Paid Media News
Paid Media News
We know that maximising the return on investment for Paid Media campaigns is a key priority for the majority of organisations, especially charities. Therefore, we’ve shared all of the latest Paid Media news with you below, to enable you to create the most effective and efficient campaigns possible.
The End of GA4 Config Tags
27/09/23
Google Tag Manager are moving the GA4 Configuration Tags to a more generalised Google Tag. The purpose of this change is to allow the Google Tag to be used in wider contexts, such as within Google Ads, making multiple different systems and services integrate easier and more intuitively. However, this does have an effect on how the tag works in the context of GA4.
First of all, when creating a new Ga4 tag, there is no longer a tick box to send a pageview event, as this is now controlled by a parameter called “send_page_view” which, when supplied with the value “true”, will fire as the config did prior. Also, you can no longer select the config tag to load the measurement ID of your GA4 property, which now has to be entered either manually within each event, or by selecting a variable.
Worth noting that for any existing tags, this update should have been automatically updated and function as before.
Google Announces Discovery Campaigns Upgrade
11/09/23
Google announced that Discovery campaigns are upgrading to Demand Gen starting in October 2023, with automatic upgrades from early 2024.
Discovery ads were introduced in April 2020, allowing advertisers to reach users across all Google feeds, including Discover, Gmail and parts of YouTube. The Demand Gen campaign format was later introduced in May 2023 to ‘drive performance beyond what you’ve come to expect from Discovery ads’. What that means is more conversion-focussed performance, more granular targeting, and more efficient use of budget, relying on AI to do so – as well as expanding to YouTube In-Stream and Shorts and offering more video formats.
While Demand Gen aren’t a campaign type we have experimented with much, they are a natural fit for advertisers who rely on more Paid Social advertising platforms, so one to be open to as we embrace AI more and more into paid media.
New Meta-PayPal Partnership Could Disrupt Charity Donations
05/09/2023
Meta announced that they’re partnering exclusively with PayPal Giving Fund UK (PPGF) to support donations benefitting charities in the United Kingdom.
Charities enrolled with Meta Charitable Giving Tools must accept the new terms by 1st November 2023 and switch to PPGF in order to receive donation payouts. Also worth noting that from 15th September, charities won’t be able to receive donations via Facebook or Instagram (or allow fundraisers to be set-up) for new donors unless they have accepted the new terms.
Advertisers running On-Facebook donation ads, will need to reconfigure their campaigns to avoid disruption. Existing ads can continue to run, but after 15th Sept won’t be able to receive donations from new donors, whereas campaign delivery will stop entirely from 1st Nov.
TikTok Ends Personalised Ads for EU Users
07/08/23
In an important but inevitable move, TikTok has unveiled a set of measures in response to the European Union’s forthcoming Digital Services Act. The platform will cease personalized advertising for users aged 13 to 17 across Europe, ensuring compliance with regulations.
Additionally, users of all ages will have the ability to disable personalized content discovery. This move aligns with TikTok’s existing safeguards for younger users, such as defaulting accounts of those under 16 to private settings, limiting content visibility in other users’ feeds, and offering the option to opt out of personalized ads.
Advertising to minors has been a contentious issue for TikTok; they’ve previously received fines in the UK and USA for mishandling children’s data.
The platform will, however, continue running personalised ads for users under 18 outside the European Union. To offer more transparency, TikTok plans to furnish EU users with enhanced information on content moderation decisions. Furthermore, it intends to introduce new content reporting mechanisms, enabling European users to flag content violating TikTok’s policies.
If you’re curious about how a TikTok ads strategy can improve your organisation’s reach, don’t hesitate to get in contact with us today.
Improvements to the TikTok Pixel
10/07/23
A new TikTok update has rolled out, which will bring their pixel more in line with Meta’s in terms of amount of data collected. On top of data such as interactions and reach being collected, the TikTok pixel will now also gather information directly from the website you are advertising for. This can include information from the site’s metadata, as well as how the user interacts with the site such as if they click certain buttons or fill out specific forms.
By doing this, TikTok will now have a) the ability to see and provide insight into how users reach certain goals, b) an increased data set to feed their machine learning algorithms, leading to better campaign optimisation. The update has rolled out for all new pixels, and any older pixels will be updated by the end of the month, if not opted-out.
From a performance perspective, this could significantly benefit advertisers by brining down CPAs, however advertisers need to be mindful of their website data collection/cookie policies. Read our full blog here on the potential problems and our solutions regarding data collection through pixels.
Google: Brand Controls For Search & Performance Max Campaigns
03/07/23
Google Ads is working to give advertisers more control over their ad placement using brand keyword restrictions in Search campaigns for broad match globally and brand exclusions in Performance Max campaigns.
This is in response to advertisers wanting more control over their ads as the use of AI technology plays an increasingly key role in online advertising.
