Hey there, Digital Darlings,
Everyone’s busy celebrating our nation’s birth, so this week was a bit quieter than usual when it comes to news. But drama never truly stops and Maddie Marinsider never misses, so I’m still gonna keep you in the loop. Firstly, I want to make sure all my cute little Amazon advertisers are prepared for Prime Day.
My alter ego wrote a Prime Day prep guide
If you run ads on Amazon and plan to take advantage of the upcoming shopping frenzy, it’s time to launch your Prime Day campaigns. The big day is officially happening July 16-17, which is a mere two weeks away, so it’s go time. And if you’re looking to do a little Prime Day shopping yourself, start adding your desired products to your carts and wishlists now. The pre-Prime Day deals have already started! One particularly good strategy is to…
Dominate Amazon top-of-search with Sponsored Products + Sponsored Brand
This strategy can be pricey, but it’s a great way to own the search results above the fold for your highest priority ASINs. The goal is to get your Sponsored Brand ad serving at the top of the page, and your Sponsored Product ads serving in the top three spots so that your brand and products are all users see when they first return results for your target keywords. If you’re ready to try out some more advanced Amazon bidding tactics, this blog’s for you. In other ecommerce sale news…
Tons of other retailers are competing with Prime Day
Target’s trying to hold its own against the Prime Day boom with Circle Week, a week of promotions available to all members of its free loyalty program. From July 7-13, Target will be offering tons of deals on toys, apparel, home goods, and more. Walmart is also running a July savings event called Walmart Deals from July 8-11. Other companies like Doordash and Best Buy are running summer deals as well. So if you sell on any of those sites, it may be time to scale up ad spend. And if you’ve been waiting to pull the trigger on some pricey purchases, keep your eye out for discounts this month. Now for a bit of social news…
Apple expanded their 30% fee on Meta ads globally
They’ve been charging this fee to US advertisers since February, and now they're going global with it. As of July 1st, any Facebook or Instagram ad purchase made through an iOS app anywhere in the world will see a 30% service fee. It can be avoided by doing all your ad buying on a web browser, which I assume is how most of us work anyways. But the workflow to boost a post right on your iPhone is pretty seamless, so don’t let that get you. Meta proactively updated its web platforms to offer the same boosting functionality as its mobile apps. This fee is kinda rude of Apple, IMO, and even the government is mad about it. US and EU officials say that the fee is ‘anti-competitive’ and gives Apple an unfair advantage. And they’re right! Now for some Google news…
Google Search Console reports are delayed over 53 hours
It’s pretty common for these reports to be delayed, but since a lot of people are doing end-of-month reporting right now, I wanted to call it out. Google confirmed the issue on X yesterday, saying they’ll post again when it’s resolved. So keep an eye on Google Search Central’s X account for updates. In other not-so-great Google news…
‘Grim outlook’ predicted for Google’s Privacy Sandbox
IAB Tech Lab’s Privacy Sandbox Task Force was assembled to study the implementation of Google’s new data privacy solution. In their final report, they noted that the “Privacy Sandbox will restrict the digital media industry's ability to deliver relevant, effective advertising, placing smaller media companies and brands at significant risk. The lack of functionality will throttle their ability to compete, ultimately impacting the industry’s growth.” Oof.
They ran a test with Criteo and concluded that if third-party cookies were deprecated today, Criteo would expect publisher revenue to decrease by an average of 60%. Yikes! Unfortunate news, but considering the regulatory challenges Google is facing, I’m not sure how this can be avoided. They keep pushing back cookie deprecation, but it has to happen eventually… right? All us advertisers can do is take advantage of our first party data and prepare our tracking set up for the impending third-party cookie deprecation. Now for some SEO tips…
Here’s 7 platforms SEOs need to optimize for beyond Google
People are turning to channels other than search to find the info they need, and SEOs need to adapt. This detailed guide from Search Engine Land does a great job of breaking down each new platform we need to optimize for and what our next steps should be. I consider this required reading for any SEOer, so take notes! There will be a quiz next week…
And that’s a wrap for this week’s marketing digest. Enjoy some summer sun this weekend and come back refreshed and ready to tackle the digital domain.
You know you love me.
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