Jonny - Head of Social Media Facebook has announced that over the coming six months it will be making some significant changes to its options for advertisers. The social network is planning to halve the available ad formats in order to simplify the process for marketers, as well as to make sure that Facebook Ads continue to match the aesthetic of the Timeline and Pages they appear on.
As the updates are implemented, advertisers will have a more limited selection of ad formats to choose from. The hope is that this will help them to target their advertising spend in a more effective way: it will be easier to manage their ad campaigns, so keeping control of – and maximising the efficiency of – the money spent will be more straight forward.
So, what are the key changes that are going to take place?
“Questions for Pages” to be removed
The “Questions for Pages” functionality is to be retired. This was an underused feature because it was so easy for Page managers to interact with, and seek engagement from, their fans in other ways. Posts or promoted posts, especially those which include an image, have been found to be more successful ways for marketers to ask questions of their fans.
“Offers” to be removed
Advertisers have, until now, been able to publish a specific kind of ad that contained a special offer for their fans. However, many marketers have achieved the same impact, or even better results, by using posts on Pages, so the “Offers” functionality in its current form has been judged to be redundant.
Changes to “Sponsored Stories”
Unlike Questions and Offers, Sponsored Stories are not being removed, however they are going to undergo some considerable changes. At present, Sponsored Stories are distinguished from standard Facebook Ads. The 13 types of Sponsored Story will no longer be needed when the updates are in place because Facebook is going to embed the social context, such as Page likes, into all promoted posts automatically.
What this means is that the key features of Sponsored Stories and the engagement that they can introduce will remain, but in a new form. As Brian Boland, the product marketing director at Facebook said, “Sponsored stories as an idea doesn’t go away. Sponsored stories as a product goes away”.
More consistent ad appearance
As Facebook starts to streamline the appearance of their site, particularly over multiple platforms, it only makes sense that they would want the advertisements they publish to fit the overall visual picture, too. They hope to build a site which has a consistent appearance no matter where or how you access it, and one of the ways they will accomplish this is by reducing the number of ad formats an advertiser can choose from.
As well as having an impact on the general look of the site, it is hoped that the reduction in choices will make the process of creating ads far easier to manage, and that it will simplify the interface, especially for advertisers who run multiple campaigns simultaneously. The new ads should also be more goal-oriented and easier to test.
While the plans in place should help advertisers to manage their goals and ads more effectively and create a more coherent appearance for users, the impact it will have on advertising effectiveness remains to be seen. Careful analytics and testing will need to be carried out to ensure that ads remain successful for marketers and business owners.
Jonny - Head of Social Media Some four years ago, Twitter began to offer “Verified Accounts” to high profile users to reassure others that they are the genuine article, and to limit the number of fake celebrity accounts that were proliferating. Although these have not been without their problems, such as when an impersonator of Rupert Murdoch’s wife Wendi Deng managed to get their spoof account verified by Twitter, they are generally an effective way to prevent Twitter users from being misled, and to protect celebrities from being misrepresented. The “blue tick” verification offers people in the public eye the opportunity to prove the veracity of their account, while preventing tricksters from being able to convince the masses that they are the real thing.
Facebook has now followed suit, with a similar “blue tick” system to verify that people who say they are famous actually are. Mark Zuckerberg, Madonna and the Guardian newspaper are among those accounts which are now proven to be verified and authentic and which now bear the emblem. They explained that the Pages in question would be those of a, “small group of prominent public figures (celebrities, journalists, government officials, popular brands and businesses) with large audiences”.
The Facebook blue tick is not displayed over the cover photo, and this is possibly in anticipation of a potential problem that Twitter has encountered in the past, in which impersonators would add a screengrabbed copy of the tick to their own background image to make it look like an account is verified when it is not. Therefore when users hover their mouse over the blue tick on Facebook, the words “Verified Profile” appear. This should legitimise those who are genuine as this is impossible to replicate fraudulently.
When searching for well-known personalities on the site, the blue tick will also appear next to their name in the search results.
It is unclear at this stage who will be offered the opportunity to verify their Facebook Page or profile. Currently it seems to be limited to a certain breed of almost super celebrity, such as Justin Bieber and David Beckham, although this could simply be the start of a wider system of verification. Over time, smaller brands and less well known public personalities may start to receive the validation that this symbol offers, and many will undoubtedly be keen to be endorsed in this way.
The site does seem, so far, to have celebrities and public figures who are conspicuous by their absence. The Pages of Prime Minister David Cameron, international music producer Simon Cowell, film actress Susan Sarandon and supermodel Naomi Campbell are amongst those not so far authenticated as genuine.
There is no way, as yet, to approach Facebook and ask for a validated account although, ironically, fake Pages are already popping up offering people the chance to do just this. In reality, Facebook are making approaches to individuals and brands rather than opening the system up for people to nominate themselves. The site does, however, offer all users the ability to report fake accounts whenever they find them
DBD Media - Insights Whenever a visitor arrives on your website’s landing page, there are lots of factors that have to be right if you are to make the most of this conversion opportunity. A/B split testing and multivariate testing can teach marketers a lot about which parts of a page are the most efficient.
