Hello there, Digital Darlings,
As Friday rolls in, carrying with it the promise of rest and rejuvenation, let's dive into the labyrinth of digital marketing developments that have been making waves. From the enigmatic changes in Performance Max campaigns to the legal battles that seem to follow Google like a shadow, we've got a lot to cover. I’ll kick it off with some juicy Google drama…
Impression-level placement reports for PMAX campaigns are coming.
Historically, it was best practice to opt paid search ads out of serving on the Google Search Partner (GSP) network, because there was no way to know what sites the ads were serving on. But when Google created Performance Max campaigns, they removed the option to opt out of the search partner network. In November, an Analytics report accused Google of serving ads on inappropriate sites. Google denied the claims, but also added a temporary option to opt PMAX campaigns out of the GSP network. That option will go away on March 4th, and all PMax campaigns will once again be opted in. Ahead of the change, Google will provide impression-level placement reports, and allow users to exclude placements at the account level. So be sure to add those exclusions ASAP! And in other paid search news…
GA4 launched a default Google Ads report.
You may recognize this report from the Universal Analytics days, but it’s finally been replicated in the new GA4. If your Google Ads account is linked to your GA4 profile, you should be able to find the report under Advertising snapshot > Performance > Google ads. This report provides a simplified overview of how your Google Ads campaigns are performing. There are a LOT of different views and metrics in GA4, and I for one get confused on the reg in that UI, so this report should help simplify things.
Google continues to collect lawsuits like they’re Trophies.
A group of 32 European publishers are suing Google for $2.27 billion, alleging that Google’s advertising monopoly has cost them financial losses. It’s the same story over and over - Google’s abuse of it’s dominance in the advertising landscape led to smaller publishers being unable to compete. Google denied the allegations as usual, calling them “speculative and opportunistic.” Google has been in their feelings lately…
Google claims the US government is trying to punish them for being successful.
Sorry, Google, but this Drake-coded ‘it’s lonely at the top’ mentality isn’t going to work for you. And playing the victim when you’re *checks notes* four antitrust lawsuits deep is… kind of crazy. Did the PR team approve this statement?? Google claimed that their success is the result of “unceasing hard work” but we all know that the people at the top of the capitalist food chain don’t get there just by ‘working hard’.
Now for some social news…
Threads is getting 3x as many daily downloads as X.
It’s looking like Threads is the future of microblogging, as it continues to grow while X usership has been shrinking under Elon’s leadership. If your company isn’t on Threads yet, it’s time to make a profile. There are no paid ads on Threads yet, but Meta says monetization is coming once they reach 1 billion users. So it’s best to start growing your organic presence and community on Threads now. And in other Meta news…
Apple is charging advertisers a 30% fee to boost posts on Instagram.
Content that is boosted from the Instagram and Facebook iOS apps will receive a 30% service charge–so to avoid it, boost posts from your desktop or mobile web browser instead of in the app. You can also avoid the fees by boosting from Meta Business Suite or Ads Manager. Basically, just don’t boost in-app, and you’re good to go.
And finally, it’s time for our weekly AI update…
Search Engine Land shared 3 reasons NOT to block GPTBot from crawling your site.
To summarize the three reasons - firstly, 100 million people use ChatGPT, so you’d be missing out on brand visibility. Secondly, Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the new SEO. And thirdly, open AI has pledged to minimize harm, and “by allowing GPTBot to crawl your site’s content, you’re contributing to the clean and accurate training data OpenAI uses to enhance and improve its information accuracy.” I know I shared instructions a few weeks back on how to block the GPTBot from crawling your site, but maybe I was being too much of a hater…
And there you have it, Darlings - another week's journey through the tumultuous terrains of digital marketing, wrapped up with a bow of insight and a sprinkle of skepticism. Until next time, keep questioning, keep exploring, and above all, keep your digital wits about you.
You know you love me.
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