Hello Click-Through-Readers! This is a weird week...there was football on a Tuesday and the Bachelorette premiered on a Tuesday. My husband and I had to flip a coin over who got to relax and watch their show live, and who had baby bedtime duty and recorded tv.
In the news this week we have some big updates for Amazon Sellers just in time for Prime Day! We also cover Google’s new Performance Max campaigns that are currently in Beta, Microsoft’s new Digital Marketing Center, Facebook Lookalike audience expansion, and finally new attribution reporting for YouTube. It’s a big week of new marketing features, Covid-delayed professional sports, and a new season of reality tv. We are ready for it all!
Let’s get to the news!
Google Performance Max campaigns
Performance Max is Google’s latest automated campaign type that’s currently in Beta. It’s designed to help advertisers that are short on time or resources. Instead of creating separate campaigns for different Google properties, this campaign type will run across Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Discover, etc.
There are some inputs you can provide such as specifying audiences most likely to convert and utilizing conversion value rules. Advertisers will provide different copy and image/video variations that will fuel the responsive ad units. The search ads are not keyword-based, and they will run as dynamic search ads.
Microsoft’s Digital Marketing Center for search and social management adds features, opens beta
Microsoft’s DMC is now available as an open beta in the US for small businesses. This was designed to simplify management across search and social campaigns.
As they opened up the beta, they have added new features to the platform. This includes Analytics, which reports on conversion actions that occur on site along with average time on site, pages visited, etc.
Microsoft has also added a search term control AI tool that will show the advertiser which search terms will trigger their keywords on Google and Bing.
Lastly, Ad Reviews in DCM auto-generates text ads based on the advertisers website and business categories, which minimizes the work the SMB owner will have to do at launch. Prior to this, users had no visibility into the automated ads. They show the top performing automated ads and it allows for users to edit and modify ad copy.
Amazon launches Sponsored Display custom headline and logo worldwide
A long-awaited update from Amazon, marketers can now personalize their Sponsored Display product targeting ad creatives with custom headlines and brand logos. These Sponsored Display ads feature a custom headline and logo, and can serve alongside customer reviews, product description pages, shopping results pages, or under the Featured Offer. The customization element has been requested by marketers as a way to enhance brand messaging and increase customer engagement.
To create custom headlines and logos, upload an image and input a headline as part of product targeting campaign management. There is an ad preview so marketers can edit and adjust the creative elements prior to submitting the campaign for review and launch.
Facebook unveils lookalike audience expansion
In Facebook’s weekly update, they announced that lookalike audience expansion is now available. With the expansion, advertisers can now select to expand the reach of their lookalike audiences to reach additional users. When selected, the expansion stays within your ad set parameters like age, gender or location targeting.
Google launches attribution reporting for YouTube
Measuring marketing efforts determines the bids, budgets, and strategy for future campaigns. Google knows the importance of being able to attribute credit to paid advertising efforts, which is why they have rolled out attribution reporting for YouTube campaigns.
Advertisers can now see just how big of a part videos play in a consumer’s decision making toward a purchase. The available metrics to view are Top Paths, Assisted Conversions and Path Metrics alongside Search and Shopping campaigns, so users will be able to see how YouTube works with other Google networks. This was the next step toward Google’s overall goal of cross-network attribution tracking, so attribution reporting for Display will be rolling out in the coming months.
