Reddit has launched new capabilities on Ads Manager for enhanced community targeting.

The platform has added three new features to the platform, as well as two new administration tools, designed to enhance campaign efficiency and performance, benefitting small business advertisers all the way through to enterprise clients.

Why we care. The enhanced features in Reddit’s Ads Manager provide improved tools for a deeper understanding of relevant Reddit communities, helping connect brands with high-value consumers for better conversions. The new administration tools also provide more efficient and controlled campaign management, offering advertisers greater flexibility and effectiveness in their advertising efforts.

New Ads Manager features. Reddit has added several new Ads Manager features to help advertisers find their audience, expand their targeting, and better understand the Reddit communities most relevant to them:

• Improved Community Search: Advertisers can now search for relevant communities by topic in Ads Manager.
• Targeting Suggestions: This new feature helps broad reach by suggesting additional communities based on an advertiser’s selected community target.
• Community Info: Reddit now provides community descriptions, topic tags, estimated audience size based on membership and engagement, as well as a link to the community, to give advertisers access to all of the key details in one easy place. 

New administration tools. Reddit has also invested in new administration tools to help streamline campaign optimization and oversight:

• Campaign lifetime budget: Advertisers can now set a maximum spending limit for their campaigns. Once the allocated budget is exhausted, all ad groups in the campaign will automatically cease spending, providing a straightforward way to manage budgets.
• Inline editing: Advertisers can now edit campaign names, bids, and budgets in one convenient location – the Ads dashboard.

What has Reddit said? Reddit’s EVP of Business Marketing and Growth Jim Squires told Search Engine Land:

• “With more than 100,000 communities on Reddit covering every topic imaginable, it’s helpful to know where to start and how to effectively navigate to success, especially for advertisers less familiar with our platform.”
• “Our client partners do a great job of connecting the dots, and these latest updates allow us to go a step further in providing that guidance and support at scale through our Ads Manager.”
• “Whether you’re a large brand or small business, self-serve or managed advertiser, you’ll be able to better harness the power of Reddit communities by discovering, understanding and targeting their ranging passions and interests, in one easy-to-use place, which will ultimately strengthen campaign outcomes.”

Deep dive. Read Reddit’s Business Blog for more information about the platform’s latest developments.

YouTube has updated its analytics platform to provide enhanced audience insights.

Creators will now have access to data analyzing membership cancellation, and will also be able to compare new and existing viewer data for the first time.

In addition, YouTube has carried out improvements to the design of its studio platform to enhance the user experience.

Why we care. The detailed audience breakdown will enable advertisers to understand how different audiences engage with their content on a deeper level, allowing them to make more data-led decisions and create more targeted content for improved reach and conversions.

Filter performance metrics by audience segment. The YouTube product team have launched a new feature in Studio Analytics to help creators better understand how new and returning viewers watch their content. This means creators can now compare how many views they get from different audience segments.

The platform has also created a new tab in Deep Dive Analytics called “New and Returning Viewers”, where creators can analyze the performance of their content based on audience segments. In addition, new filters have been added at a channel and video level to simplify data analytics. Here, you can now select whether you want to see data from new viewers or returning viewers.

Memberships revenue analytics. YouTube has added two new cards and one new insight into the memberships tab:

• Total members – This card allows creators to see their total number of members, and within this, two additional categories: recurring memberships and members with gifted memberships. The subcategories help creators to understand the different types of members they have.
• Members join from – This provides insight into how creators convert memberships with their content.
• Reason for membership cancelation – This new insight has been added to memberships on YouTube analytics but not in the detailed view of an existing report.

TextField Modernization. The YouTube team have also rolled out improvements on a standard shared text field component across the main and studio platforms. The changes include:

• Updated visual design
• Migrated key surfaces
• Enhanced error states

What has YouTube said? Conor Kavanagh, YouTube monetization policy lead, said:

• “When a member cancels their membership, they will now be asked to provide a reason for their cancellation through an optional survey. This data will be collected and displayed in a separate card on the membership chip.”
• “By understanding the reasons why members cancel their memberships, creators can gain valuable insights into potential improvements or changes to their content or membership offerings.“
• “Before the launch of this [Filter performance metrics by audience segment], creators could only see how many new or returning viewers they had, or how many views they got, from all viewers.”
• “But now, creators have the ability to see how different audience segments watch their content. This means that creators can now see how many views they got from new viewers, and compare it to the number of views from returning viewers.”

