Google knew as far back as 2010 that Google Chrome would help drive more Google searches. We learned some exact figures today during testimony from Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai at the ongoing U.S. vs. Google antitrust trial.

• Users who switched to Chrome from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer performed 48% more Google searches. 
• Users who switched to Chrome from Mozilla’s Firefox performed 27% more Google searches.

“The correlation was pretty clear to see,” Pichai said, CNN reported. Pichai also said, via WSJ:

• “We realized early on that browsers are critical to how people are able to navigate and use the web.”
• “It became very clear early on that if you make the user’s experience better, they would use the web more, they would enjoy using the web more, and they would search more in Google as well.”

$26.3 billion. Meanwhile, we also learned Google paid $26.3 billion to be the default search engine on various browsers, platforms and devices, with the biggest share going to Apple. That was according to testimony from Prabhakar Raghavan, a Google senior VP and head of Search, on Friday.

• Google Search made $146 billion in 2021 – so that means Google spent around 18% of its search revenue on these deals.

The Apple deal. It made “it very, very seamless and easy for users to use our services,” Pichai said, per WSJ. “We know that making it the default will lead to increased usage of our products and services, particularly Google search in this case. So there is clear value in that and that’s what we were looking for.”

Google vs. Microsoft. The never-ending rivalry came up during Pichai’s testimony at a couple of different points:

• In a flashback to 2005, when Google’s David Drummond sent a letter to Microsoft, complaining about Internet Explorer 7’s search defaults. Drummond wanted a choice screen because Google was worried about the anti-competitive nature of Microsoft prioritizing its own engine, MSN Search. From the letter:
  • “We are deeply concerned about the potential for harm to the competitive process from Microsoft’s actions, particularly given Microsoft’s monopoly position with its Windows OS and its IE browser.”
    “By pushing out an update of IE with a new search box that will default to Microsoft’s own search product in the vast majority of cases, Microsoft would gain a large number of search users for reasons having nothing to do with the merits of Microsoft’s search offering.”
  • “Finally, although Google hopes that legal action will not be necessary, we recognize that it is a foreseeable possibility. Accordingly, Google requests that Microsoft take care to retain all past and future records relating to any plans to tie search to any Microsoft product or otherwise deprive consumers of a competitive choice in search…”
• In a flashback to 2007, when Pichai talked about how the browser market had “kind of stagnated” because Microsoft wasn’t “incented to improve the browser,” according to Reuters. (Chrome launched in 2008. Pichai led its development.)

Europe has a choice. Speaking of choice screens, since the 2020 arrival of a search choice screen Microsoft Bing has seen no positive gains in market share in Europe. Here’s Google vs. Microsoft Bing search market share, as of September in Europe, according to Statcounter:

• Google: 90.87% (in the U.S., Google’s market share is lower – 88.48%)
• Microsoft Bing: 3.4% (in the U.S., Microsoft Bing’s market share is higher – 6.35%)

So, yes, Google has spent $26.3 billion to be the search default everywhere it wants. But Europe shows that on all platforms, where explicitly given a choice, people still overwhelmingly choose Google.

Why we care. It has been interesting to learn just how important Chrome has been to fueling Google Search through the years. Clearly, the Apple deal (and all the other default deals) are valuable to Google. But we’re still weeks away from knowing what this all means when we’ll finally get a verdict from Judge Amit Mehta.

Ahrefs leadership is once again calling out Semrush for making “7 shameless edits” to an Ahrefs vs. Semrush comparison article written by Brian Dean before his site, Backlinko, was acquired by Semrush.

The saga continues. That would actually be seven additional edits. Because previously, in Ahrefs mentions vanishing from Semrush-owned Backlinko, Ahrefs called out Semrush for, among other edits, changing Dean’s recommendation from Ahrefs to Semrush in a sentence preceded by “if you had to make me pick ONE tool to use for SEO, I’d have to go with…”

The 7 ‘shameless edits’. So what’s changed now? In his own words, Ahrefs CMO Tim Soulo said these changes were made:

1. Erased the fact that Brian used to be our customer for many years (since 2013)
2. Changed Brian’s preference from Ahrefs to Semrush
3. Tried to upend the narrative that backlink analysis is Ahrefs’ “bread and butter feature”
4. Link Intersect is no longer “awesome:”
5. No more praise for “Best by links” report
6. Erased the statement about the accuracy of our traffic estimations
7. Relegated our Site Audit tool from “web-based version of ScreamingFrog” to a “toned-down version of ScreamingFrog:”

