In the blink of an eye, another month went by. And it was a hot one, indeed – the sun was reaching pretty high temperatures. We could also use a similar adjective for last month’s marketing news. There’s plenty one of them, so buckle up! Here we go!

Google

New Local Campaign Ad Formats in Google Ads

Google announced on last month’s Google Marketing Livestream online conference new ad formats for Local campaigns.

Local campaigns are designed to help businesses reach potential customers and increase store visits by providing them with useful information in Google Search, Google Maps, Google Display and YouTube. Here are the 3 new formats:

• Auto Suggest ads – ads that appear as suggestions, listing similar businesses when searching for a specific business.
• Navigational ads – ads that pop up while using navigation suggesting interesting stops.
• Similar Places ads – ads that show similar places in Maps when the searched business is currently closed or not available.

These new formats should be available later in 2021.

Source: Google Blog

Google Merchant Policy Changes

Google is updating Google Merchant Center policies that will affect Google Shopping campaigns. The main goal of these changes is to provide customers with better customer journey while shopping online.

According to the new policies if a website doesn’t meet certain criteria, Google will suspend the Google Merchant account connected to it, which will stop shopping ads from running.

Google wants to show people clear and relevant ads. The landing page should have the same qualities, making sure the customer journey is seamless. Google will penalize incomplete websites, pages with misleading products descriptions and 404s.

The suspension will be lifted once the website is fixed. That’s why we recommend checking your website regularly and pay special attention to your product pages.

Source: Google Merchant Help

Google Ads Latest News and Features

There are more Google Ads news from June’s Google Marketing Livestream. Some of them are already available, others are coming soon.

• Image extensions for Search ads – highlight your ads using images in Google Search. This is already available worldwide.
• More useful data on the Insights page - in the upcoming months, we can be excited for a new Insights page withing Google Ads providing us with more useful data, even with customer demand forecasts.
• Customizable RSAs – ad customizers are coming to responsive search ads well.

It was interesting to see how much Google wants us to use its ultimate combo of responsive search ads + smart bidding + broad match. Will we gradually lose control of our campaigns?

Source: Google Ads Help

 

New Google Partner Requirements

Google announced the newest Google Partner program requirements for advertisers, which will come into effect in February 2022. Advertisers that already meet the requirements will get their badges in June 2021.

If your agency is currently a Google Partner or Google Premier Partner, you can keep your badge till February 2022. After that you will have to meet the new requirements to keep the badge.

Google Partner requirements:

• Performance – Ads manager account needs to have a minimum optimization score of 70%. Better check those Recommendations.
• Spend – Ads manager account needs to have a spend of $10,000 (8 300 €) in the last 90 days.
• Certification – Ads manager account needs to have a minimum of 50% of its employees (account strategists) certified in Google Ads with at least one certification in each product area.

If you want to become a Google Premier Partner, you need to be in the top 3% of participating countries in the selected country.

Source: Google Ads Help

 

Are You Ready For The Page Experience Update?

Last month, Google announced that starting from 15th of June, they started slowly releasing their new Search update called Page Experience Update. The update should have been released in May, but for reasons unknown it was postponed.

You better go and check your website in GSC using the Page Experience and Core Web Vitals report. The Page Experience Update should be fully rolled out by the end of August.

Source: Google Search Central

 

Google Introduces Search Console Insights

Google was cooking something under the hood, and they are ready to announce their new report called Search Console Insights. This new experience provides useful information by combining data from Google Search Console and Google Analytics.

That’s why we recommend associating those two accounts the get the most out of this new experience. You can do it by clicking here and choosing the right accounts. The association works only with Universal Analytics now, but Google Analytics 4 support is coming soon.

You can visit the Search Console Insights from your GSC’s home screen or by clicking here.

Source: Google Search Central Blog

New Tool: Google Ads Creative Studio

Google is combining its products from YouTube, Display &Video 360, Campaign Manager 360 for a unified experience – Google Ads Creative Studio – creation of video, audio, and display ads in one place. Features include:

• Director Mix – creation and customization of creatives  for different audiences.
• Dynamic display & HTML5 – interactive and customizable creatives for Display & Video 360 and Campaign Manager 360.
• Audio Mixer – dynamic and tailored audio ads.

All the creatives are in one place, which makes it easier to edit and customize them. Google Ads Creative Studio will be available in beta for Display & Video 360 customers at the end of July and for selected YouTube Ads customers at the end of September. Additional features will be available to a wider group over the following months.

Source: Google Blog

More Interesting News from Google

Here are some more news:

• FAQ Rich Results: Google is limiting the number of FAQ search results in Google Search. The current limit is 2.
• Carousel for articles: Google is trying out a new carousel format for articles in Google Search for journalists and authors. The beta testing is currently available in the USA on mobile devices. Find out more here.
• Google My Business offers more options to manage the GMB profile, posts, services, take-outs straight in Google Search. Find out more here.
• Similar results widget: Google is testing a new widget for similar search results in the Knowledge panel. After clicking on More on mobile, it shows you an interactive carousel with more results. Check it out here.
• Country filter in Google News: Google is trying out the option to filter out news from specific countries while using Google News by clicking on Tools.

Source: Search Engine Roundtable & Google Blog

Facebook & Instagram

Instagram’s Algorithm in Action

Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram, released a lengthy blog post describing Instagram’s algorithm. It uses several algorithms in different sections of the app based on user interactions.

• Feed and Stories use thousands of signals to rank posts, for example:
• Time and place posting, popularity of the post
• Engagement of the person who posted 
• Activity of the viewer, how many posts he/she liked
• History of interacting between the 2 users - whether they comment on each other’s posts or not

Instagram ranks posts based on the probability of comments, likes, spent time, post saves or user profile visits. Explore feed works similarly, trying to show content the user would like.

Source: Instagram Blog