Dangerous Products or Services. These types of violations have been in Google’s ad policy for a long time, but with increased penalties for each strike and warning. Google’s main goal for this system is to hold advertisers accountable about Google’s advertising policies and help prevent future violations. Here’s the level of each warning and strike:

Google attribution models now support YouTube and Display ads

This week, Google announced that they upgraded their data-driven attribution and non-last click models to support YouTube and Display ads; adding YouTube and Display ads to attribution reports as well.

The data-driven attribution model now measures engaged views, in addition to clicks, to learn more from how users interact and what converts best. If used alongside automated bidding, or with updates to manual bidding, data-driven attribution can drive additional conversions at the same CPA. 

Attribution reports were upgraded with the addition of “Model Comparison” reports, where you can compare your cost per acquisition and return on ad spend for different attribution models. Look at Search, YouTube and Display ads all in one place and understand their impact on conversions.

Attribution models can now be changed for an existing conversion action.

By following these instructions, change the attribution model of an existing conversion action; however, doing this might bring changes to the reporting on your “Campaigns” tab:

Credit shifts: 

• See conversion credit shift across various campaigns, networks, ad groups, and keywords associated with a conversion action when changes are made to your attribution model. 

Fractional credit: 

• Since credit conversions are distributed between contributing ad interactions, decimals can now be found in your "Conversions" and "All Conversions" columns.

Time lag: 

• Since the "Campaigns" report counts conversions based on the time frame in which the relevant interactions took place, multiple interactions happening at different times may temporarily show fewer conversions for the recent days following a change of attribution model.

Twitter Launches Updated Agency Playbook to Guide Advertisers on Best Practices

Twitter released their latest agency playbook to help marketers succeed on the platform. 

Readers can find detailed information on how to market to the evolving user base, noting that “ad engagements...are on the rise, while younger users are also increasingly turning to Twitter to communicate on key issues.”

The platform provides guidance to creating well-written tweets, as well as key best practices for tweet ads.

Marketers can also take advantage of the platform’s best practices for paid campaigns. Get the playbook full of new usage insights, revised ad specs, case studies, examples and more here.

Instagram Is Testing Ads in its Shop Tab

Instagram continues to push in-app purchasing with continuous investment in Instagram Shops. The company has said it’s currently testing ads in Instagram Shop as it’s latest new ad placement with select advertisers in the US. The new ad format includes single images and the option for an image carousel. These ads will only appear on mobile devices (as Instagram Shop only appears on mobile devices). The goal of this initial test phase is to get feedback from top ecommerce brands across some of the most popular categories that people shop for on Instagram like beauty, home decor, pet products, etc. Instagram has not released a rollout date generally, but says the plan is to expand the test of the new ad format to other markets over the next several months.

Google Set to Launch Google Ads Editor V1.7 August 9th

With this new update advertisers can now manage Hotel ads, Youtube audio ads and lead form extensions, and select specific parts of their campaigns to download.

Google Introduces New Reach and Frequency Metrics in Display and Video 360

Recognizing that to deliver a consistent user experience across new channels such as CTV and Streaming, and more established ones, Google has introduced 2 new tools to help you with a personal assessment of cross-channel frequency on a campaign by campaign basis, at no extra cost.

They are adding a data visualization for each campaign that spans across channels and has a frequency goal set at the campaign level. It shows how much was gained due to frequency management. You can also access the same information at the advertiser or partner level by creating an offline report. This real time view lets you assess the value of managing your programmatic campaigns across channels in a consolidated way, and also better armed to defend marketing budgets.

With this visualization you no longer need to set up an experiment with a test and control phase in order to see the results of your frequency management strategy. Display & Video 360 uses log data to compare reach that you would have had to get from different campaigns.

Display & Video e360 will now be able to calculate the extra reach you get for each Programmatic Guaranteed deal.  This will give you a better understanding of how the deals contribute to the incremental reach you get from applying frequency management across media. This will be available in a dashboard in the “May Inventory” table. 

