2015 is flying by at a rapid pace, and the month of May featured some big stories in both our industry and within the four walls of the Location3 office. The world of Local marketing saw some big rumors surface, we launched a brand new mini white paper on mobile app optimization, and our CEO Andrew Beckman announced his transition to role as Chairman of Location3. We also posted more new episodes of our Digital Shoptalk podcast. Oh, and we had a little fun at A-Basin too. On to June!
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN SEARCH?
Best Practices for Display Creatives
With digital display advertising becoming more and more a part of our everyday lives, especially on mobile, Google has released a checklist of sorts to ensure advertisers are being effective with dollars they dedicate to creatives. This is an addition to the recent focus Google has provided on what they consider industry best practices.
Rejoice! Labels in AdWords Editor
We were all very excited and pleased with the rollout of AWE 11.0, but now the real fun begins. Labels! By adding in a layer of hierarchy to your accounts that don’t necessarily need to abide by the campaign/ad group/keyword structure, you can quickly pull reports and make changes to any segment you desire. This opens up a ton of opportunities to create efficiencies and allows advertisers to work smarter.
Photo credit: Google AdWords Blog
Bing Making Improvements to Match Types
As Bing aligns the capabilities of their platform to the industry norms, how search intent plays into close variant matching is a technology they are constantly improving. May 21 was another milestone to getting their algorithms up to snuff, so marketers should keep a close eye on their campaigns to spot changes in performance and query data.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN DISPLAY?
Having an integrated approach is something that we strive to implement for all our clients. As media channels continue to be more and more fragmented, it is important that all your strategies are working together since it is very likely that consumers will interact with more than one of those strategies throughout their conversions process. Be sure to check out our latest blog on how to integrate your display strategies with other digital and traditional strategies to create an integrated media mix.
M-Commerce continues to grow as users become more comfortable with their devices and gain confidence in the security of their devices. A recent study by AppLovin & Tune has unveiled an interesting behavior – the peak times for mobile purchases are at 7am and 7pm. And surprising the lunch hour (1pm) represents the lowest mobile buying. For more results see full article here.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN CONTENT?
Ready to peruse some puppies? Purina launched an incredibly in-depth, interactive site with tons of rich content on everything you need to know as a puppy owner. Puppyhood.com is a great example of content marketing done right…at least at launch. It’s been up for three months without any content updates. Fresh content is a major factor in search engine ranking, so Purina would have been better off to launch with a full content strategy.
Spotify announced the audio streaming service will add podcasts and video. The company shared its new goal of “finding the perfect content to accompany every moment in your day.” This is another move showing how media companies continue to diversify content offerings in order to remain profitable and relevant (and also illustrating the continuing explosion of video).
Photo credit: The Verge
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN LOCAL?
Google Maps Breakthrough: Search And Navigation Without A Connection
Later this year Google Maps will be available offline, enabling users with poor connections to plan ahead and download the mapping information. We will all be using this feature on our next big excursion into the Rockies.
Apple Acquires GPS Startup
In a move to strengthen its mapping application, Apple has acquired another location technology service, Coherent Navigation. Since 2009 they have also acquired Placebase, Locationary and Hopstop, all in an effort to provide high quality mapping data and experiences to its user base.
Yelp Seeking A Potential Buyer
Rumors continue to flow as Yelp is getting shopped around. Apple is the natural fit since they are sitting on a mountain of cash and already have strong ties to Yelp, but other companies appear to be in the running, including Priceline.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN ANALYTICS?
We’ll be at the Google Analytics Partner Summit next week, learning more about the Power of Together! Stay tuned for updates from this exciting annual event!
SuperMetrics is a data importer for Google Analytics that can beef up your campaign analysis. Check out the key features and info here.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN SEO?
Now on Tap
Google announced at its annual I/O conference “Now on Tap,” an extension to the already popular Google Now. This takes the integration of apps in the search experience further, linking apps and relevant pages through basic functions like email and messages. This makes Google Now far more intuitive, and brings results deeper into Now, and outside of traditional web searches.
Photo credit: Search Engine Land
Google search results now supports iOS Apps
Google will now start presenting results for iOS apps that are similar to experiences on Android devices we’ve been seening for just about two years. Google is testing an initial set of apps, but for iOS developers, adding the proper mark-up and sitemap to Google Search Console will be imperative moving forward as app further integrate with search.
“Near Me” Searches Have Doubled
With mobile queries increasing to 50% of searches, so too has the amount of near me searches being conducted. Customers are still looking for in-store experiences from brick and mortar businesses. As a result, it has never been more important to have a solid LLM and local SEO strategy.
Google “Webmaster Tools” is now “Search Console”
Google has re-launched specific features and rebranded the tool to be more user friendly. For more details about the update, including the new “Search Analytics Report” visit our blog.
Enough about Google. Apple, with WWDC right around the corner, has announced the existence of their own webcrawler Applebot. This will primarily feed Siri and Spotlight Suggestions to start, but could evolve to a full-fledged search engine to compete with Google and Bing.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN SOCIAL MEDIA?
Big news from Facebook this month was the launch of their Instant Articles. The focus is to drive a stronger mobile experience. Previously it took an average of 8 seconds for content to load. With this new service, content will load up to 10 times faster. There are also additional features content developers can take advantage of to increase engagement with their content. This really puts pressure on other social outlets to improve their experiences and build relationships with large content sources. This service is currently only available for top content producers, but will be rolled out to everyone soon. Here are details from the Facebook announcement and then a couple reactions from the industry.
Facebook Announcement can be seen here.
Industry reactions can be seen here.
Photo credit: Facebook
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN VIDEO?
Increased engagement and interaction with ads is the goal of most new product development, and is the focus of the new addition to the YouTube Trueview ads. YouTube announced on 5/14 the availability of a multi-product feed to their Truview ads. This new feature allows consumers easier access to the products featured in the video, and gives advertisers another way to promote their products. For full details click here.
How has your TV viewing changed over the past few years? The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) has conducted several studies monitoring and analyzing this change in viewing behaviors, and don’t anticipate the move to streamed services to slow. Respondents cited the appeal of greater control, better selection and the advertising as reasons for the move to streamed services. See the full article here.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN CREATIVE?
The Evolution of the Brand Style Guide
We recently enjoyed this post on brand style guides by visual content platform Canva.
It showcases 50 of the coolest guides, which demonstrate the evolution from static documents to interactive resources.
A trend you’ll see in many is the shift towards demonstrating application as much as providing rules. We take this approach when designing websites – instead of presenting conceptual mood boards, we create homepage variations that help brands better conceptualize different design approaches.
Photo credit: Canva