[Ep156] - Are Backlinks Still Relevant In 2023?

#TWIMshow - This Week in Marketing

Episode 156 contains the notable Digital Marketing News and Updates from the week of Apr 10-14, 2023.

1. Microsoft Ads Launches PLA Extensions - PLA Extensions are the first fully integrated retail media solution from Microsoft allowing brands to serve product ads both onsite and offsite with a single budget while automatically optimizing for the best balance of performance and reach.

What are onsite and offsite ads? Advertising your products on a retailer’s website (known as “onsite”) is a strategy with a proven return on investment (ROI)—but advertising only onsite can limit your reach. Onsite advertising has genuine advantages, such as increase awareness of your products with a retailers loyal shoppers, as they’re already shopping (with high intent to make a purchase) on the retailer’s website. However, reaching only shoppers that are already searching for your products on a retailer’s site limits your reach.

PLA Extension allows you to place product ads both onsite and offsite with a single budget, while automatically optimizing for the best balance of performance and reach. While previously limited by ad supply constraints onsite, you can now reach significantly more in-market shoppers offsite. With PLA Extension, you’ll have unified reporting and attribution without any heavy lifting. This feature unlocks omnichannel attribution in an automated and scalable way, enabling you to measure the impact of your onsite and offsite ads and see a more complete view of the shopper’s journey.

When you opt to use PLA Extension—if an onsite campaign is underspending—the feature will automatically extend your product listing ad to offsite product placements powered by the Microsoft Search Network and the Microsoft Audience Network, optimizing performance and reach across on and offsite product ad placements.

For example, suppose John is searching for a new pair of boots on his favorite retailer’s website. He sees your ad for a particular brand of boots but becomes distracted before adding them to his cart and leaves the website without making a purchase. Later that evening, he’s browsing online and sees your ad again on Bing. He clicks through the ad on Bing and is taken to your product page on the retailer’s website, and this time, makes a purchase. Meanwhile, Sandra, another shopper in need of new boots who isn’t familiar with your brand, has also seen your ad on DuckDuckGo and clicks through to make a purchase as well. Thanks to the PLA Extension feature, you’ve reached in-market shoppers both on and off the retailer’s site with a single PLA campaign.

PLA Extension drives awareness of your brand and points prospective customers back to your product landing page, growing your audience, and increasing the likelihood of sales.

The introduction of this feature in the Microsoft PromoteIQ solution is just one of the ways Microsoft is solidifying its vision to build the most complete omnichannel retail media stack.

2. GA4 Gives You The Ability To Change How You Count Your Conversions - Google Analytics 4 (GA4) now allows users to modify the counting method for conversions, introducing a “once per session” option, which is similar to how Universal Analytics (UA) operated. There are two different counting methods that you can select for a conversion event:

1. The “Once per event” (Recommended) setting means that Google Analytics 4 properties count an event as a conversion every time it occurs. This option is recommended because it reflects the behavior of users on your site or app, and allows you to distinguish between sessions where multiple conversions occurred and sessions where only one conversion occurred. For example: A user completes 5 conversions in one session. This setting counts 5 conversions.
2. The “Once per session (Legacy) This setting means that Google Analytics 4 properties count an event as a conversion only once it occurs within a particular session. Once per session is how Universal Analytics properties count goals. Select this option if it’s important for your GA4 conversion count to closely match your UA conversion count. Otherwise, select Once per event. For example, A user completes 5 conversions in one session. This setting counts 1 conversion.

A session is a group of user interactions with your website or app that take place within a given time frame. In Analytics, a session initiates when a user either opens your app in the foreground or views a page or screen and no session is currently active (e.g. their previous session has timed out).

By default, a session ends (times out) after 30 minutes of user inactivity. However, you can adjust the session timeout period. There is no limit to how long a session can last. An engaged session is a session that lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a conversion event, or has at least 2 pageviews or screenviews.

If you don't make a choice, Google Analytics will automatically use the default counting method. The default depends on how conversion events were created.

i. “Once per session” is the default counting method for all conversions that were created from Universal Analytics goals:
1. in an automatically created Google Analytics 4 property
2. using the goals migration tool in the Setup Assistant after April 2023
ii. “Once per event” is the default counting method for all other conversions

You can quickly tell which counting method each of your conversion events uses by going to the Conversion events table in Admin > Conversions. Any conversion with an icon next to it has the Once per session counting method. If there’s no icon in the Conversion name column, then that conversion event uses the Once per event.

To change the conversion counting method, you need to have at least an “Editor” role on the property.

3. In U.S Search Ads Accounted For 40.2% Of All Digital Ad Revenue In 2022 - According to the 2022 IAB’s Internet Advertising Revenue Report, search ads accounted for $84.4 billion of the $209.7 billion in U.S. digital advertising revenues. In 2021, search ads accounted for $78.3 billion of the $189 billion spending.

The IAB report pointed out that the growth of search revenues wasn’t as strong as other formats – it lost 1.2 percentage points in total revenue share. That’s because display revenues were up 12%, digital video was up 19.3% and digital audio was up 20.9%, year on year. With 40.2% of all digital ad revenue in 2022, paid search is still the leading format.

After rebounding in 2021, social media saw its smallest level of growth in 10 years, according to the IAB. In 2022, revenue from social platforms was $59.7 billion, up from $57.7 billion in 2021. Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature was cited as one key reason for stalled growth.

You can view the entire report here (note: the report is free, but you must log in or create an account to download it).

4. Google Released 2022 Web Spam Report - Every year Google releases its web spam report showing how much better the search company got at fighting search spam. Google has named its machine lea...