You can read more about how you can make the most of these features here.
Google Marketing Live 2023
23/05/23
It won’t come as a surprise to anyone, that the key theme of Google Marketing Live this year was AI.
Like it or not, soon enough, AI will be a central part of your Google Ads account. Some key highlights from the talks include:
- Creating Google Ad Campaigns using conversational AI
- Search Generative Experience integrating Search and Shopping Ads
- Performance Max using generative AI to create copy and image assets
- Merchant Center Next to replace Merchant Center
- Google Ads adds video views and demand gen campaign types
- AI and LLM’s in Smart Bidding
Discover the in depth details of these key paid media developments and how they will impact your advertising in the upcoming months.
Shopping Ads Policy Update
31/03/23
Google recently updated their ‘About our policies’ section of their Shopping ad policies to include a section addressing the responsibility of advertisers to ensure that the content or products they are promoting poses no risk to users or employees.
We know that almost everyone will already be following these guidelines, but if you would like to read more to keep yourself up-to-date, you can view the policy here.
Microsoft introduces category-based targeting
22/03/23
Recently Microsoft have been testing the effectiveness of keywords within the retail space. Whilst proving the most effective way (currently) to advertise your product to an engaged audience, it doesn’t consider the way consumers act in the build up to a purchase.
Often, consumers will browse products online in a similar fashion to how they would have in a brick-and-mortar store, browsing the aisles before settling on a product.
Using Microsoft’s new category-based solution, advertisers will be able to target consumers based on the categories they browse, leveraging keywords as a booster for campaign bids. Advertisers can boost bids with keywords to allow them a better chance of winning the auction on specific products where the audience has shown intent based on their browsing habits.
Unlike traditional keyword targeting, running category-based targeting requires smaller keyword lists, allowing advertisers to focus on a few high performing keywords.
Ad Grant Data Trends
21/03/23
The Google Ad Grant scheme has gone through many big changes and unprecedented challenges in the last 3 years. It’s weathered the COVID pandemic, seen the rise of Responsive Search Ads, and has adapted to the removal of broad match modifiers.
So, what impact has this had on Google Ad Grant data trends and performance of the scheme as a whole?
Our in-house data analytics expert, Dan Biggs, has reviewed data from 40 Google Ad Grant accounts under our umbrella, and has highlighted some key insights for charities to take note of. You can read his full report on the current and future trends of the Ad Grant Scheme here.
Enhanced GA4 Conversion Imports
18/03/23
The platform has recently updated how it imports web conversion data; it now supports fractional, cross-channel conversion imports.
Previously, conversions were only imported into Google Ads if the last click came from Google Advertising, meaning advertisers were missing out on data from other channels.
This latest update means that Google Ads will import partial cross-channel conversion data, even if the final non-direct click wasn’t from Google Ads. This allows for more precise measurements, enables advertisers to better optimise their ads which in turn will increase returns.
In order to set up conversion actions to utilise this capability, advertisers must have migrated to GA4. You can discover more about these enhanced conversion imports here.
Microsoft launches Bing Local Search Ads
07/03/23
Microsoft has developed a new way of displaying location extensions in local searches.
The new ad experience aims to help businesses gain a greater amount of real estate on the SERP. These are run on Bing’s search results page and Bing’s Maps.
Businesses will able to promote their products/ services to potential customers in the area whilst displaying their essential business information such as location, opening hours and contact details. This is great for charities with physical buildings or storefronts.
As well as this new extension, Microsoft is rolling out updates throughout March to help advertisers better track conversions, clean up UET tags and create combined audience lists. If you are running ads on Microsoft, we recommend keeping a close eye on these updates.
Google's AI powered Search Ads
27/02/23
Google has announced two new tools to enhance search ad performance with AI; automatically created assets and customer acquisition goals.
Automatically created assets generated using Google’s AI, allows responsive search ads to display asset combinations. Currently available to all English advertisers as an open beta.
The customer acquisition goal for search campaigns enables us marketers to build a consistent income of new customers through Smart bidding and first party data. We are able to target new customers this way if we combine it with other search strategies such as maximized conversion value with a target ROAS.
There are two new modes within this new tool, one which targets new customers only and one where you can bid higher for new customers than you can for existing ones giving you complete control over where your budget is spent.
Both of these tools are already benefiting marketers by improving the ad relevance, connecting with new users and boosting overall campaign performance which is vital in such a competitive digital world.
Instagram Explore Home Ads via API
13/11/22
Previously, Meta announced that companies would be able to have ads on the Instagram Explore home.
It has recently been announced that ads can be placed on the ‘Explore’ home via the Instagram Marketing API, with the feature also bringing 3 new capabilities for advertisers:
- Ads creation
- Ads insights
- Ad preview
You can read more further details about this update here.
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