The one edit Ahrefs wants. What Soulo and Dmytro Gerasymenko, founder and CEO, want is a disclosure that the article was edited by Semrush. The only mention of a connection between Backlinko and Semrush is in the footer of the page:

• © 2023 Backlinko is a Trademark of Semrush Inc

Deceptive endorsement? Ahrefs seemed to indicate they believe the article (which now has the title of Ahrefs vs Semrush: Which SEO Tool Should You Use in 2023?) could be violating Federal Trade Commision’s Endorsement Guides, which, in part say:

• “If there’s a connection between an endorser and the marketer that a significant minority of consumers wouldn’t expect and it would affect how they evaluate the endorsement, that connection should be disclosed clearly and conspicuously.”

You can dig deeper into the FTC rules here.

Semrush response. “Overreach” was the word used by Nick Eubanks, Semrush’s head of digital asset acquisition:

• “’Intentionally deceptive’ is overreaching here. ‘Doing business’ as in strategically owning media.. Semrush is far from the first company to do this,” Eubanks posted.

Little sympathy for Ahrefs. Reaction within the industry has been mixed. While both companies have their die-hard supporters/customers, various X posts accused Ahrefs of whining. Here are a couple of the negative reactions.

But Ahrefs also had supporters:

Why we care. Nobody really “wins” here from a reputation perspective. Ahrefs is viewed negatively for complaining about a competitor. Semrush looks like it’s being deceptive (and perhaps a tad arrogant). But for Gerasymenko, this battle won’t be won in X posts. As Terry Van Horne put it on X, “report them to the FTC and move on”:

Meta’s third-quarter revenue jumped 23% to $34.15 billion, the latest indicator of a rebound in digital advertising.

Meta, the parent company of Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads and Messenger, reported that:

• Ads viewed in the quarter increased by 31% from a year earlier.
• Average price per ad decreased by 6%, the smallest decline in seven quarters.

The company reported $11.6 billion in profit, more than twice the $4.4 billion from a year earlier. Its operating income of $13.7 billion also more than doubled year-over-year.

• “The year-over-year decline in pricing was driven by strong impression growth, especially from lower monetizing surfaces and regions. While overall pricing remains under pressure from these factors, we believe our ongoing improvements to ad targeting and measurement are continuing to drive improved results for advertisers,” said Meta CFO Susan Li said in an analyst call yesterday.

Cost cutting. Earnings were also helped by its cost cuts, with expenses falling 7% from a year earlier to $20.4 billion. In the past year, Meta has reduced its workforce by roughly a third and flattened its organizational structure.

User growth. This continued in some of Meta’s key markets, including the United States and Canada.

• About 3.14 billion people use one or more of the company’s apps every day, up 7% from last year.
• Nearly 4 billion people, about half the world’s population, use at least one of Meta’s apps each month.

Prioritizing AI. AI has been and will continue to be a big part of Meta’s drive to increase efficiency and lower costs. The company has depended on AI-powered marketing planning and ad measurement in particular in recent years to drive growth.

Customer use of chatbots is still in its infancy, said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

• “It’s going to take time to tune all of these experiences before hundreds of millions or billions of people are going to use them,” he said on the earnings call.

Hiring to increase. Zuckerberg said Meta plans to start hiring more AI-focused technologists for that and that the will increase headcount overall as it works through its “sizable hiring backlog.”

In the current quarter, the company expects to do well but warned of volatility because of events in the Middle East. Li said the company has “seen broader demand softness follow other regional conflicts in the past, such as in the Ukraine war” after Russia invaded in 2022.

• “We have observed softer ads in the beginning of the fourth quarter, correlating with the start of the conflict, which is captured in our Q4 revenue outlook. It’s hard for us to attribute demand softness directly to any specific geopolitical event,” Li said.

Microsoft wants small and mid-sized publishers to use pubCenter to monetize their websites, using display and native ads from the Microsoft Advertising Network.

Not new, or is it? Microsoft pubCenter is not new – it dates back to 2008 and has its own Wikipedia page – so I guess this is technically a relaunch? Or maybe a reboot? Perhaps a reimagining?

Basically, Microsoft today is positioning its 15-year-old Google AdSense alternative as a U.S.-only “pilot program.”

This is also not to be confused with Microsoft Start, its Google News alternative, which also has numerous partnerships with publishers who can earn revenue when their content is read on the Start app.

