App advertisers can now use App campaigns for engagement without implementing deep links
App advertisers are no longer required to implement deep linking to run App campaigns for engagement, Google Ads announced Monday. As a new option, advertisers can select “Set to app homepage” during ad group creation to direct users to the app homepage.
More on App campaigns for engagement
- App campaigns for engagement are designed to target an app’s existing users to bring them back to the app and foster loyalty and engagement.
- To use this campaign type, advertisers must provide text, images, video and designate a starting bid and budget. Google Ads’ automation then designs a variety of ads in different formats. These ads can appear across Google Search, YouTube, Google Play and within other apps on the Google Display Network.
- App campaigns for engagement were first announced in March 2019 and rolled out globally in December 2020.
Read more: App advertisers can now use App campaigns for engagement without implementing deep links
Google allegedly creates ad monopoly with Facebook to favor its own exchange according to new, unredacted details from Project Jedi
This past Friday a New York judge unsealed previously redacted documents in the lawsuit against Google led by the State of Texas. One of the main allegations of the antitrust lawsuit is that Google and Facebook colluded to rig ad prices and “kill header bidding” (the attempt by competitors to make the ad market less Google-centric).
“The lawsuit claims that when Facebook began to gain traction as a rival advertiser, Google made an agreement with Facebook to reduce competition in exchange for giving the social media company an advantage in Google-run ad auctions. The project was called ‘Jedi Blue,’” we wrote in April of this year.
The newly unredacted information shows just how deep the alleged agreement went between Facebook and the search engine giant.
Jedi Blue and Facebook/Google ad exchanges. Code-named “Jedi Blue,” the arrangement between Facebook and Google meant that Google would “charge Facebook lower fees and give Facebook information, speed and other advantages in header bidding auctions in exchange for Facebook’s support of Open Bidding, Google’s header bidding alternative,” wrote Allison Schiff for AdExchanger.
Some suspect that Facebook initially backed header bidding in order to force Google’s hand in the arrangement and force a mutually beneficial deal. “Partnerships like this are common in the industry, and we have similar agreements with several other companies. Facebook continues to invest in these partnerships, and create new ones, which help increase competition in ad auctions to create the best outcomes for advertisers and publishers. Any suggestion that these types of agreements harm competition is baseless,” Facebook said in a statement.
The internal documents at Facebook reveal that the company had “four options: to ‘invest hundreds more engineers’ and spend billions of dollars to lock up inventory to compete, exit the business, or do the deal with Google.”
Meanwhile, Google’s main goal was to figure out any way to stop header bidding from gaining steam in the industry.
How Project Jedi worked. In order to win in the exchange, Google created the Open Bidding program. This program, in theory, lets publishers display their inventory to multiple ad exchanges at once. This was presented as a competitor to header bidding. However, the lawsuit alleges that Google manipulated Open Bidding to give Facebook’s Ad Network (FAN) an unfair advantage. “Jedi’s success was measured not by financial targets or output increases, but by how much it stopped publishers from using header bidding,” said Janice Tan with Marketing Interactive after an assessment of the documents.
Read more: Google allegedly creates ad monopoly with Facebook to favor its own exchange according to new, unredacted details from Project Jedi
Google Search Console Search Analytics API gains Discover, News, and Regex
Google has added new support, data, and features to the Google Search Console Search Analytics API. The API now supports showing data for Google Discover, Google News and also supports Regex commands — all of which were already supported in the web interface.
Google announced this morning this support has been added to the Search Analytics API after many requests from the industry to add it.
API updates. “The search type parameter, which previously enabled you to filter API calls by the news, video, image, and web, will be renamed to type and will support two additional parameters: discover (for Google Discover) and google news (for Google News),” the company said. Google is still supporting the old name search type for the time being, so it is backward compatible.
Regex API support. Google has added Regex support to the API, specifically to the query and page dimensions. Two new operators have been added to the existing match operations, they are includingRegex and excludingRegex.
Already in web interface. Like we said above, these features have been in the web interface for a while. Google has now brought support to the API. Google News performance reports were added in January 2021, Google Discover performance reports gained full data in February 2021 and Regex support was added in April 2021.
Read more: Google Search Console Search Analytics API gains Discover, News, and Regex
How to fix the SEO issues that keep you from achieving your goals
Oftentimes we look for the quick fixes that drive major ranking improvements. These still exist, but the relationships involved with connecting us to clients, and the website to users are where the most sustained value can be found.
Here are some questions to ask before we even get started with the fixes:
Is the company ready?
At LOCOMOTIVE, we work with a wide range of clients. One of the key benefits is we see a wide range of problems, and we also develop insights on how different companies handle SEO from an implementation perspective.
Is the SEO team ready?
It is not always clients creating a bottleneck to SEO growth. It is often the SEO agency team. Every SEO team should focus strongly on the following three areas:
- Communicating issues clearly,
- Prioritizing projects well,
- Testing and reporting on impact.
SEO Issues
Most SEO issues can be broken down into a few categories. I like talking about these items, rather than using technical jargon because it helps relate back to things that are meaningful and understandable for non-SEOs.
Read more: How to fix the SEO issues that keep you from achieving your goals
Read more:
Google Search Console testing tools to match URL Inspection tool
