Businesses – both small and large scale – have been using digital marketing channels to target and reach potential customers for a long time now, often at a much lower cost compared to traditional mediums such as TV commercials or radio advertising. However, like most technology, digital marketing channels are evolving at a rapid pace and require digital marketing tactics and strategies that keep up with the change in order to get the best results.

In this blog, we will take you through the most recent major technological changes which will have a significant impact on how you execute your digital marketing plan.

Google Ads

In February 2021, Google announced changes to keyword bidding types. Once the rollout has completed, advertisers will no longer have a choice of broad match modified (BMM) or phrase match as two alternate keyword matching strategies. Instead, BMM & phrase match will be rolled into the one “updated phrase match” bidding strategy. As the name suggests, BMM allowed advertisers to choose the words which were required for their ad to be shown to searchers, but also allows the ad to be shown where additional words were used by the searcher and some of the words were not present.

Google stated that they have removed BMM in order to save advertisers time and effort in the management of their campaigns. The diagram below from Google’s explanation of the change shows a practical example of a search for “moving services NYC to Boston” and the outcome after the change.

Google stated that the change will ensure that more relevant ads are shown, as determined by the searchers’ entered keywords, boosting both users’ experiences and advertisers’ conversion rates. The new keyword matching system is easier to use because there are less choices. However the trade-off is less control for advanced users.

If you have been using BMM and getting great results, we recommend leaving those campaigns as is, and monitoring your results – Google will apply the changes to your existing setup. On average, we are expecting a slight decline in ad impressions, clicks and costs. It will be important to keep a close eye on the outcome, and continually review your keywords because the order of words within the phrases you are bidding for will now be more important.

If you have already been using phrase match, we expect you will experience a significant boost in ad impressions, clicks, costs and perhaps conversions (people taking the desired action after clicking on your ad), because the keywords are now more flexible and reach traffic which they could not in the past. However, you should monitor your budget closely because the costs could increase substantially, reducing your expected ROI.

We are still monitoring the impact of this rollout; whilst Google’s stated intentions are simplification and improved results, ultimately they make significant revenue from their ad platform and any change is also likely aimed at strengthening their share of ad spend and revenue.

Apple iOS 14.5 update

From 26th April 2021, Apple officially released iOS 14.5 for iPhone and iPad. The operating system version prompts users to opt out of pixel tracking within apps they install on their device. Prior to this change, the user had to be aware of this possibility, and manually find the setting to stop their behaviour and data being tracked and collected by 3rd parties such as Facebook. This is the sort of tracking is very powerful and has lead to situations like Target knowing that a teenage girl was pregnant before her father was told.

It has already been noted that the vast majority of iPhone and iPad users are opting out of the tracking of their behaviour and collection of their data after updating to iOS 14.5. Facebook is very concerned about the impact on their ad platform, and have started an advertising campaign to encourage small business to push back, stating that their tests have shown that a significant number of people have opted out of tracking.

We expect that as more people opt-out of tracking on iOS devices and become aware of their privacy options, performance reporting for your ad campaigns will become negatively impacted for both app and web conversion events.

With less tracking and behaviour data being applied to your advertising campaign, it will take longer for your ad campaign to build an audience or optimise for conversion, and therefore you will likely achieve a lower return on investment particularly in the initial phase of your campaign. In addition, the size of your target audience may be reduced as more people opt out of being tracked (and therefore won’t be served your targeted ads).

For Facebook advertising, even if iPhone and iPad users do opt in, event data is being limited to a maximum of nine campaigns (and five ad sets per campaign) for every Facebook account.

As an alternative to relying on the Facebook pixel, it is possible to implement the Facebook Conversion API to track user behaviour on the app server or web server (server-side) but implementation costs will be much higher and will likely deter small businesses wanting to test the usefulness of Facebook ads via a relatively low cost campaign.

According to Facebook, Apple are keen for you to invest in their ad platform instead, however their platform obviously limits your campaigns to Apple users.

Google Algorithm update – Search Engine Optimisation

If implemented well, Search Engine Optimisation (‘SEO‘) is one of the most cost-effective digital marketing tactics you can implement, yet it is the most complicated tactic to comprehend and execute successfully.

The main reason for this is Google (by far the most popular search engine, at least in Western nations) does not make known the finer details of their search algorithm. It requires trial and error to determine how to best setup your website to rank well for popular search terms, and the methods change all the time.

Google does not divulge the details about their algorithm, because they are trying to serve the needs of the searcher, and don’t want to empower businesses to outsmart their algorithm, and rank higher than another more deserving website. Instead, they give pointers and guidelines that are aimed at providing the best user experience for consumers of web information, and they are also constantly adjusting the algorithm to achieve better outcomes. Some people suggest that Google is also motivated to make SEO difficult because they would like to push more website owners over to using their Google Ads platform to deliver additional traffic, thus generating additional income for Google.

One of the factors in ranking well in Google’s search results is web page experience, which encompasses many factors including mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS-security, etc. Six months ago, Google announced that from May 2021, Core Web Vital Metrics (a range of metrics covering page load speed, interactivity and visual stability) would become more significant factors in the ranking of websites. If your website is poorly designed or taking too long to load, your website’s ranks will be adversely impacted.

The purpose of Google’s major algorithm update is to provide to searchers the most relevant websites with the best design and user experience. If your website is not ranking well in Google, even when you are providing valuable content to potential visitors, it is likely that core web vitals or user experience issues are causing your website to score poorly against Google’s algorithm.

Over the last 6 months our digital marketing team has been focusing on core web vitals for our clients websites for whom we provide SEO services. However, we will be carefully assessing the impact of the change which is still being rolled out by Google.

If you have concerns about any of the changes described above, please don’t hesitate to reach out and have a chat. We’d be delighted to assist with all your digital marketing requirements.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 26th, 2021 at 9:30 am and is filed under Digital Marketing, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimisation, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.