Deep dive. Read Google’s Advertiser-Friendly Content guidelines for more information.

X (formerly known as Twitter) has joined forces with the Google Display Network.

Following a steep decline in advertising revenue earlier this year, the social platform has decided to start outsourcing the sale of some of its ad space.

Moving forward, advertisers will be able to tap into the X home feed inventory through Google Ads Display campaigns – however, exact details of the deal terms remain undisclosed.

Why we care. This is an opportunity to reach X’s vast audience of over 200 million actively engaged daily users using Google Ads’ familiar campaign set-up and targeting tools. It’s worth noting that X doesn’t have the same strict advertising guidelines and practices in place around ad placement, and there is a risk your campaign could appear alongside unrestricted and even offensive content.

Why now? Following Elon Musk’s takeover last year, X’s ad revenue has plummeted 59% in the US alone. In 2022, 90% of X revenue was generated through advertising – so this decline had a big impact on profit.

With those statistics in mind, Musk has been trying to solve the ad revenue issue, firstly by bringing in new CEO Linda Yaccarino in May, and now by outsourcing some ad sales to one of the biggest players in the advertising industry, Google.

Powerful marketing. Tom Ruff, Head of Social at digital marketing agency Journey Further, said the new partnership has huge potential – but it will depend on how the companies share their data. He explained:

• “Google combining data with X potentially makes it the most powerful marketing database out there, so I will be interested to see how that evolves.”
• “If you’re able to use the X audiences across search and display campaigns, it could link up the user journey in ways we haven’t seen before, but, if the campaigns and data aren’t joined up then it will just be another placement and overall performance will suffer.”

What has Google said? A Google spokesperson told Ad Age:

• “Like a number of social apps and websites, X has signed up to monetize its home feed with Google Ad Manager.”
• “This is an opportunity for our advertisers to reach a broader audience, but as always they can choose what sites and apps their ads run on. Any publisher who participates in this type of partnership must abide by our publisher policies.”

Deep dive. Read Google’s Display Network guidelines for more information about display ads.

During the ongoing DOJ antitrust trial against Google, the company reiterated it sometimes shows lower-ranked ads ahead of top-ranked ads. 

This practice is known as out-of-order ad promotion. This little nuance to how the ad auction works can be confusing, so in this article, I’ll explain how out-of-order promotion works and why Google does it.

How Google ranks ads in auctions

Google uses second-price ad auctions to determine which ads show for a search query and how much advertisers pay for clicks. Advertisers bid on keywords, and their ad position is based on Quality Score, which, in highly simplified terms, is a combination of bid amount and predicted click-through rate.

This combined score is known as Ad Rank. The ad with the highest Ad Rank wins the top slot on the page.

The following table shows an example of two ads with different predicted CTRs and maximum CPCs and how those factors combine to determine ad rank and position on the page:

But there is more complexity than what the table indicates. Google maintains several thresholds or conditions an ad must meet before it can be shown in certain locations on the SERP, like the more desirable positions above organic search results. 

Google’s ad thresholds include:

• A reserve auction price (typical in most auctions where the seller can require a minimum price).
• A minimum relevance factor.
• Adherence to editorial ad standards. 

The idea behind the relevance threshold is simply that the most relevant results should be at the top, and if ads are less relevant than organic results, there should be no ads before organic results.

So even if an ad wins the top auction rank, it may not be eligible to show in the number one slot because its ad rank is below the reserve, its expected click-through rate (CTR) is below the relevance threshold, or the ad is unreviewed and hence can’t be guaranteed to meet editorial standards.

For example, if Google wants ads at the top of the SERP to have at least a 4% predicted CTR, then Ad 1 in our example above would still have a higher rank than Ad 2, but it would not be allowed to be shown at the top of the SERP. It would still be eligible for an ad slot lower on the page with lower relevance threshold.

Where it gets messy is when the lower-ranked ad does meet all the criteria but is forced to stay behind the higher-ranked ad which fails some of the criteria.

In our example, Ad 2 meets the relevance requirement because its predicted CTR is 5%, higher than the 4% threshold.

