Google changed the way ads will be served on search page results
Google has dominated the headlines this month as it announced that it was changing the way ads were going to be shown in desktop search results.
No longer will ads appear in the right sidebar of your search page results; ads will now only be presented above the organic listings and at the bottom of the page. The question is, what does this mean for retailers, impressions, CPC, CTR's and average position? We're personally yet to see this change negatively affect average CPC and are still regularly monitoring impressions and CTR to see how this might impact performance – all we can say is watch this space.
Check out our blog post for more info.
Amazon venturing into the bricks and mortar space
A retail story that has caught the attention of merchants and marketers across the globe; Amazon announced that they'd be opening physical bricks and mortar stores that won't just sell books but other goods as well. So what does this mean for merchants online and offline and, how can we learn from Amazon's venture into the bricks and mortar space?
Starting with a bookstore in Seattle opened in November 2015; Amazon is set to launch 300 – 400 more stores across the U.S. Born online, this is an interesting move for Amazon and perhaps, a realisation that consumers also get something 'unique and powerful' from the real-world shopping experience.
So what makes Amazon's stores better than Barnes & Noble? To start with, customers will be actively encouraged to compare prices in-store using the Amazon app; great for the customer and excellent data for Amazon. They'll also be merchandising products using e-tail data, splitting shelves by highest-rated, most wished-for and most popular for example. An innovative retail space, the Amazon offline experience promises to be customer focused, creating a 'natural touch point of post-sale communications' that a large percentage of offline retailers struggle to achieve.
Visit Marketing Land for more information
Google announced that AdWords will be completely redesigned
More than 15 years old; the last time that Google reviewed the AdWords dashboard was way back in 2008 – we think it is about time it had a makeover. On Monday 28th March, Google announced that they'd be completely redesigning the interface; offering us a first peek into what changes may occur.
The search engine has recognised that managing and optimising campaigns has become more complex for agencies and businesses alike as users change the way that they search for and interact with businesses online. Whilst dashboards have been reimagined and data made to be more accessible; these changes will not affect the way campaigns and ads run.
The new interface will make accessing the data you need to optimise and manage your campaigns a lot simpler and easier. It will help to identify the most successful campaigns and help understand poor performing keywords so you can make these changes quickly and more easily. AdWords is going to do this by providing you with more visual and relevant data, so even when you're just starting out in AdWords it's easy for you to achieve your marketing adjectives.
More on the AdWords interface redesign.
Google testing a new lifetime value report in Analytics
On March 29th Google announced that it was testing a new Lifetime Value report in Analytics to help businesses & marketers understand the value of different users in each of your channels. With this information at your fingertips, it will be much easier to decide on the channels delivering the best ROI and areas which need a different approach.
Google explains the "report lets you understand how valuable different users are to your business based on lifetime performance across multiple sessions. For example, you can see lifetime value for users you acquired through email or paid search. With that information in hand, you can determine a profitable allocation of marketing resources to the acquisition of those users."
Currently in Beta, only a select few users have seen the Lifetime Value report in their accounts. Ranyere Rodrigues was one of the first to report seeing this for a property but he won't be the last.
#SearchFest 2016 and how you can be a better marketer.
This year's Search Fest took place on March 10th. Presenting marketers with informative learning workshops and panel sessions, it's designed to provide direct insight into the most up to date marketing strategies and technological advancements. Top speakers included Dr. Pete Meyers from Moz and Michael King from iPullrank. Below are 3 key takeaways you should know about:
Kaizen is a Japanese philosophy that will make your digital marketing life more copacetic. What this means is make small but constant changes and improvements to your marketing campaigns, content and social media accounts. We need to stop trying to take the marketing world by storm and instead focus on making small scale changes to what you do every day.
Social shares are basically the new XML site maps: Speakers at Search Fest spent a lot of time discussing how pages with the most social shares get crawled the most.
Promote only your best content: It's important to put your content out there but then after a week only promote the best content. Why would you want to keep promoting your poor performing content?
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