Our new monthly round up of digital marketing news that landed in February 2024.
TikTok Launches Creative Guideline Playbook
TikTok has shared a 34-page playbook for creative strategy. While targeted at SMEs, it’s a good overview of a process for developing creative ideas and has considerations specifically for TikTok’s format.
One example page gives advice on getting the hook right in the first 3-6 seconds:
- Highlight the popularity of the product
- Highlight the price
- Call out the audience this is for
- Shout about USPs (e.g. ‘one night only!’)
Meta Depreciating Some Detailed Targeting Options
Every now and again Meta clears out targeting options. We’ve seen a reduction in overall coverage of targeting options in the past few years, and on March 18th there will be a further cull across interests, demographics and behaviours.
Any ad sets affected will have a notice for anything unsupported and new campaigns will launch with available interests. It may be that some niche artist targeting options are removed after the updates, and we’ll only find out what is impacted after the changes go live.
Meta Adds ‘Engaged-view’ Attribution
A new ‘engaged view’ metric will count when someone plays a video ad for 10 seconds (or completes a view if shorter than 10 seconds), and converts within one day.
This doesn’t change our targeting approach but allows an additional perspective for assessing ad campaigns.
Google Ads Updates Consent Mode
Google Ads is enhancing its Consent mode, making it easier for advertisers to respect user choices regarding ad personalization and analytics.
This update ensures better compliance with privacy regulations while optimising ad performance. This helps advertisers maintain ad effectiveness even as you adhere to evolving privacy laws. It’s a step forward in balancing user privacy with targeted advertising.
Contentsquare Launches Latest Benchmark Explorer
We bookmark lots of benchmarking articles for reference across industries, and one of our favourites is the annual release by Contentsuqare. It’s more interactive than other benchmark sources, with average benchmarks for different industries, devices and behaviours. Worth a bookmark!
Google To Reveal Detailed Placements for Pmax Campaigns
Google’s automated Pmax campaigns, which deliver single campaigns across a broad range of placements and formats, will add new reporting to see where impressions have been delivered. This gives us better control and insight into where ads are delivering across Google’s search partner network, which is where ads appear on wider websites away from Google’s own properties like search results and YouTube.
While there are brand safety controls for avoiding questionable content, this new report will give a source to reference if there are ever concerns over brand safety.
New Insights Feature in Google Analytics
Google Analytics introduces Trend change detection, a tool that identifies significant trends in your data automatically. This feature is designed to help marketers quickly spot and react to changes in user behavior.
Google Analytics displays these changes in an Insight card in the Insights & recommendations section of the Home page, in Reports snapshot and Advertising snapshot, and in the Insights hub. Hover over an insight card to see more details about a trend change.
Google AI Enhances Responsive Search Ads
Google is upgrading responsive search ads with AI to automatically select the best headline and description combinations. This includes allowing campaign-wide headlines and descriptions rather than apply exclusively at the ad set/ad level.
This means ads will be more adaptive and relevant, potentially increasing engagement and conversion rates. As usual, this cedes some control to Google.
Google Analytics Simplifies Reporting Sections
Google Analytics is updating its Advertising section to bring advertiser and publisher reports together, making it easier to access both behavioural and performance insights in one place. This includes improvements to reporting on user engagement, and a centralised advertising hub for campaign monitoring.
