Today in Digital Marketing - Yesterday's Google Update Was... a Doozy 😕

Episode Date: January 14, 2020

Google’s core update yesterday brought high volatility A new tool will reveal how changing your bid strategy would affect your campaigns Instagram completely missed the ball on DMs And what do CONSUMERS think about hiding Likes on social media? Can you help spread the word? Review this podcast at https://ratethispodcast.com/today AND/OR click https://ctt.ac/o713H to preview a tweet you can publish The Premium feed, with exclusive deep-dive interviews with social algorithm experts, is at http://patreon.com/todayindigital Today in Digital Marketing is brought to you by engageQ digital. Can we help you with YOUR brand’s digital marketing and social media? Let’s chat. http://www.engageQ.com or call 1-855-863-6233. TOD’S SOCIAL MEDIA: Tod’s web site: http://TodMaffin.com Tod’s agency: http://engageQ.com LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/todmaffin Twitter: http://twitter.com/todmaffin Instagram: http://instagram.com/todmaffin Facebook: http://facebook.com/tmaffin Mixer: https://mixer.com/HappyRadioGuy SOURCES: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-january-2020-core-update-28832.html https://www.marketingdive.com/news/alaska-airlines-ties-airfare-discounts-to-northern-lights/570365/ https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-changes-the-look-of-paid-and-organic-search-results-on-desktop/343443/#close https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/14/instagram-web-messaging/ https://wersm.com/google-ads-bid-simulator-target-roas-bid-strategy/ https://marketingland.com/brightcove-launches-all-in-one-video-campaign-app-274276 https://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2020/42270/do-consumers-think-instagram-should-hide-likes --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/todayindigital/messageOur Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

January 14th, 2020. Happy National Dress Up Your Pet Day. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. Today, Google's core update yesterday was a doozy. A new tool will reveal how changing your bid strategy will affect your campaigns. Instagram has completely missed the ball on DMs. And what do consumers think about hiding likes on social media?

Here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing. Okay, lots of Google news today. In yesterday's show, I mentioned that Google was releasing one of its core updates, and I would tell you today if it ended up being a big deal. And it did, at least according to Chatter in the industry. This one seems more volatile than the last core update in September. But remember, as with all Google algorithm updates, volatile doesn't necessarily mean bad. Your brand's position may have gone up,

maybe even dramatically so. The only way you'll know for sure is by maintaining an SEO tool subscription. Meanwhile, Google's ad people are introducing a bid simulator. Yeah, if you use the target ROAS bid strategy, they're rolling out a new tool that claims to help you understand the components of your campaign that are affecting smart bidding. Quoting WeRSM.com, bid simulators in Google Ads can help advertisers gauge potential performance if they used a different bid amount. They've only been available for campaigns that use manual bidding or target CPA bidding, but now Google Ads is introducing bid simulators to smart bidding, and specifically the target ROAS bid strategy. The tool will take data from auctions during the last seven days and will show what impact a higher target bid would have, assuming that everything in the campaign remained the same.

Google Ads is also rolling out a new budget simulator to help advertisers find their ideal budget to maximize campaign performance. The budget simulator will display how changes in the budget could have impacted campaign performance. Finally, in Google News, it looks like they are changing the look of its search engine results, following the UI trend these days of making everything looking like it's on a smartphone. The new look will have a more prominent ad label

and will add favicons. Favicons? Favicons? Favons, anyway, you know what I'm talking about, next to organic results. Also, Google is moving the URL from being green and pretty visible below the title to being smaller, black, and at the top of the results block. The new look will be rolled out over the coming weeks. File this under close but no cigar. Instagram finally confirmed it's working on bringing DMs to the desktop so you'll be able to reply to people who message your brand account via the Instagram.com website instead of just the app.

So, like I say, close. Because what we digital marketers really need is API support. Instagram DMs are one of the biggest gaps in the Facebook API ecosystem. We can access Facebook private messages through third-party tools. We can access Twitter DMs through third-party tools. But we can't see or reply to Instagram DMs in third-party tools because it's not in the API. Come on, Instagram. It's 2020. All right, time for the lightning round.

Really clever pricing model from Alaska Airlines. They are offering discounts based on the expected intensity of the northern lights. The more intense they'll be, the cheaper your flight will be. LinkedIn was having some trouble yesterday, so your third-party content tool may have been experiencing issues connecting to it. Brightcove has released a new video campaign app that lets marketers create and analyze their video campaigns in one tool. And Microsoft this morning released a free and somewhat urgent software patch,

this to fix a major security flaw in Windows 10. The U.S US's National Security Agency actually found the bug, which apparently could let hackers intercept seemingly secure communications. And finally, as you may know, Instagram has been hiding likes in a test. Influencers seem to like it. Brands seem to think it's a good idea. But what about consumers? You know, average Instagram users? A new report from the Manifest says the majority of those they polled said they couldn't really care less one way or the other. Well, if you value a daily digital marketing news show, please take a moment to review this podcast. Quick instructions at ratethispodcast.com slash today. And if your brand could use some help with your social media content,

engagement or digital marketing, check out our agency at engageq.com. Follow me on social links to my channels and our agency are in this episode's description. I'm Todd Maffin. See you tomorrow.