This Week in Digital Marketing - November 18, 2022

This week's digital marketing news includes the introduction of an e-commerce function by TikTok, the removal of Google Business Profile reviews from local listings, and an upgrade to Google's review snippet program that makes it simpler to use.

TikTok Has Launched An In-App Ecommerce Feature
TikTok has recently introduced TikTok Shop, where users can now make purchases directly through the app, in addition to its most recent purchasing options. The new function is invite-only, but you should start testing it as an alternate method of product promotion if the Shop feature becomes accessible to advertisers and companies globally.

15 Marketing Predictions For 2023

1. B2B brands will hire popular creators
   
2. TikTok ads > Facebook ads
   
3. Content will really be King/Queen NOW
   
4. Influential content written by AI
   
5. Retention will matter more than ever before
   
6. Marketers will have to justify spend
   
7. Influencer marketing will become mainstream for B2B
   
8. More creators/brands investing in owned audience
   
9. Brands will need to up their CX and brand affinity
   
10. Probabilistic attribution will start to mature
    
11. User research will become less siloed
    
12. Marketing will need to get creative with budgets
    
13. Creating a media arm will become a default standard for B2B brands
    
14. Mutually beneficial and purpose driven brand collaborations with influencers
    
15. The rise of B2B brands creating and distributing short-form content
    

Google Business Profile Bug Causing Reviews To Disappear
There are several instances where companies lose all of the reviews they have accumulated over time in their Google Business Profile listings. The problem appears to be caused by Google automatically applying web-based modification suggestions to those business profile listings, which can result in the creation of a new CID for that business listing and the subsequent dissociation of the reviews from that listing. As a result, the reviews are no longer present when you see the company listing in Google Search or Google Maps.

The lifeblood of your local Google Search and Maps business can be the reviews on your local listings. Before calling the business, making an online purchase, or driving to your location, many searchers read the reviews. Some even contend that reviews affect local Google search rankings. If your reviews vanish, the company could suffer a severe loss.

Google Now Recommends Using Dots For Decimal Numbers In Your Review Snippet Structured Data
For decimal numbers in your review snippet markup, Google now advises using dots rather than commas in its updated structured data help guide. You might want to set aside some time to update any commas in this program that are now being used in place of dots. Although it doesn't seem urgent, you should nonetheless put it on your list of things to do. And choose dots instead of decimal points for these review snippets if you intend to apply this markup to your website in the future.

Google Analytics Just Introduced A New Suggested Audience
The term "7-day unnotified users" describes the new suggested audience. These users are those of the app who have not yet received a push notification. Advertisers can easily add audience segments for the business categories you utilize the most by using suggested audiences. Most importantly, begin configuring GA4 right away before its sunset in July 2023 by testing various portions.

Google Search Console Adds Shopping Tab Listings Feature
A new Shopping tab that provides more details about your product snippets, merchant listings, and shopping tab listings in Google Search is now being rolled out by Google within Google Search Console.

It would be really helpful to have more information from Google about how well you are doing in Google Search, especially as the holiday shopping season approaches. So, as the holiday shopping season gets underway, dive in and examine how your products are performing in Google Search to determine where you can optimize.

YouTube Is Testing Shopping And Affiliate Features In Shorts
A commerce function and affiliate scheme are being tested by YouTube for its short-form video offering, Shorts. Users will be able to purchase goods while they browse Shorts thanks to new shopping tools. With the new affiliate program, creators will be able to get paid when a product they recommended in a Short or standard video is bought.

The shopping option will be accessible to viewers in the United States, India, Brazil, Canada, and Australia while the affiliate program is currently only being tested in the United States.

Many Advertisers Still Using Twitter Despite Musk’s Chaos
Major brands stopped running ads on Twitter now since Elon Musk bought the social media platform. Even if every advertiser came back today, the company's primary issue—its inability to generate revenue—would still remain. In the past ten years, Twitter has only twice made a profit.

That's been made more difficult by Musk. When he decided to buy the business in April of last year, the market was booming. At a time when social media stocks were overpriced, he paid $44 billion, or double their market value. since a decrease in the amount of money spent on digital advertising. Even if Twitter managed to make as much money as it did the previous year, it wouldn't come close to enough to pay off the debt that Musk has burdened it with.

Yelp Introduces Video And Image Spotlight Ads On Their Home Screen
With Yelp's new Spotlight Ads, businesses can advertise 7–30 second videos or still photographs on the site's front page. According to Yelp, the new ads are a development of their Seasonal Spotlight Ads, which allowed businesses to market static advertisements for special seasonal or holiday deals.

Yelp continued, "We've seen an uptick in demand from clients wanting visible homescreen ads even beyond the holidays since launching Seasonal Spotlight Ads."

Testing Yelp's new Spotlight Ads is advised for national and local businesses with physical locations like restaurants or stores.

Some of this information will be useful to your company, while some will not. This is where we can help you. We can sort through these updates and determine which ones are most significant to you and your company. Contact us for a consultation!