likee

In the latest WDA Marketing Pit Stop, we take a look at the most important digital marketing news and updates from the last two weeks, including TikTok’s Rival Likee’s continued growth, Twitter tweet reply limits, free Bing shopping ads and more!

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

TikTok Rival Likee Continues Its Growth

As of June, TikTok’s smaller rival, Likee, owned by Chinese internet company Joyy, has garnered 150 million active monthly users. One of the key differences between the two apps is that Likee enables content creators to earn money from virtual gifts they receive from fans. With Reels now launched also, the competition for TikTok is heating up!

Twitter Introduces Tweet Reply Limits

Twitter has rolled out a new feature that allows users to limit replies to tweets through a small globe icon that lets you select from 3 different options on who can reply – everyone, people you follow and people you mention. The update is their attempt to increase meaningful conversations taking place on the platform.

Microsoft Advertising Editor Updated

Microsoft Advertising Editor has got some new features – recommendations and campaign level targeting designed to help advertisers with multiple campaign management and performance optimisation. The performance recommendations are AI-powered and include things like suggested keywords, missing ads, bid changes etc.

Free Product Listings On Bing

Bing has now opened up free organic product lists in the Bing shopping tab. These are only available to U.S Microsoft Merchant Centre store owners at this time but will be rolled out to the UK and other countries in the future. Free product listings on Bing opens up another channel for your business to take advantage of, boosting reach, traffic and product sales.

Updates to Yelp for Local SMB Lead Generation

Yelp has made some updates to its “Request a Quote” feature, making it a full-featured lead-generation tool with the ability to book appointments. The Request a Quote feature is available in more than 60 business categories. If your business operates within a local radius, a car servicing business for example, then it could be a great tool to take advantage of.

Search Console Now Supports Reporting On AMP and Signed Exchanges

Google Search Console can now report on issues with AMP and Signed Exchanges using the URL inspection tool and AMP enhancement report. SXG is a technical framework that enables browsers to display publisher URLs on cached AMP results. If you’re utilising AMP and signed exchanges then the new set of tools are welcome and worth checking out. If you’re not using them currently then we’d recommend starting with AMP initially. It stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages and enables webpages to load faster on mobile devices.

Performance Planner Gets Three New Features

Google’s Performance Planner has been given three new features – the ability to account for conversion delay, shared budget support across search campaigns, and campaign plans that can be viewed and edited by stakeholders.

Google Makes It Easier to Update Local Business Profiles

Google has added the functionality to now make edits to Local Google My Business profiles from with Maps and Search rather than having to access the Google My Business site. You can still make edits from the main site but enabling edits through 2 additional apps makes it easier for marketers or business owners to optimise local listings.

Google Shopping Country Targeting Made Easier

Google has introduced a new attribute for Shopping feeds that enables advertisers to easier control which countries your ads show by excluding any specified with the new attribute “shopping_ads_excluded_country”. Using this will override any feel level targeting already in place.

That wraps up the latest Marketing Pit Stop. Subscribe to our blog and follow us on social media so you don’t miss the next one!

Google Pushed Back Mobile-First Indexing

In our latest Marketing Pit Stop, we have news from Instagram, Google, Snapchat, Facebook and Microsoft Advertising.

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

Reels to launch in the US next month

Instagram has confirmed that Reels, its TikTok rival, will launch in the US early next month. This comes following its testing in Brazil, France and Germany. A spokesperson for Facebook said “We’re excited to bring Reels to more countries, including the U.S. in early August. The community in our test countries has shown so much creativity in short-form video, and we’ve heard from creators and people around the world that they’re eager to get started as well”.

Instagram launches redesigned Shop

The social app has launched its new Instagram Shop, providing users with a place to buy products from within the app’s Explore section. Instagram Shop aims to encourage more product browsing, shopping and discovery of brands through the platform. Only available in the U.S. at this time.

Google to notify My Business account owners of suspensions

This comes into effect based on a new European law. Google will now be notifying Google My Business account owners of any local listing suspensions via email, although the notice still won’t explain why the account has been suspended.

Snapchat Testing New TikTok-style Navigation

Snapchat look set to join the growing list of social networks looking to compete better with TikTok as they have confirmed the testing of TikTok-style navigation. This new UX will enable users to explore public content on Discover with a vertical swiping motion, the same way that browsing content is done on TikTok.