Videos are proving to be increasingly popular on landing pages, and can help to increase conversion rates, but this medium does have its limitations: if it is badly implemented it can cause somebody to hit the “back” button before you have even completed your first sentence, and they are unlikely to come back.
When used well, however, videos on a landing page can increase conversions by up to 80%. One reason for this is that it makes visitors stay around for longer. This increases the exposure to your brand and allows you to build trust with the prospect. Trust is further increased among visitors if a video features one of the individuals behind the brand, as this personalises the experience, helping to boost conversion rates when compared with a faceless corporate logo.
A large part of working out how to best optimise your own landing page videos is to test, test and test some more. Create a variety of videos and test one against another, again and again, until you have found the best performing one.
Here are a few things to consider before implementing a video (these are also key areas for testing):
Value Proposition
For many users, the idea of a video itself is a source of friction: How long is? Is it actually relevant to what I’m looking for? Will it load quickly?
To address this, you need to sell your video to your visitors. You need to identify the key benefits of watching your video, and clearly communicate them in order to get them to watch your video. Some of the typical advantages of video over copy are:
- Getting a page’s worth of information in less than a minutre
- Viewing a product demo
- Hearing from an authoritative person (e.g. company CEO, industry specialist) on the product the website advertises
Whatever the value of your video, it needs to be expressed upfront. How you express it can vary. Make use of headlines, subheadlines, descriptions, tags and even thumbnails to find what works best for your site.
Autoplay?
Whether or not a video should start playing automatically when a webpage is loaded is an ongoing debate in conversion optimisation circles! Few deny that, as a user, it is an incredibly annoying feature, however many marketers have found that autoplaying their video does increase their conversion rates considerably. Make a decision to avoid annoying your prospects, regardless of results, or better still try both options and test which has the most positive effect on your visitors’ behaviour.
Placement
Make sure the video is “above the fold” and not surrounded by cluttered information that will detract from the sales pitch. Some landing pages have nothing but the video and a call to action button, while others use the video in combination with text and images elsewhere. In any case, make it clear what the next step is after watching the video. Do you want users to fill in an enquiry form, click-through to the rest of your site…? Use a sequenced and controlled eye-path to limit distractions and smoothly guide users to your conversion goal.
Transcribe it
Making a text transcript of your video available is a good idea for several reasons. Firstly, it conforms to web accessibility standards. Secondly, it can be a real SEO boost, because as yet search engine spiders can’t “read” the audio or screen. And thirdly, some of your visitors will simply prefer to read than watch.
Length
Will your visitors respond best to a 30-second video blast or an extended 10-minute long detailed demonstration? It is important to find the balance between providing enough information and avoiding getting boring, so comparing visitor reactions to different lengths and formats will let you know the typical responses of your target audience.
Calls to Action
Adding a call to action on a landing page is well known to increase conversions, and including a call to action in the video itself can boost them further. A simple, “sign up below”, “buy now” or big red arrow pointing at the button you want people to press at the end of the clip can be really effective.
Repurpose
Once you have tested and optimised your video for your landing page, it is possible to repurpose it by posting it to YouTube. Videos typically perform well in Google search results, and it increases awareness and visibility of your brand, while also enticing more new visitors to your site.
Natalie - PPC Account Manager After two and a half years of preparation and 18 months in beta testing, Google AdWords have made Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs) available to all its advertisers. This offers great potential to marketers, but as the widespread launch has been announced it has become clear that there are difficulties that can arise when marketers use DSAs without enough care or expertise.
Dynamic Search Ads are a way to allow Google AdWords to use your website, rather than specified keywords, to generate advertisements. As 16% of the searches that take place each day have never been seen before by Google, it is impossible to plan for every keyword combination eventuality in your PPC account. What DSA does is use up-to-date content from your website, as crawled by Google’s organic search crawlers, to dynamically generate an ad with a dynamic headline and description lines pre-defined by you.
DSA campaigns can be generated from the content of your whole website but it is probably better to go with one of the narrower targeting options; either by product category, website URL, page title or page content.
Advantages of Dynamic Search Ads
One of the main benefits of DSAs is that you are able to target a wider range of search queries and choose to advertise a wider range of content on your site without having to create an expansive list of keywords and ad copy. This brings a much needed reduction in a PPC managers workload as you wouldn’t need to update AdWords with your new products, hotel destinations or online games, Google’s spidering technology will do the work for you. Without the wait to write new ad copy for each new item you launch, your latest product line will show up in your PPC ads incredibly quickly. Companies who have very large product ranges, and those with fast turnovers, are likely to appreciate this benefit the most.
Many advertisers are having great success with DSA, with little extra work. Google reported that, during the pilots of the scheme, the majority saw, “5-10% more clicks and conversions”, and because complete statistical information is made available, many advertisers are appreciating the unexpected advantage of finding their AdWords reports are full of hundreds or thousands of new search terms. This data can be invaluable in planning future campaigns. And while using DSAs does require a certain leap of faith in handing the reins to Google, it is still possible to specify exclusions, so that your entire website isn’t targeted. You can also include negative key words, to prevent your DSAs showing up against irrelevant searches.
