This Week in Digital Marketing - January 14, 2022

Naturally, we have a number of Google updates to share with you, along with some insights into the 2021 holiday shopping season and some additional digital marketing snippets from the week.

Google Ads Releases Disapproved Ads Auditor Tool
Google has released a disapproved ads auditor tool for Google Ads that flags and can delete policy violating ads across your accounts. To integrate this into your software you need to have skills in Python, BigQuery API, Google Ads API and OAuth 2.0.

What it does: The disapproved ads auditor tool “enables advertisers to review at scale all disapproved ads across their Google Ads accounts,” the company said. This view allows advertisers to proactively audit their accounts , analyze the ad disapprovals holistically and identify learnings to minimize and reduce submission of potentially policy violating ads, the company added.

Why we care: This can help those who manage a lot of accounts or a lot of ads an easier way to stay on top of and scale management of disapproved ads in Google ads. Google said “advertisers operating at scale need a solution to holistically review policy violating ads across their accounts so they can ensure compliance with Google’s Ad Policies. As Google introduces more policies and enforcement mechanisms, advertisers need to continue checking their accounts to ensure they comply with Google’s Ads Policies.”

Why Consumer Privacy is Google’s Ace in the Hole
The latest earnings announcements from Alphabet and Facebook have made it abundantly clear that the consumer privacy movement is creating a competitive advantage for Google. It’s important that businesses understand this reality as Big Tech firms enact tougher privacy controls.

Since January 2020, both Apple and Google have made some big moves in the name of protecting consumer privacy. 

In 2020, Google said that the company would phase out third-party cookies on Chrome, the world’s most popular browser. As a result, advertisers would lose the ability to serve up highly targeted ads based on tracking consumer activity on Chrome. Google later postponed its timetable for doing this after regulators stepped in and insisted on having oversight with the process.

In 2021, Apple enacted the Application Tracking Transparency (ATT) privacy control as part of an update to its operating system for Apple devices. ATT requires apps to get the user’s permission before tracking their data across apps or websites owned by other companies for advertising, or sharing their data with data brokers. As much as 96% of users in the United States are opting out of having their behavior tracked.

Google’s Page Experience Update Coming to Desktop Next Month
Google told us this was coming this past November, and it should go live next month. The rollout will take a couple months. It will start in February 2022 and finish rolling out by the end of March 2022. This update will include all the current signals of the mobile version of the page experience update, outside of the page needing to be mobile friendly.

E-commerce Sales Jumped This Holiday Season as Search Marketers Weathered Google Updates
U.S. consumers spent $204.5 billion on e-commerce purchases during the holiday season, according to data from Adobe. This represented an 8.6% increase in online spending year-over-year.

The numbers show that e-commerce spenders spread out their shopping more over the months of November and December. For instance, in the weeks before Nov 24, spending was up a whopping 19.2% YoY, while the period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday – the so-called “Cyber Week”), spending was down 1.4% from the previous year. Sales were up again in the weeks after Nov 30, growing 5.6% YoY.

Google Business Profiles Sets Waiting Period for New Owners and Managers
Google updated its Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) help documents to say that when you add a new owner or manager to a business profile, those new users may have to wait seven days prior to being able to manage all the features of the profile.

When a new owner or manager is added to an existing Business Profile, they must wait for 7 days before they can manage all the features of the profile. During this 7 day period, the new owner or manager gets an error if they try any of the following:

• Delete or undelete a profile.
  
• Remove other owners or managers from a profile.
  
• Transfer primary ownership of a profile to themselves or a third user.
  
• An existing owner or manager tries to transfer primary ownership of the profile to a new owner or manager still in their first 7 days.
  

If the new owner or manager deletes their account within the first 7 days, they’re removed from the profile. If they undelete their account, they must be added to the profile again.

Why we care: If you added new owners and/or managers to a Google Business Profile and that user cannot manage all the features for that business listing, then this is why. It is a new limitation Google is making, maybe to increase security and prevent fraud or hack attempts.

Digital Marketing Snippets

• According to Google, linking to other sites from your website doesn’t necessarily increase your ranking, however, it does make your site more valuable to users.
  
• Twitter has a new video reaction option, just like TikTok’s stitch and duet options.
  
• Cows are in the Metaverse! A farmer in Turkey is putting VR headsets on their cows to show them greener (and generally better) pastures, and milk production has increased!
  
• Facebook has been rejecting women’s health ads, even though many men’s health ads have been approved.
  

Some of this information is relevant to your business, and some of it might not be. This is where we can help. We’re able to break down these updates and figure out which ones are most important for you and your business. Contact us for a consultation!