Jack Simpson says, “No doubt you’re all aware by now that Google is removing ads from the right-hand side of its search results pages (SERPs). Ads will now only appear at the top and bottom of SERPs. To give some context around what this means for search marketers, we asked several experts for their take on why Google made this decision, and also how marketers need to adjust their PPC campaigns as a result. Why did Google remove the ads? Richard Hartley, PPC Director at Jellyfish These days, Google is ‘mobile first’ due to mobile searches beginning to overtake desktop searches,... [...]

Rebecca Maynes says, “There’s a lot of talk about ad viewability at present, and with big players such as Google announcing in 2015 that it would only charge advertisers for 100% viewable impressions, it’s easy to see how it’s become such a hot topic in the digital marketing world. But what exactly does it mean to be “viewable?” Does this mean people will look at your ad? We recently conducted a research study that set out to answer these questions. Conducting the eye-tracking study The study was conducted in two parts: an online survey of 1400 participants for quantitative... [...]

David Moth says, “Programmatic advertising is currently one of the most talked about channels in digital marketing. Econsultancy founder Ashley Friedlein mentioned it several times while discussing his top digital trends for 2016. It has become a hot topic as, although there’s a general sense that it’s an effective marketing channel and one worth investing in, many in the industry also struggle to understand how it works. And it’s also commonly criticised for relying too heavily on automation, thus removing the creative element from marketing campaigns. To see whether this is the... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “AOL announced Monday that it is expanding the reach of its premium ad formats for brands to Microsoft and Millennial Media inventory. The formats will now appear on Microsoft’s MSN.com and within apps in Millennial Media’s network, which AOL acquired last fall. AOL’s Halo, Devil, Devil Full-Page Flex, Billboard and Loft ad formats are now available on MSN sites in the US, Canada, Japan and Spain and will come to the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Brazil in March. The lineup of linear video premium formats will be available in all of these markets later this quarter. AOL... [...]

Scott Gerber says, “If automatic ad blocking on iOS can teach you anything as a startup founder, it’s that you should never rely on just one strategy to carry any aspect of your business, and advertising is no exception. But as it turns out, the update isn’t all bad. Below, 11 entrepreneurs from Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) explain strategies they have used to get around it as well as what new opportunities it has opened doors to. 1. Boost social posts A boosted post on Facebook or Twitter shows up in the news feed like a post from a contact, attracting more attention than... [...]

Erica McGillivray says, “For the past couple of months, Google has been testing SERPs with 4 ads at the top of the page (previously, the top ad block had 1-3 ads), leading to a ton of speculation in the PPC community. Across the MozCast data set, 4 ads accounted for only about 1% of SERPs with top ads (which matches testing protocol, historically). Over the past 2 weeks, we’ve seen a gradual increase, but on the morning of February 18, the percentage of top ads blocks displaying 4 ads jumped to 18.9% (it’s 19.3% as of this morning). Of the 5,986 page-1 SERPs in our tracking data that... [...]

Ben Davis says, “I’ve worked in affiliate marketing for more than 13 years and in that time I have had to endure a lot of comments about the industry emulating the “wild west” and being tarnished with a bad quality image. I have always felt these comments to be incorrect and unfair, but what the affiliate world has done very well is address these concerns by putting in place practices to ensure transparency and quality that is self-regulated by industry stakeholders. The broader digital industry faces a huge threat from ad blocking and could take some useful lessons from what the... [...]

Business.com staff says, “Two new Facebook product updates are aimed at small businesses. Here’s how they work. The first is an update to local awareness ads, first introduced in 2012 to provide the ability to target ads to users who check into your site within a certain distance from a store or business location. If you have multiple locations the new update provides the additional capability to target users to those specific sites. In a blog post, Facebook explains that, “If a cafe with multiple locations across the UK decides to run local awareness ads, they could choose to automatically... [...]

Ben Davis says, “‘Please turn off your ad blocker!’ The plaintive cry echoes down the tubes of the internet. Although the ad blocker dilemma is a complex and important one, I get perverse enjoyment from reading the different messages that publishers display, imploring users to disable their ad blockers. Here are 10 of them. For colour, I’ve embedded tweets by the websites’ often disgruntled users. 1. GQ I haven’t seen this anywhere else. GQ is resourceful enough not only to request you disable your ad blocker, but to allow you to purchase access instead (if... [...]

eMarketer team says, “eMarketer expected a strong 2015 holiday season for ecommerce and total retail sales. In eMarketer’s upcoming webinar, Lessons from Holiday Shopping 2015—What You Need to Know for 2016, we’ll take a look at the final results and review what retailers need to know about changing consumer behaviors to keep up in 2016. Register here for this complimentary eMarketer webinar to learn: – How the overall retail sector performed during the 2015 holiday season – Why experiential gifts were one significant holiday trend of 2015 – How consumers used their... [...]