But as its ad rank is lower than Ad 1, to maintain auction fidelity, it should also move further down the page and show up after wherever Ad 1 is allowed to show.

This is not a great scenario for advertisers or Google, so they address this by allowing ads to be shown in a different order than what ad rank would normally dictate.

To show relevant ads above search results, Google will sometimes promote the second-ranked ad ahead of the first-ranked ad. This allows a more relevant ad to take the premium real estate.

It benefits Google and users:

• Google can still show ads in high-visibility spots above organic results. This increases potential revenue.
• Users see more relevant ads in premium locations. This improves the search experience.
• Advertisers with high-relevance ads stuck behind a less relevant ad with a higher CPC can still show up in more premium locations where they are more likely to get clicks.

In the same example as before, if Google has a 4% threshold for relevance but allows out-of-order promotion, they can now show the ads in a different order. Ad 1 and Ad 2’s positions are reversed, and only Ad 2 shows above the organic results. 

We know the above is true because we see different numbers of ads above the organic results for different searches. As we can see, Google has an algorithm that determines on the fly which ads can appear in various locations on the SERP.

Out-of-order promotion also allows Google to enforce its relevance standards. Without it, low-quality ads could occupy top spots just by bidding high – even if users are unlikely to find them useful.

For the demoted, first-ranked ad, out-of-order promotion means losing the top slot and being pushed down the page. It may still pay a high CPC because its low Quality Score means it must spend more on the CPC to meet any ad rank thresholds.

For the promoted, second-ranked ad, it provides a chance to gain greater visibility than its rank alone would permit. The advertiser will pay no more than their max CPC but may pay more than if they had not been promoted ahead of Ad 1.

As Google says in its support materials:

“Your actual CPC is calculated based on your Ad Rank, including the thresholds and competition from other advertisers.” 

This indicates that the price Ad 2 pays to jump over Ad 1 and stay at the top of the page may be higher than if it had been shown in the regular order, where it only had to pay the minimum to beat the next highest-ranked ad.

For advertisers further down the rankings, it can start a chain reaction of ads moving up a slot as the demoted ad falls.

In general, out-of-order promotion aims to balance relevance for users with revenue for Google. Advertisers may see fluctuations in ad position and cost per click as a result.

Navigating Google’s ad auctions

While out-of-order promotion changes the typical auction dynamics, Google believes it ultimately improves the search experience, and I tend to agree with that.

For advertisers, it highlights the need to focus both on bidding strategically and optimizing for relevance and Quality Score.

Microsoft claims its attempts to sell Bing to Apple were blocked by Google.

The tech giant’s CEO of Advertising and Web Services, Mikhail Parakhin, said he offered Apple more than 100% of the revenue or gross profit to make Bing its default search engine – but the proposal was rejected because of the company’s deal with Google.

Speaking at the federal antitrust trial, Parakhin alleged this was despite Microsoft offering to pay Apple more than Google – which he claims was offering in the region of 60%.

How much did Microsoft offer Apple? Tinter didn’t reveal exactly how much its offer to Apple was worth, but it was enough that the tech giant would have sustained a several billion dollar loss as a result. Tinter explained the company felt the short-term loss would be a justified investment because of the importance of default search engine status.

Why we care. Apple’s decision to reject Microsoft’s higher monetary offer for Bing as the default search engine implies that the Google deal might not be solely based on financial considerations. This could reinforce Google’s argument that it’s preferred for its superior product. Nevertheless, it underscores the significance of default status for search engines, as Microsoft was willing to incur a significant loss for the position.

Better offer than Google. While Tinter didn’t provide the exact dollar amount Microsoft offered Apple, he asserted that Microsoft was confident it presented a superior deal compared to Google. He explained: “That’s based on our best estimates of the revenue payments that Google was making to Apple in the United States.”

Samsung also shut down potential sale. Tinter went on to reveal that Microsoft had also tried to pitch Samsung about making Bing the default search engine on its products. However, he claims these conversations were shut down by the tech giant in their early stages.

Tinter allegedly urged Samsung to at least allow Microsoft to try and make an offer that could rival its deal with Google. But the tech giant told Microsoft that negotiations wouldn’t be worth discussing because of the company’s contract with Google.

