It’s the start of a new week here at Modo25. So, Kylie and Tom have been checking out the PPC and SEO headlines to bring you this week’s top five digital news stories to watch. This week, we take a look at why Meta is increasing ad load on Instagram and how beauty brands are focusing on authenticity on channels such as BeReal to re-engage their audience.
Morrisons introduces a full-service, internal advertising agency
Last week, we mentioned that retail media was growing at a significant pace this year and we’re set to see another major player enter the market in the UK. Morrisons will offer a full-service, internal advertising agency to deliver high-performing campaigns to shoppers. This will more than likely cause a domino effect as we see more retailers copy their rivals on retail media platforms.
Meta announced it’s increasing its ad load on Instagram
Instagram is getting new ad slots this week which will appear on the Explore page and profile feeds. With Facebook struggling with falling advertiser spend, they will be looking for more ways to improve performance and serve ads at a higher rate. Long term, this feels like a stopgap for falling revenue figures as Facebook continues to lose users and advertisers move budgets to other platforms.
Google’s review guidelines updated to disapprove negative comments
Google is continuing to clamp down on fake and deceptive reviews on its site. The Google Maps contributor guidelines were updated last week to include a new line under the sub-heading that details what they consider to be fake engagement and will therefore be removed.
The new line reads, “discouraging or prohibiting negative reviews, or selectively soliciting positive reviews from customers”. This follows Google’s guidance a few weeks back that businesses are not allowed to incentivize those leaving negative reviews to remove them. It seems that Google is making a big effort to ensure reviews are natural at present.
Beauty brands focus on authenticity as consumer trust declines
Social media fatigue is nothing new, but what does it mean for advertising? With 64% of people saying they’re likely to stop using social media if they received too much advertising.
90% of consumers believe control of their data is a consumer right with mainstream social media apps providing little control of how your data is used.
At the forefront of these difficulties are beauty brands which are trying to show brand authenticity and trustworthiness and separate themselves in a growing market. Beauty brands have started to latch onto the idea of using BeReal which doesn’t allow filters or advertising as a way of reaching their customers in a more meaningful manner. There’s no doubt BeReal is growing quickly but how it can survive long-term without any revenue streams remains to be seen.
Searching visually is rare on Google
Google’s John Mueller was asked on Twitter last week about using stock vs unique images. Although his answer did include the usual “it depends”, he did elaborate to reveal that users searching visually, using image search or Google Lens, is rare in comparison with other more traditional search types.
Therefore, using stock images that are duplicated across many sites, isn’t as big a problem as it could be. This does obviously depend on how much your site relies on imagery, however, and if ranking within Image Search is important to you, then you should ensure your images are unique.
If you need support with your digital marketing strategy, in SEO, PPC, Meta for paid social or any other services, send us an email to team@modo25.com and we’ll be more than happy to discuss what you need.
