LOCATION3 MEDIA NEWS:
Location3 Media team members recently attended and exhibited at the Franchise Consumer Marketing Conference in Atlanta, GA. This event expanded our focus on franchise brands beyond our annual attendance at the IFA Convention each February, and brought another opportunity to establish ourselves as thought leaders in this space. Anne Baum was a featured facilitator on a PPC-focused roundtable, and the business development team came away with follow ups from brands such as Oxi Fresh, Quiznos, and Valvoline.
CEO Andrew Beckman’s recent presentation at SES NY was covered during a recent post on Search Engine Watch. The presentation “Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media” focused on the ways in which brand marketers can improve their online performance by integrating their media strategy across a variety of channels.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN SEARCH?
Will we see a change in the SERP landscape in the not too distant future? Well, it certainly appears the FTC will make sure that happens. The FTC has sent guidance letters to search engines like Google, Bing, AOL and Yahoo! “To avoid the potential for deception, consumers should be able to easily distinguish a natural search result from advertising that a search engine delivers,” Engle said in the letters, which the FTC made public on Tuesday. Click here to read more.
How are the engines ranking? It should come as no surprise that Google owns the lion’s share of the search market at 66.7%, up 0.2% from last month. Bing and Yahoo! remained consistent at a combined 29.3% market share. Read more on the latest Search Engine Rankings from comScore.
With the July 22nd deadline to switch to enhanced campaigns coming up, Google is certainly starting to see the fruits of their efforts. In a recent research study by J.P.Morgan, they report a rising target price for Google shares due to increases in CPC’s for search marketing campaigns since March of this year.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN DISPLAY?
Will you be attending the OMMA Conference in LA July 25th through 27th? Samantha Bedford – SVP of Digital Media at Location3 – will be and would like to use the opportunity to get together.
We have seen great results from the likes of Criteo and AdRoll through their use of technology such as liquid Ads for remarketing. Now Google brings this dynamic ad feature to the table. In a nutshell, you essentially link your AdWords account with your Merchant Center account, and that allows you to pull information from your product feeds into your display ad templates. For example, if you happened to be eyeing those beautiful red shoes on Macy’s.com and did not actually purchase them, you would be shown an ad with those shoes as the primary focus at a later date. Although some detractors call it creepy, it is certainly a targeted approach based on relevancy. As for the results, we’ve been quite impressed with what we’ve seen so far with this program. Reach out to your Location3 rep for more details.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN VIDEO?
Studies have shown that switching 15% of your TV dollars to online video can produce incremental lift. Analyst Doug Anmuth from J.P. Morgan has stated that YouTube’s top 100 global advertisers increased their spending by 50% in 2012. This also ties in to the fact that Apple will soon be selling video ads on televisions. So where does this leave you? Make sure when planning your 2014 budgets that you are taking video into account and allocating budget accordingly.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN LOCAL?
Google announced a new feature in local search results called the “carousel.” Previously when a user performed a local search, traditional SEO results were shown including a “pack” of results, which could include 3, 5, 7 or 10 local listings. Starting today, local desktop searches for categories like dining, nightlife, hotels, and other attractions will display the carousel of results. Not all verticals will be served the carousel, as this initial roll-out is targeted towards categories where it makes the most sense.
The listings in the carousel currently mirror the local maps results, as a listing in the #1 position for the local search will be the first business listed on the left hand side of the carousel, with the rest following in order. Listings are still ranked and placed in the carousel based on Google’s local search algorithm, just as they have traditionally been ranked for the “pack” results.
Apple’s recent WWDC keynote gave them the opportunity to announce that along with the release of the new iOS7, Siri will now have web search integration with the ability to search directly in Bing. Once you ask a question, Siri will provide a specific answer or web search links to the user in an effort to provide information faster. This is likely to provide an increase in search volume for Bing and change the user experience with Siri and search for Apple users.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN ANALYTICS?
Google Analytics made a big announcement: they are working on integrating impression data into their path-to-conversion reporting. This is a positive step forward, as users can now get a better idea of whether or not views of their display ads have impacted their bottom line.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN SEO?
Over the next few months Google is going to be making changes to the mobile search algorithm. The most important factor to be considered is that websites need to have mobile-friendly structure, whether that be through mobile-specific design or the oft-preferred responsive design. They will also need to incorporate page-to-page redirects rather than simply possess a single site-wide redirect that lands on the homepage, which is currently a fairly common practice. As it stands currently, the desktop pages Google has indexed for certain keywords contain content specific to those search phrases. If the redirect takes the user and the search crawler to the homepage, the relevant content and optimizations no longer exist. Therefore, Google may very well choose to remove the website’s search ranking for that particular phrase and potentially many others.
Want to learn more directly from Google? Click here.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN SOCIAL?
Instagram Adds Videos
Instagram now allows users to shoot, edit, filter and share 15-second videos in addition to photos. This announcement comes hot on the heels of research showing that Vine surpassed Instagram in total shares on Twitter. Whether Instagram videos will be a Vine killer is still up for debate, but it is certainly representative of the popularity and performance of online video (viewers spend 100% more time of pages with videos and posts with videos attract three times the number of inbound links). Due to this, brands are making video a main focus of their content marketing strategy, and Instagram’s video feature makes production and promotion of video more accessible. Learn more here.
Facebook Adds Hashtags
Facebook began rolling out hashtags on June 12, allowing users and brands to add clickable links in status updates and ad copy. As you might expect, this much-anticipated feature has numerous implications for advertising, and Facebook has hinted that they’ll be releasing other new features, including trending hashtags and updated Insights (such as the already released negative feedback and clicks). Learn more here.
Twitter Allows Analytics for Every Account
Previously only available to advertisers, Twitter has opened up their Analytics for all users. Twitter Analytics shows metrics in two sections: 1. Timeline Activity, showing the number of favorites, retweets and replies for every tweet, as well as trending for follows, unfollows and mentions; and 2. Followers, displaying location, gender, interests and most followed users of your followers. Access Twitter Analytics for your brand and personal profiles at https://ads.twitter.com/.
Facebook Announces Reduction of Ad Units
In an effort to streamline ads, Facebook has announced that they will be simplifying their offering by combining features of various ad units and halving the overall number of units available. The main changes are: 1. removal of Questions and Offers starting in July; 2. automatic addition of social context to all ads starting in the fall; and 3. consistent visual display of all ads starting in late June. Learn more here.
Google Allows You to Add Logo to Knowledge Graph Box
Google released a new feature of Schema—Organization Logo Markup—allowing your company logo to appear in the Google Knowledge Graph box that displays in the top right corner of search results for general branded searches. If you are actively using Google+ for your brand, your logo will be pulled from your +Page instead. However, Organization Logo Markup can be a second line of brand defense, increasing your chances of having your logo display properly. Learn more and get instructions here.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN CONTENT?
Browser plugin Adblock Plus becomes the most downloaded Firefox add-on with over 200 MM users. What does this mean? The feature now allows users to block banner ads, but does have an “Acceptable Ads Initiative” aimed at finding a middle ground for both users and advertisers. While this represents a fraction of internet users, it speaks to the growing consumer appetite for content over advertising.