What has Microsoft said? Parakhin told the court at the federal antitrust trial:

• “We were just big enough to play but probably not big enough to win, if that makes sense.”
• “The optimal thing for Apple to have done — and again, I think in closed session, maybe we’ll end up looking at some of the sort of math on this — would have been to have switched to Microsoft in the United States, taken our aggressive offer there, and continue with sort of Google in the rest of the world.”

Deep dive. Read our Google antitrust trial updates for the latest developments in the courtroom.

Reddit is getting rid of the ability to opt-out of ad personlization based on users’ activity on the platform.

The change, which is being rolled out over the next few weeks, won’t increase the frequency of ads, but users can expect better targeted ads.

“Select countries” will still feature opt-out controls for Reddit users, however, specific locations have not yet been confirmed.

Why we care. This change enables Reddit’s models to better predict which ads may be most relevant to users, helping brands to reach higher-value consumers. Advertisers should prioritize reaching their target audience to enhance campaign effectiveness, improve cost-efficiency, and increase the likelihood of engagement and conversions.

Why now? In June, the platform’s CEO, Steve Huffman, told The Verge that monetization has become an increasing priority for Reddit: ” “Getting to breakeven is a priority for us in any climate.”

This change will enable Reddit’s models to identify relevant audiences more efficiently, enabling ads to be served to higher-value consumers, making it a more appealing platform for advertisers.

Specific category opt-out. Reddit is also now enabling its users to see fewer ads from the following categories:

• Alcohol.
• Dating.
• Gambling.
• Pregnancy & Parenting.
• Weight Loss.

The platform explained it is using a combination of manual tagging and machine learning to classify ads. Although the change won’t be 100% successful to begin with, Reddit has said its accuracy will improve.

Toggle consolidation. In addition to the changes mentioned above, Reddit announced that it is consolidating two toggles so now there’s just one place to update your location preferences to help customize your feed and recommendations. It’s not certain if these settings will automatically impact post suggestions, and it’s yet to be confirmed if there will be an option to disable them.

What has Reddit said?  Reddit’s head of privacy, “snoo-tuh” (Reddit does not reveal the identity of admins on the site), said in a statement:

• “Reddit requires very little personal information, and we like it that way. Our advertisers instead rely on on-platform activity—what communities you join, leave, upvotes, downvotes, and other signals—to get an idea of what you might be interested in.”
• “The vast majority of redditors will see no change to their ads on Reddit. For users who previously opted out of personalization based on Reddit activity, this change will not result in seeing more ads or sharing on-platform activity with advertisers. It does enable our models to better predict which ad may be most relevant to you.”

Deep dive. Read Reddit’s announcement in full for more information.

TikTok has launched a new AI-powered tool to help advertisers create more effective campaigns.

Creative Assistant, which is located in the platform’s Creative Center, can be used to analyze data, offer suggestions, brainstorm ideas and provide advice on the platform’s best practice guidance.

Why we care. Creative Assistant can help make content creation easier and faster by acting as your virtual assistant. By leveraging TikTok creative insights, it can suggest data-led ideas to help you create more effective and engaging campaigns.

What is TikTok Creative Assistant? TikTok Creative Assistant is an AI-driven virtual assistant that you can chat with and work alongside while you create ads or videos for the platform. By harnessing TikTok-specific creative knowledge, it ensures you get the most relevant suggestions and guidance, ultimately helping advertisers craft compelling and effective content for their TikTok campaigns.

How it works. You can access Creative Assistant on the top right-hand corner of the Creative Center page when you log into the TikTok Creative Center. Start using the new feature by inputting prompts, such as the following:

• “I am new to creating videos on TikTok. What are some best practices I need to know before starting?”
• “Show me top-performing ads on Creative Center in the [industry] industry.”
• “Come up with TikTok ideas for my brand named [name], promoting [topic].”
• “Write a TikTok ad script for my [industry] brand named [name], targeting [market] and [target audience]. Highlight these benefits in the script – [benefits].”

What can you use Creative Assistant for? TikTok Creative Assistant can be used to boost advertisers’ creativity within the platform’s Creative Center, offering insights and suggestions for a smoother content creation process. Examples of instances to use it include:

• For TikTok newcomers, Creative Assistant provides guidance on best practices and helps you kickstart your journey on the platform.
• When researching the creative landscape on TikTok, Creative Assistant can display and analyze inspirational and top-performing ads using data sources available on the Creative Center.
• When facing writer’s block, Creative Assistant is there to brainstorm TikTok ideas, assist in writing, and refine your TikTok scripts collaboratively.

