April 2019 – SEO and marketing news

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Apr 12, 2019 / by
April 2019 – SEO and marketing news

Spring has finally sprung, but if the news is to be believed, there’s little to celebrate. With the Brexit saga showing no sign of slowing any time soon and April Fools Day now mercifully behind us, we’re trying to ignore “the B word” this month and are instead focusing on the digital marketing world across the pond. So, expect the latest from Google, a surprising new feature from Bing and Apple’s foray into its app marketing platform, amongst other things.

Bing Ads Launches New Action Extensions

Bing Ads has revealed a new ad extension that features one of 70 pre-defined calls-to-action. You can associate action extensions at the account, campaign or ad group level, with the lowest level taking precedence and a limit set to 20 action extensions per level. Action extensions are supported in the web UI, the web bulk account management tool, the Bing Ads campaign management service API and the bulk API.

Action extensions take a page from social media ads that feature prominent calls-to-action. You won’t find this ad extension in Google as its only available in Bing Ads. It will be very interesting to see how these impact click-through and conversion rates for marketers using Bing. During testing, these new extensions helped advertisers achieve an average 20% increase in click-through rate.

Google Assistant Being Sneaky With its Ads

According to Reuters, the Google Assistant isn’t being entirely truthful with its recommendations, as it found the assistant making recommendations being generated by local services ads without disclosing this information to users – which it has a legal obligation to do.

There have been no complaints received yet and the issue is currently not widespread enough to alarm or inconvenience users. Still, given the €1.49 billion EU fine Google was recently awarded for breaching antitrust in advertising rules, they might want to consider operating with greater transparency moving forward.

Ahrefs Announce New Search Engine That Values Privacy

Dmitry Gerasimenko, CEO of popular SEO resource site Ahrefs, has announced plans to create a new search engine that supports content creators and protects users privacy. He laid out his proposal for a more free and open web that rewards content creators directly from search revenue with a 90/10 split in favour of publishers. He believes Google’s existing model is “unfair” and feels that a modern earth engine should encourage innovation.

Dmitry also feels the job of a search engine should be to impose a structure to the chaos of the web. He explains:

Structure wielded upon chaos should not be rigid and containing as a glass box around a venomous serpent, but rather supporting and spreading as a scaffolding for the vine, allowing it to flourish and grow new exciting fruits for humanity to grok and cherish.

Apple Extends Search Ads Support

Apple buildingApple has extended its Search Ads platform to 46 more countries. This means marketers are now able to boost the visibility of their apps in 59 countries, as well as manage campaigns spanning multiple regions. Search Ads launched in 2016 in the US before expanding into Canada, Mexico, and Switzerland the following year.

It also introduced Search Ads Basic, which did away with keywords and bidding to cater to developers who don’t have the expertise or resources to manage more traditional paid search campaigns.

A Bernstein research analyst estimated that Search Ads could generate $2 billion in 2020, but now that the number of supported countries has more than quadrupled, Apple may be well on its way to surpassing that figure.

While the increase in supported regions might add an extra layer of complexity on top of the criteria that app marketers are already used to, those willing to learn the characteristics of each distinct audience stand to gain a lot of attention.

YouTube Comprises 37% of all Mobile Web Traffic

YouTube’s irrefutable grasp on youth culture might be well documented, but a new report by networking equipment firm Sandvine has cemented this opinion with some serious stats about mobile data.

YouTube is reportedly responsible for 37% of all downstream mobile internet traffic worldwide, according to the annual Mobile Internet Phenomena report. This puts it way ahead of Facebook/Instagram and Snapchat, which are in second and third place with 14.1% and 8.3%, respectively. Of course, YouTube’s dominance could be down to the fact that streaming video uses more data than most social media applications, but it’s still a sobering statistic.

The report, which can be downloaded in full right here, also found that traditional web browsing only comprises 4.6% of all mobile internet traffic and Netflix makes up just 2.4% of all global mobile data.

Other findings in the report include the fact that Facebook’s collective properties account for over 20% of all mobile traffic and relative newcomer TikTok is the 11th most popular mobile app worldwide by data volume.

The list of top 10 networks making the mobile internet tick are:-

  1. YouTube – 37%
  2. Facebook – 8.4%
  3. Snapchat – 8.3%
  4. Instagram – 5.7%
  5. Web browsing – 4.6%
  6. Facebook video – 2.5%
  7. Netflix – 2.4%
  8. WhatsApp – 3.7%
  9. App Store – 2.1%
  10. Google Play – 1.9%

To check out what was big in the world of SEO, digital marketing and the digital realm in general last month, click here for more news.

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