Longer ad headlines than are usually allowed on AdWords have also been reported with DSAs, which is definitely a bonus.
Disadvantages
There are some aspects to DSAs that have caused some concern. Possibly the biggest issue is that, by allowing Google the power to use dynamic search, you do relinquish some control over which searches your ads appear with. This means that it might be displayed alongside some very generic and irrelevant searches. This is where use of the exclusions and negative keywords is intrinsic. Although due to the very nature of DSAs a high level of work would be needed to keep on top of this.
Another reason that DSAs won’t be for everyone is the fact that they would undoubtedly require additional budget. If you find you are already loosing impressions share on your existing search campaigns then this is probably a priority, ahead of spending extra money on dynamic search ads.
Andrew Lolk at Search Engine Journal tells a cautionary tale about a previously well-managed PPC account, which spiralled somewhat out of control when DSAs were activated. It is clear that accounts running dynamic search ads do require attention, and that relying on Google to entirely self-regulate in this respect can lead to wasted money and badly targeted promotions. An increased budget and an account overseen by a PPC professional are often the best way to make the most of DSAs, so not all advertisers feel equipped to dip their toes in the water.
Overall, dynamic search ads can produce really good results but they do require regular maintenance to ensure that they are making the right assumptions about targeting. By agreeing to the broader exposure you may lose some ability to fine tune your marketing, although traditional PPC options are still available alongside the DSAs, which can help to balance out this effect. The keywords and other data insights you glean from DSAs can inform your future keyword bidding, and the technology certainly has exciting possibilities. Therefore with careful optimisation, dynamic search ads can help you to expand your marketing and target those searches that would otherwise not be catered for if you were limited to keywords identified in advance.
Jonny - Head of Social Media Google’s I/O 2013 conference in San Francisco was packed full of information about brand-new changes and updates to the company’s services. Google+ alone has 41 new features, and changes to Chrome, Android and Hangouts were also significant. With 190 million people active on Google+, and more than double that using Google for things such as video calls, using the +1 button to recommend apps in Android’s Google Play, or sharing YouTube clips with their friends, the company showed at the conference that it is still constantly evolving and looking for ways to make things bigger and better for its users.
One of the biggest changes in Google+, whose redesign was launched on the day of the keynote speech at the conference, is its visual appearance. In a style that has been described as reminiscent of both Pinterest and Facebook, the new layout is image-focused with multiple columns that vary in number depending on screen size. The updated layout is built using the principles of responsive design.
Just as photographs and images are the star of the new column layout, so Google+ has also added many photo-related features to Google+’s functionality. When viewing other people’s photographs, a user can now flip them over with a single click and Google presents them with similar photos on the same theme.
Photographers will also be pleased to hear that their storage capacity has been raised from 5GB to 15GB, though how this will compare with Flickr’s recent announcement of 1TB storage remains to be seen. Google has done more, however, than simply increase the prominence of, and storage space for, photographs, it has incorporated some new features which will edit, enhance, filter, highlight, back up, animate, prioritise and select images, as well as exclude poor quality pictures.
Auto Backup does what it sounds like: it automatically uploads photographs taken on a smartphone to a private folder in Google+. Auto Enhance offers users the chance to improve the brightness, saturation, contrast and noise levels in uploaded photographs, bringing Google+ in line with sites like Twitter and Instagram that already offer these basic editing capabilities. Auto Highlight uses Google’s knowledge of a user to recognise which of a series of photographs they upload are the most important. It brings to the fore those photographs which are clear, which feature known friends and family members or even just people who are happy and smiling, and also pictures which include landmarks of places you have visited. It simultaneously downgrades the importance of blurry, dark or repetitive photos.
Its other new key photographic feature is called Auto Awesome. This nifty functionality combines the photos you have uploaded and creates new ones. Some examples of how this will work include:
- creating animated gifs from a series of similar photographs
- creating panoramic images from a series of pictures
- “looking” at and comparing group photographs and stitching together a new group photo featuring people with their best smile on show.
Another step forward for Google+ is its incorporation of hashtags. Google will generate hashtags for whatever content you post, and this will make it easier to contextualise information and to find more relevant details about a story. Trending hashtags will be displayed in the sidebar, and because people seem to intuitively understand hashtags after they have been used so much on Twitter, Instagram and more, this is expected to be a popular and easy-to-understand feature.
Another considerable change that Google announced at the conference was the launch of Hangouts. You might be thinking that these were already around in Google+, but they are now a cross-platform messaging service which has brought together several former services such as Google Talk, Google Voice and Google+ Hangouts into one place. Google disclosed at the conference that 20,000 hangouts per day take place within just the company itself.
Reports from the conference clearly show that Google has no intention of giving up on Google+. Instead it is taking action to make it an exciting and stimulating place to be. Its benefits for social media marketing and SEO aside, the new photographic features in particular could well be a pull for image-focused individuals, and the success of Pinterest and Instagram certainly shows that this is an active and passionate demographic.