It’s time to optimize your marketing campaigns.

In a search-dominated world, Google is changing the game. The latest platform updates from Google are here, and they’re going to change the way you advertise.

In May of this year, Google announced 16 major changes that affect both marketers and organic users alike. 

The best thing you can do is stay in the know. Don’t be caught off-guard by these new updates—stay informed with our marketing experts so you can maximize your performance and make sure your campaigns are optimized.

Core Updates: What You Need to Know

Google core updates are designed to make search results more relevant for users.

Marketers have experienced a range of outcomes, such as spikes or drops in search rankings, with these updates. They’re designed to improve Google’s systems overall, so it’s not necessarily that your content is being targeted specifically—it just means that Google is reassessing the quality of all web content published since the last update. This ensures that users will be able to find what they are looking for, while also incentivizing website owners to create high-quality content.

These updates can cause issues for some businesses that rely on organic traffic from Google searches in order to generate leads or sales. Do not underestimate just how important link building for SEO really is. If a website isn’t optimized for mobile devices or if it doesn’t have enough backlinks from other sites, then it may not show up on Google when someone searches for keywords related to that business.

Providing the best possible content is the top recommended way to deal with the impact of a core algorithm update. In fact, Cape & Bay recommends providing fresh content at least once a week if possible because this will help keep you on track with Google’s standards. 

Getting your business to the top of Google’s page is not as easy as it used to be. If you’re looking for help with your SEO strategy, contact our experts and we’ll work with you to create an effective SEO strategy that will ensure that your website is performing at its best. 

Google Updates to search, ads, and more

Since their Marketing Live keynote, when Google announced 16 new features for 2022, a few have already rolled out.

All-New Asset Library

Google announced a new account-level Asset Library to store all your digital creative assets.

With the new asset library, you’ll be able to create video ads using YouTube-optimized templates, and easily pull them into new creative executions. Assets can be used in multiple executions, so agencies can share them across various campaigns in their studio account.

This new feature will make it easier than ever for you to expand your reach with the same tools you already know and love. 

Expansion of Optimization Score

Google Ads’ Optimization Score is expanding to cover every campaign type for advertisers around the world. This is a big change, and it’s going to make a big difference.

The introduction of Optimization Score was a great step forward in Google’s efforts to help you achieve success with your campaigns. It gave us all a better idea of how each campaign would perform even before implementation. 

Now, Google will be able to give more accurate predictions on the performance of ad campaigns by incorporating more data into their calculations. 

Performance Max Campaigns

As Google rolls out updates to its Performance Max campaigns, advertisers will soon be able to use  features such as:

• A/B testing
• Expanded campaign management support in Search Ads 360 and the Google Ads mobile app
• Ability to optimize for in-store sales
• New performance data such as attribution, audience and auction insights
• Optimization score and recommendations

Updates to Insights Page

If you’re a regular user of the Google Ads platform, you’ve probably noticed your Insights Page hasn’t been updated in forever. Since July 2021 to be exact. It’s about time for a refresher. Google announced three new reports in 2022 to help you understand your campaigns better and make them more effective.

1. Attribution Insights. This report will help you see how your ads work together across Google surfaces. You’ll be able to compare how much traffic comes from each of your channels and sources, as well as how much of that traffic converts into sales or leads.

2. Budget Insights. This report will help you find new opportunities for budget optimization—and increase your ROI in the process. You’ll be able to see which campaigns are driving conversions, so you can optimize those budgets first and spend less on campaigns that aren’t working as well (or at all).

3. Audience Insights, which will show you how your customer segments are driving campaign performance—and give insight into who should be targeted with specific messages in order to reach their goals most effectively.

Improvements to Responsive Search Ads

Google Ads is getting smarter.

Google now offers automatically created assets to responsive search ads, which are designed to improve ad relevance. This feature generates assets automatically based on content from landing pages and existing ad units. Google Ads will display the best-performing combination of provided assets and automatically created assets.

This means marketers won’t have to worry about creating an ad that works across all devices; Google will do it for you.

Forward-Looking Features

In an effort to build “resilience for the future of marketing,” Google announced a series of advertising features that it said are designed to give users more control over where ads appear and how they’re used.

The new features include:

• Conversion Lift Tests: Measure incremental conversions based on users and geography. With lift testing, we are able to understand if the conversion is being targeted properly or not. For example, if we message buyers for textured hair and the ad reaches a target without textured hair, we would be able to identify that key target issue.

• Search Lift Tests: Measure the impact of your YouTube campaigns on driving organic searches on Google and YouTube.
• Google Tag: The global site tag will become the Google tag, which will get updated with new capabilities.
• My Ad Center: Google will give users the option to select the types of ads they want to see.

 

Video Ads Updates

Youtube has expanded its Ad options

YouTube Shorts are going to be getting more of your attention.

The platform launched two new ad formats: video action campaigns and app campaigns. These updates have been rolling out worldwide over the past few months, giving advertisers more opportunities to get their branded content in front of users who are looking for it.

In the coming months, product feed information will begin showing up on YouTube Shorts, making video ads more shoppable. This will help brands reach consumers where they’re already thinking about buying things—right in the middle of a video they’re watching.

Video Ads In Google Discover

Google is bringing short video ads to its platform through Discover. The move would be a natural fit for the platform, which is built around personalization and delivering results that are relevant to each user.

The latest update to Discover was released late last year and brought with it an algorithm pattern that’s been rolling out since late 2021, according to reports. This algorithm pattern is a new way for common internet users to gain information about topics that are most interesting to them.

Since then, Google has been rolling out constant updates and support for Discover in order to improve its performance as a platform for users who want access to relevant information about their interests at all times.

Discover curates a personalized feed of content for users based on their interests from cookies, locations, search history, and activity on other Google platforms like Youtube or Search. 

The increase in ads on Discover will allow these spots to blend seamlessly with other content displayed to the user—making it difficult for users to spot ads when using Discover. 

Display & Video 360: the new way to reach your target audience on connected TV

By the end of 2022, marketers will utilize Display & Video 360 to create connected TV campaigns to reach affinity, in-market, and demographic audiences across YouTube and other ad-supported connected TV apps. 

With Display & Video 360, marketers can now reach 80% of all CTV households in the US and 92% of ad-supported CTV households and get access to the top 50 most watched ad supported CTV apps in the US.

Stay on top of the latest changes from Google

Google is continually changing the game. We’re here to help you stay on top of it.

Platform changes can be intimidating, but they’re also an opportunity to make sure your brand is getting the attention it deserves.

At Cape & Bay, we’re always on the lookout for new and exciting ways to help our clients. When it comes to boosting your Google platform updates, we’re as excited as you are to get in on the action. That’s why we’ve created a special team of experts dedicated solely to this burgeoning field, who can help you get the most out of your ads and optimize them for SEO.

Ready to take your business to new heights? Contact us today.