Today in Digital Marketing - Is Google's "Honeymoon Period" Real?

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Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, how to detect and fix ad fatigue. Be protected. Be Zen. Day Americans, and I think Australia and India too, maybe? I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. You don't have to be in digital marketing long before you run up against the infamous and perhaps mythical Google honeymoon period. This is where pages you've just added to your brand's website seem to jump artificially higher in the rankings than you expect, then sink down to regular levels or sometimes even lower.

Starting point is 00:01:08 Many people in the industry have wondered if that's really a thing. So, is it? Today's quiz, does Google reward new content with higher than usual rankings in order to test if users like it? The answer, later in today's episode. with higher than usual rankings in order to test if users like it? The answer, later in today's episode. I don't often cover these how-to articles that are, you know, everywhere online, but every once in a while there is indeed a decent one.

Starting point is 00:01:48 Social Media Examiner today has a great piece up on preventing ad fatigue on Facebook and Instagram campaigns. What is ad fatigue? Here's how they describe it. Quote, Have you run Facebook ad campaigns that seem to be going well but then take a nosedive? Your cost per result is increasing and the volume of your results is falling, but you haven't made any changes to an ad that was once delivering well. This can be caused by ad fatigue.

Starting point is 00:02:10 Ad fatigue occurs when your audience is no longer responding to your ad, and because of their lack of attention, you start to see an increase in costs and a decrease in volume. There are a number of reasons ad fatigue can occur. For instance, you may have been using the same creative for so long that it's become white noise in your audience's newsfeed. They've seen your ads so much they simply don't notice them anymore. When your ads lose impact, they're less competitive in the auction and your costs increase. Ad fatigue can also happen when the creative you've selected resonates with only a small part of your potential audience.

Starting point is 00:02:42 When you first start running your ad, this small group may respond. If your creative doesn't appeal to the larger part of your audience, however, your ads can fatigue once you've exhausted delivery to that small segment. Unquote. Anyway, the rest of the piece covers how to detect it, how to fix it. It's definitely worth a read if you do any social ads. Honestly, it even applies to Google PPC. You'll find it up on socialmediaexaminer.com. Facebook's added a small but helpful upgrade. You can now choose a specific time in a video embed where the video will start playing. For instance, if you've embedded a Facebook video onto your brand's website, but you only want it to start at the four-minute mark, you can now do that. This is something you've been able to do on YouTube since the Industrial Revolution, so it's nice to see Facebook catching up.

Starting point is 00:03:34 Although, actually, to be fair, this was always possible on Facebook by adding a couple of parameters to the end of the URL of the embed, but, you know, HTML scares off a lot of people, so now they've made that a little shortcut in the embed screen. Ads on Instagram Reels, that's their TikTok version, are now rolling out to more countries. They're basically identical to ads on TikTok and appear in between other clips in people's feeds. There's a little

Starting point is 00:04:02 sponsored tag under the username, and you get a call-to- action button. That placement was launched last month in India, Brazil, Germany, and Australia. But now they're coming to France, the UK, the US, and Canada. So how is Reels doing? Nobody really knows outside

Starting point is 00:04:18 of Instagram. And they haven't said much, which, you know, I mean, if they were killing it against TikTok, you'd think there'd be parades. All the head of Instagram has said so far is that it's growing, quote, both in terms of how much people are sharing and how much people are consuming, unquote. Which, I mean, it's a bit disingenuous because how much people are consuming, that's a lever you control, Instagram. So if you want it to go up, you just put it into more. Anyway, a recent report, though, found that Americans are now spending more time in TikTok than they are in the Facebook app.

Starting point is 00:04:50 And I know you're thinking, yeah, sure. But I mean, how's TikTok doing against Instagram? Actually, TikTok passed Instagram at the beginning of this year. Now, for every one hour spent on Instagram, Americans spend three hours on TikTok. Finding itself under pressure from competitors with big wallets, the audio app Clubhouse is chugging away. You might recall last week they announced the first cohort of Creator Fund recipients. Now, an impressive new hire. The former head of conferences and speaker curation at TED. Variety Report shall be responsible for finding more thoughtful people,

Starting point is 00:05:36 their words, to the platform, quote, including authors, scientists, academics, and other creatives to use the app's interactive audio rooms. She'll also work with high-profile folks already on the platform, including Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Amy Cuddy and Bernice King, unquote. Also hired a Google engineer who is leading that company's audio and video products. He'll be in charge of improving the quality of the in-app experience. And finally, Google appears to be testing a new setting in Google My Business

Starting point is 00:06:07 that will let businesses hide their phone number from search and maps. Oh, and as for the quiz, does Google reward new content with higher than usual rankings in order to test if users like it? Google search advocate John Mueller answered this in last week's Office Hours Hangout. TLDR? Kind of? Sometimes? When it comes to new content on a website or new websites overall, there's kind of this period where we recognize the new content. We can crawl and index the new

Starting point is 00:06:42 content, but we don't have a lot of signals for that new content yet. And then we have to make assumptions. And our systems try to make assumptions where they think this is probably in line with the rest of the website. But sometimes those assumptions are on the high side, where we say, oh, this is fantastic content, probably. And sometimes the assumptions are more on the lower side

Starting point is 00:07:06 where we're a little bit more conservative and like, oh, we have to be careful with showing this new content. And that's something where you will see that sometimes new content performs particularly well for a period of time, and then it settles down again. Sometimes it performs kind of badly initially and then settles down again. Sometimes it performs kind of badly initially

Starting point is 00:07:25 and then settles down in a higher state. This is something which is essentially just our systems kind of trying to figure out where this new content should fit in before we have a lot of signals about the content. And in the SEO world, this is sometimes called kind of like a sandbox where Google is keeping things back to prevent new pages from showing up, which is not the case.

Starting point is 00:07:51 Or some people call it like the honeymoon period where new content comes out and Google really loves it and tries to promote it. And it's, again, not the case that we're explicitly trying to promote new content or demote new content. It's just we don't know. And we have to make assumptions. And then sometimes those assumptions are right and nothing really changes over time.

Starting point is 00:08:13 Sometimes things settle down a little bit lower, sometimes a little bit higher. Well, busy, busy day today. We are onboarding a new client here. And also one of our clients has this enormous Facebook contest where you draw from, you know, people who've commented. Those are always kind of... Well, anyway.

Starting point is 00:08:35 They're no fun sometimes. Plus, my wife and I are buying a new car today. First time I've ever bought a new car in my life. In fact, I've only ever bought one car before this in my life. It was back in 1990 when I was 20 years old to go to radio. My first job in private radio. I bought an AMC Eagle. Which, if you remember what Pintos looked like, it looked like a jacked up Pinto.

Starting point is 00:09:01 Essentially. They were the ugliest cars ever. But, my God, that thing was fantastic in the Kootenays of British Columbia. So busy day today. Talk to you tomorrow. We're already holding hands, but I don't know her. We're already making plans, but I don't know her. I just want to be her man, but I don't know her. I just want to see, I, I just want to see. Lipstick and wild eyes.

Starting point is 00:09:39 She's got me hypnotized. Tiny jeans with an attitude.

Today in Digital Marketing - Is Google's "Honeymoon Period" Real?

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