How it works. Just like AdSense, you pick an ad format, add some code to your website and get paid every time an ad is served on your website. There are “no sign-up costs, revenue minimums, or volume requirements to get started,” Microsoft wrote in its announcement.

What Microsoft is saying. The typical – higher engagement and more revenue. It seems to be promising more revenue than Google AdSense.

• “We offer flexible mediation—simply use our ads in the same units with Google AdSense, and we’ll only serve our ads when we can predict a higher bid for you. You can also place the Microsoft ad code on the same page alongside your other ads.”

U.S. only. It’s now open to all SMBs/publishers in the U.S. Those outside of the U.S. will have to join a waitlist, if/when Microsoft adds international support. You can sign up here.

First spotted in May? In Microsoft pubCenter, Google AdSense Alternative, Looking To Expand? on May 18 Barry Schwartz reported on a Microsoft Advertising console pop-up that seemed to indicate something was happening with pubCenter. He also provided a walk-through for configuring the next/latest version of pubCenter.

Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, reported its revenue rose 5% in the latest quarter after two straight quarters of declines on a rebound in the digital advertising market.

Advertising is the biggest source of Snap’s revenue – and the company cautioned the ad market remains volatile, pointing to the impact of war in the Middle East:

• “We have had a number of primarily brand-oriented campaigns pause spending in the early period, I will say that we have seen a lot of those campaigns resume spending and the impact to our daily run rate has reduced significantly as a result of that but we also have seen a very small amount of incremental campaign pauses trickle in more recently,” said Snap CFO Derek Andersen said in an analyst call yesterday.

Revenue for the third quarter was $1.19 billion, up from $1.13 billion a year ago. In the previous two quarters, Snap’s revenue had fallen between 4% and 7%.

The company remains unprofitable – its net loss of $368 million for the third quarter is wider than a loss of $360 million a year ago.

Ad platform improvements. In a letter to investors, Snap said the company has “focused on improving our advertising platform” to generate higher returns for advertisers.

• “We continue to make really significant investments in the ad ranking and optimization of creating a much broader range of signals into the ad platform and driving much larger models. And we’ve also instituted a much faster pace of experimentation. All of that’s leading to more precise conversion predictions, improved ROI for advertisers,” Andersen said.

Snap invested in improving ad ranking and optimization using ML models. This has led to a significant improvement in ROI for advertisers and an increase in lower-funnel revenue year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter. Also, its 7/0 Pixel Purchase optimization now lets advertisers bid for attributed seven-day clickthrough conversions.

Snapchat also reported working with advertisers to improve the effectiveness of their privacy-centric integrations with the ad platform. This resulted in significantly higher signal quality for those advertisers.

Last quarter, Snapchat introduced the Event Quality Score (EQS) system for advertisers to measure the quality and integrity of their data and identify opportunities to optimize their integrations with the ad platform. 

Increase in paid subscribers. Daily active users for the third quarter were 406 million, up 12% from a year ago. Last month, Snap said it had reached five million users for its paid subscription services, up from 4 million in June.

Because Snap is primarily used as a messaging platform – and doesn’t run ads in those messages – it’s had a hard time monetizing its users.

To rectify that it has ads in features like Stories and Spotlight, scrollable feeds of photos and videos from creators. Last month, Snap partnered with Microsoft to include sponsored links in Snap’s AI chatbot My AI.

Snap reported more than 200 million people have used My AI, sending more than 20 billion messages. CEO Evan Spiegel said in yesterday’s analyst call that while My AI is just getting started, it will eventually be a revenue driver.

• “Our primary focus right now is just improving response quality. We’re seeing some of the work we’re doing to improve those responses lead to higher retention with the product overall. There’s certainly plenty of commercial intent. We are taking steps to integrate into our models to help folks see more relevant content and advertising,” Spiegel said.

Select Amazon advertisers can now create AI-generated images to use in ad campaigns.

Essentially, what the tool offers advertisers is the ability to add backgrounds or scenery to plain product images.

Why we care. Amazon said its tool could lead to better ad performance. Products shown within a “lifestyle scene” can get 40% higher click-through rates, the company said.

How it works. Head to Amazon Ad Console, select your product, then click Generate. Using generative AI, Amazon will show you various “lifestyle and brand-themed images, based on product details, in a matter of seconds,” Amazon explained.

You can then further customize your AI-generated images using short text prompts or “enhance” them with a pre-set theme. You can save multiple versions to test and optimize performance, the company said.

