Cookies are here to stay, for now
Google isn’t getting away that easy with killing third-party cookies. The company has announced that it will postpone blocking third-party cookies from Chrome by 2 years.
Why is this happening?
According to Google, “it’s become clear that more time is needed across the ecosystem to get this right.”
According to the internet, the real reason is regulation:
- Three days ago, the EU has launched an antitrust investigation into Google banning third-party cookies.
- The UK competition watchdog has also recently placed Google on their radar, mandating that they don’t remove cookies without their green light.
The Crew’s take: For now, your cookies are safe. We also won’t be surprised if the phrasing is delegated at a later date.
Twitter has launched a new bid unit for videos
It’s called “15s view”, and you guessed right: It charges you for 15-second (or longer) views.
Why use it: According to Twitter, compared to legacy bid units, advertisers who use the 15s view bid unit get 89% higher video completion rates on average. Another advantage is a 25 percent cheaper cost per completed view.
The AI magic behind it: Twitter stated that they have been working on a prediction model that identifies users who are most likely to spend more time with video content. Then they show your video to those users and charge you on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis.
Why we care: Because there’s a difference between an impression and an impression seen by an actual human. Most of us are interested in the latter, so any large platform that’s working on this has our attention.
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SEO
Read this if you use Google’s FAQ schema
If you keep your ear on the pulse of SEO, you may have noticed that Google recently made an update to the FAQ schema:
There can be only two FAQs per URL in the search results.
If your reaction is… “so what?”, Brodie Clark outlined how this update can impact your SEO strategy.
Previously, SEOs would mark up only four FAQs to get maximum coverage. And if you added more than four, a “show more” drop-down menu would emerge. Consequently, any other FAQs in the sequence would be displayed only after the accordion was expanded.
What does the update mean?
- Websites that were taking advantage of the 4 FAQs will see their snippet real estate reduced. However, websites that were in a lower spot will appear in a few pixels hgher.
- In some cases, the query will influence the FAQ schema: For different search terms, Google will display different FAQs from a URL.
- Google mostly uses the first 2 FAQs being marked up on the page. This means the first two FAQs are the most important, and you should optimize them.
- Marking up only one FAQ on your page won’t allow for rich results: Read Google’s announcement of “maximum 2 components” as “you should have at least 2 FAQs marked up to be eligible.” This means you shouldn’t remove the other FAQs you marked up.
In a nutshell, you should review your first two FAQs marked up. But if you want to get into the nitty and gritty of this update, Brodie Clark wrote quite a thorough explanation.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
INSTAGRAM: Posting on Instagram as a marketer is a pain because you can only do it from mobile. Fortunately, the social media network is fixing that. Some users have reported that they now have an option to post from their desktop.
YOUTUBE: About 40 percent of US ad impressions on YouTube now happen on TV screens. The opportunity: Few marketers are aware of this, and they have been slow to shift their budgets to YouTube TV.
EMAIL MARKETING: No, email marketing is not dead because of Apple’s recent email privacy update. Here’s why.
ADVERTISING: As more people install iOS 14.5, advertising budgets are switching from iOS to Android. This article provides some more specific data on this.
GOOGLE: The search engine won’t allow you to target only Gmail anymore. Standalone Gmail campaigns are becoming read-only.
MARKETING: This is a handy free Gmail extension that lets you analyze the reviews of your Google My Business competitors.
MOBILE: Mobile app platforms are lowering their fee. First it was Amazon. Now, Google. The search company will let some mobile apps pay a 15% fee, instead of the standard 30 percent.
BRAIN TEASER
Bret was born on December 28th, yet his birthday always falls in the summer. How is this possible?
You can find the solution here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
This AI generates verses from your favorite rappers
AI is doing more than speaking and writing these days. It can now rap as well.
It comes in the form of a nifty tool called Uberduck.
How it works: Uberduck allows you to enter some text, choose your favorite rapper (Eminem, Tupac and of course, Biggie) and kaboom, you’ve got a song.
This guy from TikTok has a cool example. Although, knowing at what current state AI is, we assume it got him at least a hundred tries to get it right.
Still, it’s a step in the right direction. Is AI opera next?