Instagram reels launched

Our latest Marketing Pit Stop again features the latest digital marketing news from the last couple of weeks, including Instagram Reels, updates to Bing Webmaster Tools, a new Google AdWords test and more.

Let’s take a pit stop and get into it.

Instagram Reels Now Available In Over 50 Countries

We recently covered Instagram Reels, the app’s new feature designed to challenge TikTok on short-form video content. The new feature is now available in over 50 countries including the UK and the U.S.

Instagram head of Product, Vishal Shah, had this to say about Reels and in particular its extensive music catalogue… “We’re launching Reels now in countries where we have rights. We think that the catalogue is quite deep and it has some unique content that you can’t really find, at that depth, in other platforms.”

Whether Reels can steal away some of TikTok’s audience remains to be seen but the U.S. is sure to be a prime market, particularly if Trump’s TikTok ban goes ahead. If your automotive business hasn’t explored the world of TikTok then Reels could be a good alternative to creating informal content that shows off the fun side to your brand.

Bing’s New Robot Txt Tester

Bing has added a new robots.txt testing tool to its all-new Webmaster Tools. The tool was available in Bing over 10 years ago but support for it was dropped. The new version, however, is greatly improved, aiming to help Webmasters analyse robots.txt files and highlighting any potential crawling issues for the BingBot and other Search Engine crawlers.

Google’s Latest AdWords Test

Google is constantly testing how they format search results listings and ads. Their latest test is for Google Search Ads copy. The new test has seen them giving a new treatment to headline one, significantly increasing the text size, making it much larger than headline 2.

It wouldn’t be surprising however if this wasn’t rolled out but it’s certainly something to keep your eyes open for as a bigger first headline would surely have a positive impact on ad click-through rates.

New Messenger Chat Plugin

Facebook has launched a new chat plugin for Messenger that makes it easier for businesses to leverage by enabling them to reach customers that aren’t on Facebook. Customers can now chat to businesses that use the updated plugin as a guest with no need to log in.

If you’re still not using live chat for your business, this is a great place to start! Live chat has the highest consumer satisfaction rate at 92%.

Google’s Lead Form Ads Extended Beyond Search

Lead form ad extensions have been available in Search campaigns since last year but they’ve now been extended to YouTube and Discovery Campaign ads also. Google has also stated that the ad extension will be coming to Display campaigns later on in the year. Lead form ad extensions enable advertisers to collect data from a form without clicking through to their website.

In an early test of lead form extensions on YouTube, Jeep reportedly saw a 10X increase in completed leads.

Quora Lead Gen Forms

In addition to Google extending their lead form ad extensions to more campaigns, Quora has now rolled out its Lead Gen Forms which operate in a similar way for paid ads on Quora.

That wraps up our latest Marketing Pit Stop. Don’t forget to subscribe to our blog and podcast so you don’t miss the next one!

linkedin retargeting

Our Marketing Pit Stop is back!

We’ve spent the last few weeks upgrading our own website and have just relaunched it. Find out what we did here.

Our round-up of news from the world of marketing includes updates from the last two weeks due to a slow news week the week prior. Updates and new features discussed include multiple additions to Bing Webmaster Tools, Google Featured Snippets and advertising policy updates, new retargeting options for LinkedIn, Facebook Information Panels and updates from Snapchat.

Let’s take a Pit Stop and get into it…

Competitive link data available in Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing Webmaster Tools has launched a new feature for its backlinks tool called “similar sites”. Similar Sites gives webmasters an insight into competitive link data by letting you compare your website’s backlinks with other sites. The best part about this is that the other sites you’re comparing with don’t need to be verified in Bing.

Site Scan comes to Bing Webmaster Tools

Another great SEO update for Bing as they add Site Scan to its new version of Webmaster Tools. Site Scan is an SEO site audit tool that crawls your website for common technical SEO issues that you can then fix and improve performance. It’s broken down into errors, warnings and notices, with errors being the most important, priority issues to resolve.

Highlighting content comes to Google Featured Snippets

Google has now launched the content highlighting feature when a user clicks through to a page from a featured snippet. They’ve been testing this for the past couple of years and the feature works on most Google featured snippets in the majority of browsers.

Google updating its advertising policies

Google looks to make more updates to its advertising policies, rolling out initially in the U.S. and Canada by the end of this year. The new policy will mean employment, housing and credit advertisers will no longer be allowed to target or exclude ads from being shown based on – gender, age, parental status, marital status and zip code, extending their existing policies.

New retargeting options for LinkedIn Advertising

LinkedIn has announced new retargeting capabilities for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. The new retargeting options will enable advertisers to create and target ads based on engagement in the following ways:

  • Users who watch 25, 50, 75 or 100% of a video ad.
  • Users who have opened or submitted a LinkedIn Lead Gen Form.

Snapchat design updates

Snapchat’s app is undergoing a bit of a redesign with the navigation being rethought. The design sees a new action bar at the bottom, granting access to Snap Map and Snap Originals. This has been tested for a while but it is now official. They’re also launching a news aggregator in the Discover tab called “Happening Now”.

Snapchat AR updates

Snapchat has also announced several updates that boost its AR platform. The updates include Lens voice search, a Lens Studio update and a geo-specific AR system. These should significantly improve the apps existing AR platform.

Snapchat co-founder and CTO has this to say: “Today, augmented reality is changing how we talk with our friends,” “But in the future, we’ll use it to see the world in all-new ways.”

Facebook Information Panels

Facebook is testing “Information Panels”. These are powered by Wikipedia and will appear similarly to Google Featured Snippets. The aim with these is to try and keep users engaged on the Facebook app, being able to find what they’re looking for without having to leave. SocialMediaToday was the first to report the news of the pilot, citing posts from Twitter users like JC Van Zijl, Matt Navarra and Giulio S. Facebook has since confirmed that the feature is currently a pilot program for iOS, desktop and mobile web (as it’s a test, not everyone may see them yet).

That wraps up the last two weeks of digital marketing news.

Subscribe and stay tuned for our next round-up. Don’t forget that our Marketing Pit Stops are available in audio form on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and all major podcast providers.

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