What has TikTok said? A TikTok spokesperson said in a statement:

• “With Creative Assistant, you’re now empowered to continuously create a meaningful and valuable presence on TikTok through never-ending ideation and brainstorm sessions.”
• “This tool means brands and creators worldwide can harness the power of artificial intelligence to better ideate and create TikTok creatives like never before.”
•  “It’s important to remember that Creative Assistant is a launchpad for creative ideation, providing suggestions and playing the role of a collaborator in your creation journey. You are also always in total control, and have the option to use, edit, discard or redo the materials.”

Deep dive. Read TikTok’s Creative Assistant announcement in full for more information.

YouTube has confirmed the global launch of video view campaigns (VVC).

This new campaign type leverages AI to help advertisers target relevant audiences more efficiently and effectively by serving ads in the right place at the right time to drive interest and intent.

Why we care. Serving your ads to a more relevant audience optimizes campaign impact and efficiency, increasing engagement, leading to a better ROI. This approach ensures resources are used effectively and contributes to building stronger brand-consumer connections.

What is VVC? This campaign type leverages AI to strategically deliver the best-performing creatives to audiences more inclined to engage with the brand, helping to maximize views. VVCs combine a variety of formats to get the most out of a budget, including:

• Skippable in-stream ads.
• In-feed ads.
• Shorts ads.

VVCs help advertisers achieve 40% more views and 30% lower cost per view than in-stream skippable CPV campaigns on average, according to a Google study.

What has Google said? Julia Karr, Global Product Expert, Video, YouTube, said in a statement:

• “Videos are one of the most impactful ways to tell a story, and VVC showcases your brand’s story across skippable in-stream, in-feed and Shorts ad formats.
• “Warner Brothers Korea used VVC to drive user engagement, maximise views and drive ticket sales for the release of their new film ‘Bones and All’. They found VVC to be an effective way to increase views and drive user engagement, with 33% more views and 36% lower cost when compared to TrueView in-stream alone.”

Deep dive. Read Google’s video views guide for more information.

Fall is here, and that means holiday sales are right around the corner.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two of the largest online shopping days of the year, with Cyber Monday 2022 breaking records with almost $12 billion in sales.

These consumerist holidays are huge opportunities for businesses to rack up sales, so it’s important to be prepared. 

There are many different ways to prepare your marketing funnel for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

This article will focus on one specific aspect: paid search. 

Having a well-built paid search strategy is critical for most growing businesses but can be a fantastic way to boost sales during key times of the year with promotions. 

Promotions are a fantastic way to get your ads to stand out from the crowd on a normal day, but they’re a must on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 

Here are three ways to use promotions and discounts in paid search to help you boost sales and capitalize on the holiday rush. 

1. Create new ad copy

The most obvious way to use your promotions and discounts in PPC is to emphasize promotions and discounts in a new set of ad copy. 

Using multiple headlines and descriptions to get customers excited about your promotion is simple but takes more work than the other two options.

One caveat to consider when creating all new ad copy for your promotions is that you need to ensure the ads start and stop at the correct times. I recommend using the labels feature to automate this process.

Decide what ad you want to use before and after the promotion and label them appropriately. I call these ads “evergreen” so I know this is my standard ad that is always relevant. 

You then need to create your ad. Once done, label them as a promotion and the event/year you’re running them so you don’t run into labeling issues in the future.

For instance, if I were to create ads for Black Friday 2023, I would label them “Promo – BlackFriday2023.” 

Make four automated rules to enable and disable the ads at the right times. Let’s say in this example that you want the ads to start on 11/21 and end on 11/28 for Black Friday. Here are the four rules you would set up:

• Disable all ads labeled “Evergreen” in the campaigns to which you’re adding the promotion. Set this to run once on 11/21.
• Enable all paused ads labeled “Promo – BlackFriday2023.” Set to run once on 11/21.
• Disable all ads labeled “Promo-BlackFriday2023.” Set to run once on 11/28.
• Enable all paused ads labeled “Evergreen.” Set to run once on 11/28

Setting these rules up takes the stress out of launching and pausing promotional paid search ads so you can focus on crushing this holiday season.

