Our latest roundup of all the Google updates you need to know about.
1. New ad policies to help brands & Ad content align
Google stated that “Recently, we had a number of cases where brands’ ads appeared on content that was not aligned with their values.”
This has been a hot topic in the marketing world, where brands are more sensitive than ever to where their ads appear—and the message it may send to viewers.
Just last year, we removed nearly 2 billion bad ads from our systems, removed over 100,000 publishers from our AdSense program, and prevented ads from serving on over 300 million YouTube videos. – Ronan Harris, Managing Director – Google UK
Google has publicly committed to making a change – we’ll be watching to see how it unfolds. First step: an extensive review of advertising policies.
2. Expansion of Close Variants Matching
Close variants help advertisers find people who are looking for the products and services their business offers. For example, “pizza place” and “pizza restaurants” and “restaurants good pizza” all lead to the same thing: people searching for these terms want pizza.
Google wants to help close the gap—relieving advertisers of the burden of devising over-the-top keyword lists that include every variation possible. They’ve committed to expanding close variant matching.
It will now include re-wording and reordering of exact match keywords.
3. Hit the ground running with Click-to-Call
Google is reviewing the click-to-call experience in a variety of ways: how to improve the backend, how to make reporting more useful, and how to make the customer experience more enjoyable.
Account level extensions recently started rolling out. These are designed to help you scale your click-to-call implementations across your entire account, versus the burden of having to add them multiple times to individual campaigns and ad groups.
Google will also be rolling out automated extensions, as well as automated call reporting.
As for the view experience: Google wants to make it easier for them to call businesses. One way they’re doing this is testing business names in the headlines of call-only ads (they started testing this late last year).
Keep your eyes peeled for other features Google is testing in click-to-call ads.
4. Spike in “Get Location Details”!
Google says nearly all traffic from clicks on “Get location details” links back to ads featured within Google Maps.
Merkle supports this claim, noting that these clicks are on the rise; brand searches delivering 5% traffic from this type of click. Overall, volume from ad traffic related to Google maps on the rise, across all device types.