Smart Shopping Updates

Google has made some updates to Smart Shopping campaigns, launching in the U.S. initially. The updates include the introduction of annotations such as free shipping and the ability to optimise campaign conversions for new customer acquisition.

Google Pushed Back Mobile-First Indexing

Due to the pandemic, Google has decided to push back its mobile-first indexing deadline from September of this year to March next year, giving webmasters longer to prepare for the switch. Many sites have already been switched over and all new sites are now indexed with mobile-first indexing. You can check the status of your website using Search Console.

Microsoft Advertising partner with Shutterstock

Microsoft Advertising has partnered with Shutterstock to offer free stock images to advertisers for its Audience ads. There are more than 230 million images to choose from and access to the images will roll out first in the States before launching here in the UK.

Facebook Tests New Design For Pages

The new Facebook Page design they are testing is cleaner and also remove the “Like” count and button, just show follow/followers instead. Facebook’s aim with this new design is to provide a better experience for visitors to a page, making it easier to see key details.

Google Upgraded Business Profiles

Google is starting to offer upgraded Business profiles with the Google Guaranteed badge for a monthly fee of $50. Google Guaranteed is designed to give consumers greater confidence in your business. Likely, profiles with the badge will also enjoy a higher number of clicks and calls compared to those without.

That’s it for the most important digital marketing news and updates from last week. Subscribe to our blog and podcast and also follow us on Social Media so you don’t miss future updates.

instagram story test

In our latest Marketing Pit Stop, we have news from Google, Bing and Social – including Google streamlining ad labelling for Shopping, Bing updating its webmaster guidelines and Instagram’s latest story test.

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

Google testing ads in local business profiles

It appears that Google is again testing third party ads in local business profiles. The ads can’t be removed by the business owner and can appear on both desktop and mobile devices. So far, this only applies to a small group of whitelisted advertisers.

Google streamlining Shopping ad labelling

Late last year, Google updated the labelling for its Shopping ads across mobile devices and they’re now looking to roll this out onto desktop. Once rolled out, the “Sponsored” label that is currently present will be replaced with the “Ads” label.

Bing webmaster guidelines update

Bing has made several significant changes to its Webmaster Guidelines. The updates delve into how Bing crawls, indexes and ranks web content. We’d recommend reviewing the new guidelines to get a better understanding of how Bing works and differs to Google.

Christi Olson, Head of Evangelism Search at Microsoft had this to say about the update…

“We decided to refresh the entire guidelines to make them easier to understand while including the most recent updates on crawling, indexing, ranking and quality.”

Free Google Product Listings expanded to Knowledge Panels

Google is starting to extend the fairly new free Google Shopping product listings into the main search results. They announced last Monday that knowledge panel product listings will now be organic instead of sponsored. These listings are usually triggered on searches for specific products.

Instagram testing new Story layout

Instagram is testing a new Stories experience, giving it more focus within the app. The feature they’re testing will enable users to see more Stories by adding two rows at the top and a new expanded Stories area that will display all available Stories in full-screen.

Facebook to boost Stories with original reporting in the News Feed

Facebook has announced that they’ll be giving Stories with original reporting a boost in the News Feed. This comes following the #StopHateforProfit campaign which has put pressure on the Social giant to take increased action against misinformation and hate speech on the platform.

VP of Global News Partnerships Campbell Brown and product manager Jon Levin wrote…

“When multiple stories are shared by publishers and are available in a person’s News Feed, we will boost the more original one which will help it get more distribution.”

Facebook closes Lasso

Facebook has now closed Lasso, an app it launched 18 months ago to take on TikTok. Lasso enables its users to record short 15-second videos with popular music overlayed. The close of Lasso likely means that Facebook will put all of its focus on Instagram Reels to compete in the space.

Google Image Search new feature

Google has added a new feature to image search that shows quick facts about the images you see. A knowledge panel can be opened and expanded to display information about the image. It has been testing the feature for a few weeks and is now fully launched. You may start seeing more traffic from Google Images thanks to the update.

That’s it for the most important digital marketing news and updates from last week. Subscribe to our blog and podcast and also follow us on Social Media so you don’t miss future updates.

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