Today in Digital Marketing - Google Ads Finally Fixes Its Huge Reporting Problem

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Friday, October 18th, 2019. Happy St. Luke Day, Catholics. I'm Todd Maffin. Today, Google finally fixes its attribution window reporting. Facebook rolls out search ads, but there's a catch. Actually, there are two catches. Episode 497 of the FTC doesn't understand Twitter. And truly the funniest story I've heard all month.

Starting point is 00:00:21 It involves Yahoo Groups and the British Telephone Network. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Let's start with a bit of Friday trivia, shall we? What is the most popular hashtag in use on Instagram? Is it Instagood, Happy, Love, or TBT? That's for Throwback Thursday. The answer at the end of the show. If you are one of those hardcore marketing data nerds, you know, the type that actually reads the help text over metric descriptions. First of all, hi, I love you. Secondly, this segment is for you.

Starting point is 00:00:57 Google Ads, as you probably know, used to be a little vague in its attribution window reporting. No, not vague. What's the word again? Oh, yeah, completely inaccurate. What they did was report conversions based on the day an ad was clicked, even if that conversion didn't actually happen on that day. Well, now they are fixing this. And all joking aside, this is actually a big deal. How you report and measure actions within attribution windows

Starting point is 00:01:25 are critically important to your campaigns. If you're new and just getting started in marketing, please Google attribution windows. It's important you know this stuff. Anyway, back to the changes, quoting Google, starting today, you can report conversions and conversion values at the time they happened with new by conversion time columns. That means if your ad was clicked on last week and that traffic converted this week, the new conversions by conversion time column will now show a conversion for this week.

Starting point is 00:01:58 Long time coming, but glad it's there. Facebook is rolling out search ads more widely now. We reported on this a while back when it was in early beta. You probably now have it in your ads manager. It's a placement, so of course you'll find it at the ad set level. Search ads appear when people use Facebook's search function, and they show up like regular newsfeed ads in both search results and marketplace search results. So two things to note here.

Starting point is 00:02:27 Thing number one, and this might throw you a bit, even though it's a search ad, you can't actually trigger the ad based on specific search terms, like how you do with Google ads. If you sell shoes, you can't put the keyword shoes anywhere and have your ads display when people type that into search, which is kind of weird. Instead, you just use the same old targeting you've always used. Interests, behaviors, lookalikes, custom audiences, that sort of thing. Facebook says it will try to make its own keywords behind the scenes from your headline description and other ad creative. But you can't edit these. You can't even see these yourself. I tried to run ads for this podcast using just the search placement this morning, which brings us to thing number two.

Starting point is 00:03:10 You can't run ads using just the search placement. No, you've got to run them both in search and in the regular Facebook news feed, which makes testing how effective these new search ads are, not impossible, but potentially expensive. Because you'll be running your test to both the news feed and search. And use the breakdown by placement feature in Ads Manager to check to see which one performs better. But given that both placements have to run together, you are relying on Facebook to decide how much of your budget to give to the search ads. One last thing, search ads are now part of Facebook's automatic placements. Just something to be aware of.

Starting point is 00:03:55 If you're a marketer for a non-profit, you may want to know that GoFundMe has launched a new free-to-use fundraising tool for non-profits. It's called GoFundMe Charity. One of the new features it has is an embeddable button that you can use on your organization's website. When people click the button, it takes them to a donation form. Currently, only about 25% of all charity donations are made online. The rest still come from IRL, door-knocking, direct mail events, that sort of thing. Amazon this morning sent out an email to all its affiliate sellers reminding them about their disclosure obligations,

Starting point is 00:04:30 and it's a lot more than using just hashtag ad. To meet Amazon's requirements, you have to include a legally compliant disclosure with your links and identify yourself on your website as an Amazon associate using very specific language, which you will find in your operating agreement. And hey, that's just Amazon's requirements. If you're in the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission has rules for you, too. You need to disclose it's an ad with text like paid link or hashtag ad. The FCC also suggests hashtag commissions earned, which I have never seen out in the wild.

Starting point is 00:05:09 And also, my God uses a lot of characters. Has the FCC not seen Twitter? Yeah, don't answer that question. There's a bunch of other rules, too. And if you're an affiliate, you probably got the email this morning. So, you know, check your spam folder. Yesterday, I reported that Yahoo Groups is shutting down. Today comes truly the weirdest story I have seen all month. It turns out part of the national phone network in the United Kingdom

Starting point is 00:05:37 actually relies on a Yahoo Group to function. I promise this is not a headline from the onion. There's a government agency over there called Ofcom. Think of it like the FCC in America or the CRTC in Canada. One of the things that Ofcom does is manage the UK's telephone numbers. Part of that job is to keep phone companies up to date on which blocks of numbers have been allocated and to which company. And they have been using a Yahoo group to do this. A Yahoo group which will close shortly, along with all other Yahoo groups. Quoting The Verge, The idea that at least some part of the UK's voice communication infrastructure rests on the framework of Yahoo groups feels a little alarming.

Starting point is 00:06:27 Shouldn't phone numbers be easier to manage than the internet? But then, the infrastructure that underpins the stuff we use and take for granted every day is usually far weirder and more complicated than it seems at first. Okay, time for the lightning round. Pinterest appears to now be testing reactions on videos as well. YouTube Music is rolling out redesigned artist profiles to Android and iOS today. It has a larger cover image with a closer crop, so check your image, and a more prominent subscribe button.

Starting point is 00:07:03 It appears that some users of Buffer are still experiencing issues with tagging other Facebook pages and tagging locations for Instagram. So despite what I reported yesterday, bug not squashed. At least not yet. If you'd like to comment on anything you've heard in the podcast, just tweet with the hashtag TIDM. Oh, and the answer to this week's trivia question, the most popular hashtag in use on Instagram today

Starting point is 00:07:28 is hashtag love. That is what you missed today in digital marketing brought to you by engageq.com. I'm Todd Maffin. Follow me on social. All my links are at the bottom of todayindigital.com. I'm off to pad my stats by hiding behind a monkey and never detaching my heel beam even for a second. See you Monday.

Today in Digital Marketing - Google Ads Finally Fixes Its Huge Reporting Problem

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