It’s been another rollercoaster week in the news, but what’s trending in digital? Kylie and Tom have been trawling the PPC and SEO headlines to bring you this week’s top five digital news stories to watch. This week, we catch up on Google spam updates, how ad spend continues to decline and how 75% of marketing agencies are outsourcing help.
Spooky searches: Google reveals top search trends for Halloween 2022
Google’s own website, Halloween Frightgeist, has been updated with 2022 Google Trends data to reveal the top Halloween costumes by search volume across the US. This can tell you the most popular costumes overall in the US and by State to help you identify what your local customers are searching for.
With a week to go, are there any quick wins you can implement to boost your best witch costumes before the big day?
Ad spend declines for the fourth month in a row
Ad spend continues to reflect tightening budgets and economic uncertainty, as it drops for the fourth consecutive month in September. According to the Standard Media Index’s September 2022 Core Data report, ad spend was down 5% in September year-over-year (YoY).
The report also found that ad spend by channel in the third quarter YoY is down 6%. Among the channels to take a hit; television, radio and magazine ad spend saw double-digit dips in the third quarter.
Google’s latest spam update rolling out now
Google announced last Wednesday (19th) that their latest October 2022 spam update in their series of recent spam-fighting updates is currently rolling out worldwide and in all languages.
Google have been regularly releasing these spam updates over the past year to maintain the quality of the search results. We never get much information about these updates, unless there’s a specific target, but unless you’re taking part in some spam tactics, you should have nothing to worry about.
If your site sees drops unexpectedly following this update, we recommend checking your site’s security and that you haven’t been hacked.
Google is making the shopping experience on desktop more visual
Google will be adding a more comprehensive selection of product images to the shopping results page. You will also be able to click on one of the products and bring up a panel with links to different retailers selling the product. This feature allows you to read more about a product without losing your place in search results.
In a blog post, Google said that the new shopping search experience will come up when searching for clothes, electronics, beauty products, or home goods.
With this update, search results for shopping-related queries on desktop are closer to the experience Google recently rolled out on mobile.
75% of marketing agencies are outsourcing additional help
According to content creation platform Verblio, which surveyed more than 400 content marketers, 69% of in-house marketers and 75% of marketing agencies are sourcing help from either freelancers or content marketplaces.
Most of the requirements were around content creation, and the lack of resources and knowledge in their team to meet client expectations.
When it comes to outsourcing, the main pain points for agencies were similar; getting content which is authentic and industry-specific (43%), and client satisfaction (29%). On average, it was found that in-house marketers are producing more pieces of content per month than an agency would for a single client, with almost half (49%) producing five-14 pieces.
If you need support with your digital marketing strategy, in SEO, PPC or any other services, send us an email to team@modo25.com and we’ll be more than happy to discuss what you need.
