Google announces expanded text ads will be sunsetted in 2022
Technically this announcement snuck in at the very end of August. But it’s a big shake up in the SEM community so we had to share it here. Google has announced that “beginning in July 2022, advertisers will no longer be able to create new expanded text ads (ETA) or edit existing ETAs in Google Ads”. Instead, you will be forced to use responsive search ads or Dynamic search ad formats. Our search marketing experts break down what this means and more in this blog post about Google’s ETA announcement(link to Ashley’s post).
Expedia group shares fall travel outlook
We love some great travel insights. These fall travel outlook details from Expedia breakdown who is most eager to travel this fall (hint: Millennials are in the lead) and where they are most interested in travelling to. What excites us most is the mix of both city center and outdoor destinations. Dive into the details here to guide your fall marketing strategies including who you may want to start crafting your targeting and messaging towards.
Google updates how pages titles are displayed in Search Results
About a month ago Google confirmed that it had changed how it displays page titles in the SERP results. Google decided that in certain situations it would replace title tag text with the text from the page’s header tags. While the initial changes found by many in the SERP immediately after the change were dramatic, the amount of pages/changes that are showing the results have now leveled out. We’ve noticed only certain pages we’ve audited have been re-written in the SERP, mostly pages that had yet to have optimized page titles written. The thought amongst the team here is that Google is only focusing on rewriting or replace page title text that is underperforming. So, if you notice page titles that do not contain your assigned page title text, it may be a good indicator it’s time to try different copy.
Google Ads Phrase Broad Match Keyword Preferability and BERT
In what seemed to be an announcement that just confused most of the SEM community, Google announced updates to the way keyword matching works. The biggest change seems to come around the inclusion of different relevance signals, including use of BERT, to determine which keyword is most relevant. Exact will still trump phrase and broad in matching to the query as long it is the most relevant and has the higher Ad Rank. GCommerce is continuing to test different ways to use match type structures in our accounts to achieve the most cost efficient results.
Google Announces it will use Data Driven Attribution in Google ads by default
Data Driven Attribution was always something small businesses aspired to have, but could never possibly attain due to extremely high minimum conversions needed to qualify. At the end of September, Google announced that it is officially moving away from last-click attribution and instead using data-driven attribution as it’s default for all conversion tags for all advertisers. This means, no matter the total conversions you achieve in a month, your account will be eligible. This will roll out over the coming months and is another step Google is taking to help advertisers “future-proof their measurement” in a privacy centric world. GCommere long did away with last-click attribution many years ago in favor of the next best option for our accounts which was default-position based attribution. We’re excited to monitor how this change impacts our reporting and campaign performance.
Mailchimp Acquired by Intuit
Our last piece of digital marketing news to round out September updates comes from the major announcement by Intuit that it had acquired Mailchimp. The move comes from a desire by Intuit to establish themselves as an end-to-end customer growth platform. Email marketing and engagement possible through Mailchimp’s platform gives Intuit the ability to do so. From our point of view it proves that owning your customer data and organizing your eCRM in a way that allows you to best communicate and grow your customer database is even more important.