Twitter tests new shopping section for brands

Twitter is running a shop module pilot with about a dozen brands, testing the addition of a shopping section at the top of the brand’s profile. This test launched on IOS devices in the US this week and offers a product carousel that visitors can view and shop. A user can browse products and purchase items without leaving the Twitter platform. A timeline of expansion to more brands has not been announced yet.

Pinterest Launches New Features for Monetization & Partnerships 

After launching Idea Pins earlier this year, Pinterest announced new features to assist creators with earning money and growing their business: product tagging and paid partnership tools. 

Product taggings enable Ideas Pins to be shoppable. Paid partnership tools lets creators earn commission through affiliate links and sponsored content, and they can get insights on performance.

Idea Pins evolved from Story Pins, making it possible for creators to publish high-quality and long-lasting content directly to Pinterest that users can save. Pinterest recognized that pinners are “89% more likely to exhibit shopping intent on products tagged in Idea Pins than on standalone Product Pins.”

For pinners, the addition of product tagging means they can now shop from their favorite Creator’s Idea Pins, going from inspiration straight to purchase. This tool is accessible to all business accounts in the U.S. and UK, and will roll out internationally over the coming months.

For those creating branded content with existing brand partnerships, adding the “paid partnerships'' label to Idea Pins will now disclose those paid relationships with ease. 

Currently, the paid partnerships tool is only live for select Creators in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, France, Spain, Italy Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Peru.

Pinterest shared that “they are focused on building a creator platform centered on inspiration over influence and entertainment,” and that “these latest updates make their content actionable and shoppable.” 

Microsoft Launches a New Addition to its Suite of Automated Bidding Strategies and More 

Now available through Microsoft Advertising, a new addition to their suite of automated bidding strategies, Target Impression Share. With this strategy, you set your Target Impression Share, where you want your ads to appear, and your budget and Microsoft Advertising automatically set your bids. 

Microsoft suggests using this bidding strategy when you want:

• More visibility and awareness during sustained periods and promotional periods.
• Competitive advantage by maximizing your impression share.
• Increase the likelihood of more click and conversion volume by optimizing your ad placement

To get started with this strategy Microsoft suggest the following:  

• Using your low-risk campaigns, set a target impression share based on your campaigns historical performance. Then Allow the Microsoft AI to evaluate performance for 2-3 weeks before making any campaign adjustments. 
• Don't set a maximum CPC cap. If it is set too low it will limit your performance.
• Use experiments over any pre-post comparison period for 1-2 weeks before fulling testing the strategy. 
• Use conversion tracking (not required)

Track product-specific conversions with product conversion goals

Using shopping campaigns or other feed-based campaigns, you'll be able to get a better understanding of the products your customers are buying after clicking on your ads with product conversion goals. When you create a new goal you will be able to track product purchases. 

New automated extensions

Starting this month, you can opt in or out of any of the following extensions:

• Dynamic location extensions, which enhance ads with location information from your location extensions and Bing Maps
• Dynamic Multimedia, which enhances ad with images and videos
• Additional syndication decorations to enhance ads. These are added by search partners. 

Account labels

Manager account-level labels will help you easily tag accounts, campaigns, ads, and keywords of accounts you are managing and also pivot your reports and insights into labels. 

Integral Ad Science Brand Protection

An additional layer of brand safety protection is now available, powered by Integral Ad Science (IAS), to help advertisers implement the right parameters to protect their brand.  IAS will automatically scan all pages of all sites that Microsoft Audience Network ads can appear on, rate the page based on risk associated across their standard content categories (Adult, Alcohol, Gambling, Hate Speech, Illegal Downloads, Illegal Drugs, Offensive Language and Controversial Content, Violence) and send a signal preventing any ads from showing on any pages that they deem as moderate or high risk.

Changes to unified campaigns

Microsoft Advertising has made improvements and added features to unified campaigns.  With this new update users now able to manage multiple sub-accounts underneath a single parent account and do the following: 

• Create multiple unified campaigns accounts underneath the same account manager
• Create a mix of unified campaigns and expert mode accounts under the same account manager
• Post to Instagram accounts from the social media section of unified campaigns. (Organic only)
• Invite other users to have access to and manager their accounts
• Use the same billing pages and see the same level of detail as Expert mode users. 
• Post on-boarding tips and always visible overview information