One of the biggest hassles of advertising promotions is the time it takes to create sales-specific ad copy. 

This isn’t a big deal if you only have a couple of campaigns in the account, but what if you have 200 campaigns and 50 different sales to promote? 

If that’s the case (or even if it’s not), then promotion assets are for you. 

Promotion assets are ad assets that allow you to highlight relevant promotions for your business without creating specific ad copy. 

Assets are additive to your normal ad copy, so you’ll only need to create one promotion asset per promotion, and you can have them run at the campaign or account level. 

Since creating new ads resets the performance data, promotion assets will allow you to add promotions without affecting your ad data.

Another benefit of promotion assets is setting the time frame you want them to run. 

This eliminates the stress of going into Google Ads and manually pausing promotions once they’re over, which is especially useful during flash sales, where many products go on sale for a short period.

3. Consider dynamic keyword insertion

What if you don’t have any specific promotions that you want to call out in your ad copy? Or, what if you always have generally cheaper prices than your competition? 

This is where dynamic keyword insertion comes in.

Dynamic keyword insertion is a way for you to “automatically update your ads with the keywords in your ad group that caused the ad to show,” according to Google. 

This enables you to easily tailor your ads to the individual user without having to create a thousand different ad groups and ad variations to match their search.

Let’s take a look at an example:

Imagine you own your own clothing business, and you want to promote discounted jeans in a paid search campaign. You decide that you want your ad to show up for people who are looking for “blue jeans,” “denim jeans” and “jeans” and you want the first headline to match the user’s search exactly.

To do this, you have two options:

• Create a unique ad group for each of those keywords and tailor the ad copy to the respective keyword.
• Use dynamic keyword insertion to have a single ad tailor to all of those keywords. 

Instead of typing out “Buy Discounted Blue Jeans” as a headline, you can use “Buy Discounted {KeyWord:Jeans}” and the headline will dynamically change for each of the keywords:

• Blue Jeans = “Buy Discounted Blue Jeans”
• Denim Jeans = “Buy Discounted Denim Jeans” 
• Jeans = “Buy Discounted Jeans”

The headline will update with whatever user search includes the words “Jeans.” 

The only exception is if the user search exceeds the character limit, the headline will default to “Buy Discounted Jeans.” 

The holiday months are often a make-or-break season for small and large businesses looking to get ahead of the competition. 

When utilized correctly, paid search can be that advantage. Using your promotions and discounts in tandem with paid search can make a huge difference during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

By using these tips to use promotions and discounts in your paid search strategy properly, you’re well on your way to a successful holiday season. 

Ad fraud will cost marketers $84 billion this year – 22% of all online ad spend.

This figure is expected to soar to $170 billion in five years’ time in 2028, according to a new in-depth study from Juniper Research.

Why we care. Ad fraud could be costing your brand money, hurting campaign results, leaving you with fewer genuine leads and poor advertising ROI. With this in mind, it may be worthwhile exploring fraud-blocking technology or reallocating some of your ad budget to your SEO strategy.

Key findings. Juniper’s study analyzed digital advertising in 45 countries across 8 regions, using a dataset of over 78,700 data points from 2019 to 2028. The research found that:

• 22% of all online ad spend is lost due to ad fraud in 2023.
• 30% of mobile ad spend is lost to ad fraud in 2023.
• $172 Billion of ad spend is projected to be lost due to ad fraud by 2028.
• $23 Billion per year can be recovered by using fraud mitigation platforms.

Solution. Fraud detection technology, such as Fraud Blocker, can detect and identify fraudulent or invalid traffic, impressions, clicks, or conversions on ads, helping to protect your campaign performance and ad budget.

What has Juniper Research said? Senior Research Analyst from Juniper Research, Elisha Sudlow-Poole, said in a statement:

• “Data provided by popular ad platforms, such as Facebook and Google, provide an incomplete picture of the success of advertising campaigns.”
• “That is, these platforms give an optimistic view of campaign efficiency, failing to distinguish between how many clicks or views originated from legitimate users compared to click farms or fraudulent bots.”

Deep dive. Download the full report by Juniper Research for more information.