You can add up to five images in your Amazon ad. Choosing multiple images will automatically create a looping slideshow.

Here’s a video showing it in action:

Limited availability. AI-generated images is only available to “select” advertisers now. But Amazon said it will “expand availability over time.”

What Amazon is saying. The image generation tool is easy to use and requires no technical expertise, according to Amazon.

• “This solution is helpful for advertisers of all sizes—enabling those that do not have in-house capabilities or agency support to more easily create brand-themed imagery, while also supporting bigger brands, who are constantly looking for ways to be more efficient around creative development,” the company wrote in its announcement.

This was expected. Like most ad platforms, Amazon has been working to add generative AI capabilities. We reported that Amazon was working on AI tools to generate images for advertisers in May. Now it’s finally here, nearly six months later.

LinkedIn is giving users more incentives to contribute to Collaborative Articles, promising greater visibility in search, feeds and notifications, the company announced today.

More visibility. LinkedIn plans to include more Collaborative Articles when people search for specific problems or topics. So if you’ve contributed to a Collaborative Article, this increases the odds your answer could be featured in LinkedIn’s search results.

Other ways LinkedIn is increasing visibility for Collaborative Article contributors:

• People outside your network may be exposed to your contribution, not just people you are already connected to.
• LinkedIn may also notify members “who would benefit” from your expertise.

Why we care. Contributing to Collaborative Articles provides a way to increase your visibility and your LinkedIn network and possibly even get leads. However, the format still is imperfect and needs more human editorial oversight.

Smart SEO play. LinkedIn Collaborative articles have been a smart and effective SEO play for LinkedIn so far. Just look at this growth (as shared on LinkedIn by Olga Andrienko, VP of brand marketing at Semrush):

But. It’s also resulting in a lot of SEO misinformation.

• “It’s churning out content about SEO talking about bounce rate, toxic links, and how you need to spend hours agnosing over meta descriptions. Just drowning in half-truths and misinformation. SEO is going to be particularly interesting in the next few years!” Mark Williams-Cook, Director at Candour, wrote on LinkedIn.

What else is changing. LinkedIn announced multiple additional updates to Collaborative Articles:

• Top Community Voice badges: Badges for a skill will appear next to your contributions to an article, no longer just on your profile.
• New layout: LinkedIn is putting a greater focus on member contributions instead of AI-generated text.
• All reactions available: Plus, you can see who has reacted to your contributions.
• Follow: People can now follow you directly from your contributions.
• Top Contributor section: Noteworthy contributors will be featured at the top of an article (most likely based on reactions).
• Cross-article linking: Internal links are being added to articles to make it easier to discover and read more articles.
• And more: LinkedIn is promising better quality and depth for articles; better algorithmic recommendations based on your posts/articles/comments; that filling in your Top Skills section will “explicitly pick the skills you want to contribute to”; and a refresh of linkedin.com/advice that makes it easier to find and contribute to articles.

Marketing professionals say they are overwhelmed by the pace of AI developments, according to a new survey.

While 70% of marketers often or always feel overwhelmed, just 30% rarely or never feel overwhelmed, according to a survey released by SOCi, a marketing platform for multi-location brands.

• “It’s a call to action for organizations to prioritize continuous learning and offer support to their teams. Otherwise, millions and billions invested in AI will be wasted,” said Monica Ho, CMO of SOCi.

No training or education. Perhaps contributing to some of that overwhelmed feeling is this survey finding:

• 42% of marketers haven’t received any formal training on AI and its applications in marketing.

As for the rest, 39% have received training while 19% are currently undergoing training.

• “We need to better equip our marketing teams with the right AI training and resources. A better understanding of AI and its applications is pivotal to harnessing its capabilities for our marketing strategies and unlocking its full potential,” Ho said.

More tools, more confusion. Rather than help marketers do their jobs better, the frequent introduction of new AI tools has caused confusion, according to 44% of respondents.

Why we care. If you’re feeling overwhelmed like the marketers in this survey, know you’re not alone. The speed of change we’ve seen this year in search marketing has been incredible and unlike any other year that I’ve seen covering this industry for 16 years.

The search marketer’s generative AI survival guide. Make sure to join me at SMX Next for my keynote presentation that will address this topic. (Register for free here.)

About the survey. Soci surveyed 317 digital marketing professionals, 55% of whom were decision-makers (including marketing managers, marketing analysts, marketing directors, CMOs and VPs), working at U.S. B2C companies.