The CLICKTRUST monthly pick – October 2019

News and articles that allow us to stay on top of our game. You might want to read them too.

Data & Privacy

Four strong indicators that your marketing analytics program will fail

– Econsultancy

“According to Gartner, so far marketers have leveraged only 61% of the functions available in their martech portfolio. The reason? Most organizations lack people, skills, and a proper vision for their marketing analytics program.
Ascend2 research further mirrors that sentiment indicating that 61% of companies originally invested in martech solutions to improve marketing efficiency and marketing ROI. Yet, post-adoption, 47% of respondents still struggle to capture that elusive ROI figure and 40% are far from being as productive as they’d like to be.”

Marketers Are Going Straight To Exchanges For Ultimate Data Transparency

– Adexchanger

“As marketers seek more transparency into their programmatic buys, they’re bypassing their demand-side platforms and going straight to exchanges and publishers to ask for log-level data about the bids they’ve won and lost. Advertisers are planning to use this data to power their buying strategies. Buyers could find pockets of undervalued inventory though log-level analysis and make more intelligent decisions than competitors who don’t have access to this data. Granular pricing information could inform negotiations in direct deals with publishers.

Data Platforms Enable First-Party Data Strategies – But Aren’t A Substitute For One

– Adexchanger

“The framework should provide for adding and removing online and offline data sources, easily integrating into multiple channels well beyond programmatic and setting up data partnerships to fill the data gaps and improve revenue, including the collection of additional data that the user may be willing to provide. It should be independent and not tightly tied to any specific technology partner or platform.”

Some Unsolicited Advice For Surviving The ‘Cookiepocolypse’

– Adexchanger

“The “death of cookies” may be second only to “year of mobile” as ad industry prediction fails. Both forecasts felt tired after too many false starts. The third-party cookie may not be dead just yet, but the increasingly scrutinized piece of code – one which for decades fueled audience buying across the digital landscape – is arguably now on life support.
If you were renting third-party data, you will likely need to build partnerships or some other means of working around the reduced efficacy of the third-party cookie. If you have strong customer (first-party) data, you will need to find partnerships that enable that data to work on third-party sites.”

 

Google: Organic, Ads & Analytics

Is Google’s new BERT technology another nail in traditional SEO’s coffin?

– Econsultancy

“As for optimizing content for BERT, Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz suggests that little can and should be done. He pointed to a tweet posted by Google’s Gary Illyes when RankBrain was launched, which stated “you optimize your content for users and thus for rankbrain. that hasn’t changed.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean that there is nothing for search marketers to do. For one, some companies might soon find that as Google’s ability to better understand natural language grows, they have reason to update content that was originally developed for traditional SEO so that it’s better-suited for human consumption.”

Google Ads Rolls Out 2 New Tools for Responsive Search Ads

– Search Engine Journal

“The two new tools include:

Performance column: Identify the exact creative assets that are driving results in high volume ad groups. Improve “Low” rated assets, keep “Good” performing assets, and emulate the “Best” performing assets.
Ad variations: Google Ads’ ad variations now supports responsive search ads, which lets advertisers run their own ad copy tests.”

Google Ads is Testing New Lead Form Extensions

– Search Engine Journal

“Advertisers can customize lead forms with their own title and description, and indicate which pieces of information they want to ask customers for. ”

Google Ads now showing cart metrics for Shopping campaigns

– Search Engine Land

“Merchants capturing cart data with Google Ads conversion tracking will be able to see additional revenue and profitability data attributed down to the product level. The new metrics, currently in beta, take cross-device conversions into account.”

Google Chrome Will Block Mixed Content

– Search Engine Journal

“Google announced that Chrome browser will begin blocking web pages with mixed content beginning December 2019. Publishers are urged to check their websites to make sure there are no resources that are being loaded using the insecure HTTP protocol.
Mixed content is when a secure web page (loaded through HTTPS) also contains scripts, styles, images or other linked content that is served through the insecure HTTP protocol. This is called mixed content.”

 

Facebook & Instagram

Facebook is Changing How it Calculates Organic Impressions

– Search Engine Journal

“Facebook pages are likely to see organic impressions go down as a result of changes being made to how impressions are calculated. Facebook is specifically changing how repeat organic page impressions are calculated. Changes will affect the time frame in which organic impressions from the same person are calculated.”