In this week’s digital news to watch, our Senior Performance Marketing Manager Tom and Senior Performance Marketing Executive Kylie, discuss Google Ads latency issues, new ads extension icons, Tesco’s first Ramadan campaign, updates from Google Data Studio and the new Google Search label.
Ad reviews confirm Google Ads latency issues
If you use Google Ads with any frequency, you’ll have noticed that Google Ads ad reviews has been extremely slow recently. Google have finally acknowledged the issue which has been impacting a significant subset of users. There currently hasn’t been any notice of when this will be fixed but chances are everything will be back to normal early this week.
New Ads Extension Icons tested by Google Ads
Google appear to be testing new ad extension icons which have CTAs within them. These icons or buttons appear to show just below the headline and description line of the ads and arguably make it look a lot clearer in terms of showing what the ad is asking the user to do. There will likely be some value in lead generation clients being able to offer sign up or register buttons in their ads. Similarly retail is going to benefit from clearer CTAs. However, it’s likely these buttons will also show a clear differentiation between organic and paid results which may dissuade some from clicking.
Tesco’s first Ramadan campaign
Ramadan began on the evening of the 1st of April this year and for the first time ever, Tesco ran a marketing campaign promoting the month. As we’ve been talking about over the last year, this more personal touch marketing led by marketeers with real experience on the subject are great campaigns for building the brand and a community within the brand. Having great content backed up by high quality images and messaging are going to resonate more with target customer groups. The use of OOH campaigns is can sometimes be seen as daunting for some brands but the potential impact/cost of specific geo locations can be significant.
Google data studio add more search console insights
Users can now upload more insights from search console thanks to the new update from Google data studio. Additional data such as allowing users to visualize traffic from more Google sources is now available to use through the Google Data Studio connector. The update was announced by Google Search Advocate Daniel Waisberg in a second post from his blog series. Here is a statement from Waidberg: “… we have some good news for Data Studio users: as of today, the Search Console connector includes data for Discover and Google News traffic, similar to the data recently added to the API.”.
Highly Cited Sources is a now new Google search label
This new label in Google search will help users locate pages that are highly cited. The label is next to pages in top stories, and has been introduced to help users find more credible information online. The label was rolled out in the US on the 2nd of April which was also international fact-checking day. Here is what Google has to say:
“The widespread availability of information – from all different kinds of sources – is great for learning new facts and perspectives from around the world. But it can also make it difficult to sort out what information is credible and what isn’t.
Earlier this week, Sundar announced Google is investing $10 million to help fight misinformation about the realities and facts of the war in Ukraine. This includes new partnerships with think tanks and civil society organizations to conduct region-specific research into misinformation and disinformation and cash grants to support fact-checking networks and nonprofits.”
The update will be going global in the next few weeks.
If you would like support with your digital marketing or would like any other information, get in touch with our industry specialists by sending us an email to team@modo25.com
