ADVERTISING
Bye-bye text ads. Hello shipping annotations
If you run Google ads, we have both good and bad news for you:
- The bad news: Expanded text ads will be phased out on June 30, 2022. Responsive search ads will take their place. (Yes, Google is shoving automation down our throats…again.)
- The good news: Google has added some new features to help you stand out this holiday season. One of those features is the ability to add shipping and return annotations in Google search.
How to prepare for these changes:
- For the response ad change, Google recommends that you have at least one responsive search ad in each ad group of your Search campaigns by June 30 of next year.
- For the shipping annotation update, make sure to set up your shipping information and return policies in Google Merchant Center.
Luck favors the prepared, and we have a feeling you’ll be one of them.
MOBILE APPS
South Korea: 1 – app stores: 0
Google and Apple can no longer force developers to use their in-app billing systems in South Korea.
This is the gist of the new law that was just passed by the South Korean government.
Setting a precedent: South Korea is the first country in the world to intervene and prevent Google and Apple from forcefully imposing their own payment system.
Will other countries follow suit? We’re placing our bets on the U.S.
The Crew’s take: As 2021 comes to a close, so do app store fees. Some app stores, such as Shopify, have eliminated their fees altogether if you make less than a million dollars.
Google and Apple also cut their fees in half for small businesses. Will these charges fall into the single digits by the end of the year?
There’s a decent chance.
SPONSORED BY ADCARD
How to extract more cash from all your campaigns, even negative-ROI ones
Let’s be honest.
Almost everybody loses money on advertising.
We all have a few negative ad sets here and there. Especially during the testing phase.
In a whole year, this turns into thousands of dollars flushed into Google and Facebook’s hefty pockets.
What if you could recover a part of all this money?
From all campaigns, regardless of their ROAS.
The solution? AdCard.
It’s the card created specifically for media buyers, by FunnelDash along with Mastercard.
With AdCard you get up to 3% cashback on your ad spend.
And they have all the perks that make the life of a media buyer easier:
- Unlimited virtual cards for each ad account, offer, and network. With no spending caps.
- Assign a unique name and address to each card to stabilize ad accounts at scale.
- Custom spend rules to automatically ensure your media buyers never overspend past your budget.
You know you should claim this cashback.
APPLE
Apple’s App Store optimization
Have you wondered why the search results in the App Store are ranked the way they are?
The App Store algorithm, at its core, has one goal: show the most relevant app related to each search the user makes.
It uses three pieces of information to establish which app is more relevant: the app’s name, subtitle, and keyword list.
Downloads and reviews come into play as well, but they’re not always the biggest ranking factors.
A treat: Ariel Michael from Appfigures analyzed the results from popular keywords to assess how the App Store algorithm works.
Let’s go over some of the results.
Keyword: Calendar
Very popular keyword. Equally high competition.
The first result is taken by Apple’s calendar app, which appears by default on iOS devices. The second spot is occupied by Google Calendar, with 404.6K downloads.
The third spot is taken by Calendar from Luni, which has surprisingly fewer downloads than the app in the fourth spot, Calendars: Planner & Reminders by Readdle.
The catch: The algorithm is putting more weight on Luni’s use of “calendar” than Readdle’s because Luni isn’t using any other words.
Essentially, the algorithm gives all the possible weight to one keyword, boosting Luni’s app up in the list (despite having fewer downloads).
The story repeats for another keyword: Recipes.
The app in the third spot for “recipes” is Tasty By Buzzfeed. It has more downloads than the combined downloads of the apps in the first and second spot. But these two have the keyword in the title or subtitle.
Takeaways
- Downloads are not the only factor used by the algorithm to rank an app.
- The weight is distributed across all keywords. Fewer keywords mean more weight for each.
- Repetition is ignored: If you use the same keyword both in the title and description, the algorithm will only pick one. And it will probably be the one in the description.
Intrigued? See the rest of the keyword results from Michael’s analysis.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
E-COMMERCE: What happens when you combine the right timing, the right trends, and a supportive community? You get a 7-figure business. A member of the Trends community built a business that does $101K in revenue per month by selling dried hibiscus flowers on Amazon. Learn what they did for just $1.*
TIKTOK: It’s coming; TikTok plans to announce a Creator Marketplace API in September.
ANALYTICS: Keep this in mind if you’re targeting a tech-savvy audience; more than half of them block Google Analytics.
GOOGLE: Paywalled content ≠ thin content, according to Google.
LINKEDIN: Bye, bye, Stories. LinkedIn sunsets their Instagram-like Stories feature.
SEO: Here’s a neat Google Data Studio worksheet that can help you determine which of your page titles Google probably changed during the update.
TELEGRAM: They’re bigger than you think. Telegram just reached one billion downloads globally.
AMAZON: Guess who’s going to build a live audio feature next.
*This is a sponsored post.
BRAIN TEASER
What falls but never breaks? What breaks but never falls?
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.
Google will tell you how much time you waste in meetings
Let’s be honest. You can probably count about 12 different things you would rather do with your time other than spending it in another drawn out meeting, including:
- Watching grass grow.
- Tallying up the number of sand grains on a Florida beach.
- Spending time with your nosy relatives playing 20 questions at Thanksgiving dinner.
Something to make you smile: Google plans to add a new “Time Insights” panel to their Calendar app.
The panel will show you how much time you’ve spent in meetings, providing you with all the evidence you need to prove that your time is being flushed down the pipes.
For your own good: The “Time Insights” feature will be enabled by default and will be gradually rolled out to everyone over the next two weeks.
Keep your receipts: Unfortunately, all of this data will only be visible to you, not your manager (so you will need to screenshot your Insights if you want to use them as ammo).
Some individuals might find this feature frightening, especially if you’re the one calling all these gatherings together (we’re talking to you, Ted). But, as others have said, awareness is the first step to recovery.
Maybe “Meeting Anonymous” groups will become a thing after Google rolls this out.