Ad extensions are now assets, and Video ads might be flipping
If “focused work” and “get to the point” are your love languages, well… you’ll appreciate this.
One less step: Google is integrating ad extensions and assets with campaign setup to remove friction from your ad creation and management process.
Remember how adding sitelinks, images, and prices used to be separate from campaign setup?
Now you can add them when you create new Search or Performance Max campaigns. Very handy.
… And there’s a new menu: The “Ads & assets” menu shows you performance reports of all assets across your account.
Flippin’ good videos: Also, Google announced they’re experimenting with a new technology that “flips” videos from landscape to vertical format based on how users are watching YouTube.
… Which could save you from adapting videos to different formats.
Why we care: Both features could make your life a little easier when it comes to creating campaigns. Who doesn’t love cutting out extra steps?
And while we’re on the topic of promising new features…
E-COMMERCE
Amazon and Walmart like having you around
… And they’re rolling out new features to keep you advertising on their platforms.
Amazon wants in on email marketing: The company is planning to roll out a new email marketing feature called Tailored Audiences—currently in beta.
This tool will let merchants send free emails to existing customers on the platform, including repeat customers, recent customers, and high-spend customers.
Whoa.
… And Walmart is handing over the ad keys: The company is onboarding new and existing Marketplace sellers to their ad platform.
Walmart also promises to improve their Ad Center later this month to make it easier to launch and optimize Search campaigns.
Search Brand Amplifier for everyone: Not only that, they’re rolling out their previously exclusive search ad campaigns to registered Marketplace brand owners and sellers.
Nice.
Why we care: It seems these goliath marketplaces are shifting their focus towards smaller merchants to incentivize them against using stand-alone platforms like Shopify.
That could benefit you in a few ways… give you a broad audience, increase your customer lifetime value, and help you avoid privacy issues and vanishing data signals.
It will be interesting to see how well these tools perform…
SPONSORED BY BOUNCER
A group of email deliverability experts wants to boost your revenue… for free
$1,000 per day.
That’s how much you can argue we were losing several years ago, back when we had deliverability problems and our newsletters were ending up in the Promotions folder.
And during Q4, it was even worse.
See, you’re competing against thousands of competitors for the same inbox.
If you don’t land in the Primary folder, your emails don’t get opened. That means no sales. Zero.
Deliverability is the foundation of profitable email marketing campaigns.
And this complete Deliverability Guide by Bouncer solves those problems for good.
It’s a series of blog posts, short videos, and live training by email deliverability experts.
You can get it for free in your inbox right now!
It will help you prepare for the holiday season and set up the right infrastructure so that your Black Friday emails get opened and make money.
Get guidance from experts… free.
ADVERTISING
How you can build a PPC audience framework for a privacy-focused future
It’s hard to imagine a world without cookies.
But for online advertising, that world is fast approaching… and marketers need to start preparing for a strict no-cookie diet.
So Joseph Kerschbaum recommends building your audience in two ways:
- Squeezing every last drop from third-party tracking before it sunsets in 2024.
- Importing first-party data to your PPC advertising platforms.
Already done that? Good.
Now it’s time to start expanding your network:
Use similar audiences. Major PPC platforms like Google and Microsoft provide “similar audiences” segments, which is when the algorithm finds users with similar online behavior.
Yes, it’s a third-party audience feature, but it could stick around because it’s based on search history and account profile data.
Build affinity and in-market audiences. These are users that are searching for a specific product, which means they’re high-intent, short-term audiences.
The main upside of these audiences is that they don’t need to be built off your first-party audiences and they’re created by on-platform usage, making them “durable.”
Use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) predictive audiences. This segment blends your on-site audience data with predictive algorithms within GA4 to determine potential user actions.
For instance, GA4 may predict likely purchasers, 28-day top spenders, and more.
Play around with the Topics API. Google has proposed a few cookieless tracking solutions, but their Topics API in particular seems promising.
Here’s how it works: Chrome determines topics and interests based on a user’s 3-week search history. Brands can target those topics to deliver specific ads. After 3 weeks, the topics are deleted.
Since it’s privacy-friendly, it may just be a key tool for expanding your audiences in the future.
Time to throw away the cookie jar… We’re entering a new era. Start planning sooner than later!
SPONSORED BY OUTBRAIN
A free course to help you become a native ads expert
Tired of walled gardens on paid social? Not getting results like you used to? It might be time to discover the power of native advertising for yourself…
With this latest course, Unlocking Performance with Native, the Outbrain Academy helps you:
- Expand to other channels besides social.
- Thrive in a cookieless world.
- Drive customer actions and engagement with content.
- … And, more importantly, improve your ROAS.
Become a native ads expert with the Outbrain Academy today!
THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
The biggest problem with most copywriting advice
Let’s talk about “viral” copywriting advice.
Viral copywriting advice usually goes like this: Someone posts a screenshot of some good copy, lists reasons for why it’s good, and publishes their analysis on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Or they post “bad copy” alongside “good copy.”
And followers love it. It’s fun and interesting. It goes viral. But is it actually helpful?
Nope! Because here’s the thing about copywriting:
Good copy depends entirely on context. Universal advice is not helpful.
Let’s take an example. We’ll write two lines of copy for a toothpaste brand:
- Line #1: Smile in the mirror. Don’t like your smile? OK. Smile in the mirror after three months of brushing with Toothpaste—now, you don’t want to stop smiling.
- Line #2: Toothpaste. Brighter smile. Cleaner feel. Fresher breath. Peace of mind.
Now we’ll write our own version of viral copywriting advice…
We’ll take Line #1 and write, “This is good copy because it’s conversational. It creates a villain and shows a before-after transformation.”
We can take Line #2 and write, “This is good copy because it keeps the value props simple. Keep your sentences short. Be straight-up about your value.”
Both versions seem like good advice, right?
Wrong! We’ll never know if the advice is good or bad because we have no context for either line.
We don’t know if these are headlines or body copy… social media ads or billboards… brand awareness or conversion copy. And most important of all… we have no data.
So when people on LinkedIn or Twitter take copy completely out of context to post viral bite-sized advice, take their advice or analysis with a grain of salt.
By the way, this is true for all sorts of marketing, not just copywriting. So tread carefully… It’s a wild world of marketing advice out there.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
CAREER: The Daily Job Hunt newsletter is helping 200,000 job-seekers rediscover their potential, stand out in the crowd and win the job race. They make the job-hunt process fun, exciting, and more fruitful. Subscribe for free now.*
TIKTOK: Stop, thief. TikTok copied directly out of BeReal’s playbook to launch TikTok Now, a feature that encourages users to take front and back photos at a random time every day. Is mimicry the future of social media?
LINKEDIN: No more random pitches; LinkedIn is rolling out a new Account dashboard for its Sales Navigator. It will help you track your saved accounts’ interests and how they change over time. Nice.
SNAP: No smartphone? No problem. Users can now access Snapchat from any device. The company launched Snapchat for Web for everyone. They’re also launching Chat Shortcuts and other features.
*This is a sponsored post
BRAIN TEASER
We hurt without moving. We poison without touching. We bear the truth and the lies. We are not to be judged by our size.
What are we?
You can find the answer here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Road stops you didn’t know existed
Sure, road trips are fun in their own right.
But imagine getting suggestions for little known landmarks and sites you could visit along the way…
That’s what this website does.
Just enter two locations and you’ll get a full list of unexpected, adventurous stops—places you likely had no idea existed.
Something to bookmark for when you need that weekend getaway from the holiday hustle.