Break Em Up And More || Digital Marketing Weekly

This week in digital marketing: another day another person wants to break up another big tech company, podcasts in search results, and more..coming up. Let’s get started.

Let’s begin with the social media news first. This time its Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes who is calling for the breakup of Facebook. Why? Because they are too powerful, and he especially calls out Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook’s response to the statement was incredibly funny where they said: “Facebook accepts that with growth comes accountability” (Nick Clegg, Facebook VP). I’m sure he accepts that success requires accountability, doesn’t mean that Facebook is going to do anything about it. Also, that reminds me eerily of Spiderman. Anyway, with Facebook broken up into WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Facebook Messenger – while it does mean that businesses can choose which platforms to be a part of more easily, it will also reduce interoperability and cross-promotion across platforms. I know a lot of businesses use their Facebook Pages to get WhatsApp/Messenger leads and use their Facebook Ads Manager to boost posts on Instagram – this will need to change if this move comes through. Facebook may also face a potential fine of 5 billion dollars from the FTC for privacy breaches. And it is my thinking that in order to offset the impact of these fines, they will simply increase the prices of ads on their platforms. Even if they do this, where exactly are marketers going to go?

Speaking of where else we can go Search Ads share of overall digital ad spending in the US fell 1 percentage point to 45 percent, in 2018 according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. It still grew 20 percent year on year though, so this doesn’t mean you should cut your spending on Google Adwords. Other trends from the report are fairly obvious, Digital Video continues to explode and Mobile Ad spending is essentially the only form of ad spending now. Mobile accounts for 65 percent of ad spending, with video accounting for 15 percent of that, growing (get this) 65 percent year on year. IF you’re not producing video content for your business as a mobile marketer in 2019, you’re doing something wrong.

It’s possible to proportionately allocate ad budgets in terms of desktop and mobile, so we’d strongly recommend you increase focus on mobile, and decrease focus on desktop. But, make sure your site is fast, and mobile-optimized before that. Speaking of speed, a new Speed report is coming to Google Search Console, you can request early access now. Google Page Speed insights have been around for a while now, but the fact that Google is baking it into Google Search Console is telling. And speaking of mobile optimized, a new formula to calculate app ratings and reviews is coming to Google Play, with a focus on more recent reviews. If you have an app out on the Play store, please make sure you set up an influencer campaign every quarter and get people to give you their honest feedback. Or, call us and we will get it set up for you.

And finally, in more media news – Google Image Search is getting support for higher quality images, and 3d images. Make sure as a marketer you’ve uploaded images to your site in the highest quality possible. It’s a common misconception that high quality immediately implies large files. Also, podcasts, podcasts, podcasts. A few days back at IO Google announced that podcasts are coming to Google Search. A lot of us are camera shy, and a lot of us love to talk – so – start podcasting.

That’s about it for this week’s episode. I’m interested to know what people think about breaking Facebook up in particular, please let us know in the comments section below, and we will see you guys next week.