ICYMI in August: Paid Media & social roundup

New this month, in case you missed it.

GOOGLE DISCOVERY ADS: *NEW* Audience Expansion (+20% REACH)

Scale top performing audiences with expansion… or not?

This is similar to Facebook’s version – reach more people that matter to your business and easily expand the reach of top performing audiences with audience expansion. 

Some LinkedIn connections were quick to show caution. Abbie claimed a “slow transformation to Goobook” that places control with audiences; Gordon observed it was likely to cause businesses more money.

I’m interested to see how this pans out. If you’re using it and you’d like to share insight, head over to the post and make a comment.

VERDICT: CURIOUS

GOOGLE SHOPPING: *UPDATE* Display Network (Discover Section)

Are bots an issue?

This month, I started to see the first dribble of impressions on the Display Network (Discover Section) for my Shopping Ads.

Surprisingly, there is no YouTube traffic showing up, I would have expected to generate a huge amount of impressions, as the client’s niche is very popular.

GOOGLE SHOPPING: *UPDATE* Display Network (Discover Section)

Gonzalo, one of my contacts, commented that comms from Google had been sketchy, all his clients had unexpectedly been auto enrolled. Another – Dean – had turned it off on almost all his clients for the time being. And so on.

What concerns me is the risk of bot clicks. It might only take the bots a few weeks to change their inbuilt scripts to click a different ad type.

Also, when I did some digging in my Facebook groups, I heard that, in the USA, normal daily budgets are now being spent early morning due to this update. It’s worth noting that Google has probably turned it fully on for the US, but not in the UK yet.

If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, check you’re opted into these Networks (via settings / targeting / tick the 2nd box).

VERDICT: WAIT LONGER

FACEBOOK & INSTAGRAM: *New* Single Messages Tab

One tab to rule them both

And yet another new change to the UI of the comments section. This one brings Facebook and Instagram closer together, showing messages for both in one single tab.

I can’t honestly see any controversy. It could indeed save someone a few clicks and created a warm fuzzy ‘how convenient’ feeling, for which there is probably an emoji.

So, you can see both sets of messages in one place, and also filter messages by platform to view them separately.

Meanwhile, the Verge reported that Facebook is working on a Snapchat rival, a companion app to Instagram called Threads. From what I can tell, the app will allow users to share a wider range of [bewildering] information like battery life with users’ close friends list, in addition to the more conventional text, photos and videos. Just to be clear, [the brackets] are mine. 

VERDICT: SEEMS USEFUL

We’ve curated and updated the best snippets. To engage in the debate, see Steven’s profile on LinkedIn and follow #door4 so you don’t miss any updates.

Photo by Evgeni Tcherkasski on Unsplash.