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Digital News To Watch: Google has announced more new features launching for PMax

In this weeks digital news, Google has announced more new features launching for PMax. Key updates include campaign-level negative keywords, high-value customer acquisition goals, and brand exclusions for different formats. Retail media networks (RMNs) are under increasing scrutiny as advertisers demand better measurement beyond traditional return on ad spend.

Google has released its first major update to the Search Quality Rater Guidelines since March. Big news from Meta: Threads, the platform everyone rushed to last summer, is officially testing ads. Apple and Google are the subjects of an investigation under the UK competition watchdog’s new digital markets competition regime, with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) probing its dominance in the mobile market. The new year has brought with it gloomy news for marketers hoping for a more optimistic consumer, with the overall consumer confidence score dropping by five points in January, according to GfK’s Consumer Confidence Barometer.

New Performance Max (PMax) features from Google

Google has announced more new features launching for PMax. Key updates include campaign-level negative keywords, high-value customer acquisition goals, and brand exclusions for different formats. Advertisers can now use “URL contains” rules, demographic exclusions, and device targeting. Enhanced reporting features include deeper Search insights, search themes usefulness indicators, and improved asset group performance tracking with segmentation and downloads. These updates should provide advertisers with greater control over AI. Google is encouraging users to continue to feedback on their thoughts around PMax so far.

Read more about the new PMax features here.

ROAS vs. incrementality: Scrutiny around ad spend grows in booming retail media space

Retail media networks (RMNs) are under increasing scrutiny as advertisers demand better measurement beyond traditional return on ad spend. Marketers are now prioritising incrementality metrics to assess campaign effectiveness and determine if sales would have occurred without ads. Retailers like Kroger and Albertsons are introducing tools to improve measurement, while standardisation remains a challenge. Despite growth, questions about data accuracy persist, with some retailers claiming full attribution for sales. As RMNs evolve into broader media platforms, advertisers seek deeper insights to justify their investment, making incrementality a key focus for proving retail media’s true impact.

Read more here.

Google Updates Search Quality Rater Guidelines: What To Know

Google has released its first major update to the Search Quality Rater Guidelines since March. Human evaluators use the Search Quality Rater Guidelines (PDF link) to assess the quality of search results. Although these guidelines don’t directly affect rankings, they provide useful insights into what Google views as high-quality content. This update reflects Google’s evolving approach to determining quality, particularly regarding AI-generated content and new types of spam.

Read more here.

Meta Threads Takes the Next Step By Launching Ads

Big news from Meta: Threads, the platform everyone rushed to last summer, is officially testing ads. In its announcement on Janauary 23rd, Threads is launching an image ads test with select brands in the United States and Japan. For now, this is just a trial run with a handful of brands, but it’s a clear sign that Meta is ready to monetise its newest social media experiment.

Read more here.

Apple, Google face CMA probe into UK mobile market grip

Apple and Google are the subjects of an investigation under the UK competition watchdog’s new digital markets competition regime, with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) probing its dominance in the mobile market. The CMA’s initial SMS investigation seeks to determine whether Apple and Google should be subject to Strategic Market Status (SMS) designations, allowing the watchdog to impose “pro-competition interventions” to curb potentially dominant market positions. The pair are being investigated over their dominance in the mobile market, specifically operating systems, native app distribution, and mobile browsers, and their impact on businesses developing services to run on their devices.

Read more here.

‘Dark days ahead’: Plummeting consumer confidence brings fresh challenges for marketers

The new year has brought with it gloomy news for marketers hoping for a more optimistic consumer, with the overall consumer confidence score dropping by five points in January. According to GfK’s Consumer Confidence Barometer. The Overall Index Score, which brings together five different measures of consumer confidence, decreased by five points to -22 in January. This means the UK’s consumer confidence had fallen back to where it was at the end of 2023, when the economy had freshly emerged from a period of very high inflation. Of the five different scores that make up the Overall Index measure, all of them declined in January’s Consumer Confidence Barometer. The most notable declines came in consumer attitudes to the overall UK economic situation. Consumers are both more negative about how the economy has fared over the past 12 months, and more downcast in their expectations of how it will perform over the coming 12 months.

Read more here.

For more information on any of these stories, or for support with your digital marketing. Get in touch with our team of digital specialists. If you’re looking for an improved Google Ads strategy with PPC campaigns or long term SEO strategies, send us an email to team@modo25.com 

Tom Pickard - Modo25
Author
Tom Pickard
Tom Pickard - Modo25
Author
Tom Pickard
With over ten years of experience across multiple digital marketing, Tom works as our Head of Paid Search at Modo25. Tom specialises in marketing technology such as feed management, marketing optimisation machine learning and paid marketing strategies.
 

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