Google AdSense moves to a first-price auction model
Google will move AdSense from a second-price auction model to a first-price auction by the end of 2021, the company announced Thursday. There is no action for advertisers or publishers to take and these changes will occur automatically.
First-price vs. second-price auctions. In a second-price auction, the final price paid by the winner is determined by the second-highest bid. In a first-price auction, the final price is the same as the winning bid.
This will simplify things for advertisers, Google says. “We are aligning our AdSense process with other ad selling platforms in the display advertising ecosystem, which we think will simplify the experience for buyers who can now use a single approach to bidding across AdSense, Ad Manager and AdMob, and improve advertiser spending confidence,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land.
Which AdSense products are affected. The transition to a first-price auction only affects AdSense for Content, AdSense for Video and AdSense for Games. It does not affect AdSense for Search or AdSense for Shopping.
Transitioning to a first-price auction aligns AdSense with Ad Manager and AdMob, both of which are already operating under that model. Making the winning bid the actual price advertisers pay may make it easier for some advertisers to plan their spending.
However, a first-price auction means that the final price the winning advertiser pays will be higher than it was under a second-price model if advertisers bid the same amount.
Read more: Google AdSense moves to a first-price auction model
AMP links in Google Search break with iOS 15
With the iOS 15 release on September 20th, AMP URLs in Google Search just stopped working. Google is aware of the issue and said the issue should be resolved soon. This is only impacting Google searchers using Google Search on iOS devices that have been upgraded to iOS 15.
What happens. If you are on iOS 15 and you click on a website listing in the Google Search results, you will not be taken to an AMP URL, even if the AMP URL exists for that listing. Instead, you will likely be taken to the main site’s URL for that page, or a link to their mobile app – if you have the app pre-installed on your device.
Jeff Johnson, an iOS developer, dug into this and said with the iOS 15 Safari “User-Agent, there are no AMP links in Google search results, but if I simply change Version/15.0 to Version/14.0 and keep the rest the same, Google search results suddenly have AMP links again!” “This is reproducible on my iPhone, in the Xcode iPhone simulator, and also in desktop Safari Mac with its User-Agent spoofed as iPhone,” he added.
Read more: AMP links in Google Search break with iOS 15
Google takes stand against climate change deniers with new ads and monetization policy
Google will introduce a new policy for advertisers, AdSense publishers and YouTube creators that prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts authoritative scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change, the company announced Thursday. Google will use its automated systems as well as human reviewers to enforce the policy, which will take effect next month.
Why Google is making this change. “In recent years, we’ve heard directly from a growing number of our advertising and publisher partners who have expressed concerns about ads that run alongside or promote inaccurate claims about climate change,” the company said, “Advertisers simply don’t want their ads to appear next to this content. And publishers and creators don’t want ads promoting these claims to appear on their pages or videos.”
What kind of content and ads are prohibited? The new policy prohibits ads for, and monetization of, the following: content that refers to climate change as a scam or a hoax, claims to deny that long-term trends show the global climate is warming, and claims denying that greenhouse gas emissions or human activity contribute to climate change.
Sorting out offending content and ads. “We’ll look carefully at the context in which claims are made, differentiating between content that states a false claim as fact, versus content that reports on or discusses that claim,” Google said in its announcement.
Read more: Google takes stand against climate change deniers with new ads and monetization policy
Google publishes new help documents on controlling titles and descriptions in search
Google has just published two new help documents to help publishers control what Google shows in the search results for the title and description of the listing. Also, Google introduced a new term for the title of a search result, “title link.”
Control your title links in search results. The first document is named control your title links in search results and it first defines what a “title link” is. A title link “is the title of a search result on Google Search and other properties (for example, Google News) that links to the web page.”
What changed. What changed with the help documents is that Google made two separate documents, instead of having these in a single document. Google also added the term title links, added examples of how Google adjust title links and other minimal changes to the text.
Read more: Google publishes new help documents on controlling titles and descriptions in search
Introducing the new Analytics 360
Earlier this week, we announced that the new Google Analytics is ready to help you meet the challenges of an evolving measurement landscape and get better ROI from your marketing for the long term — with privacy-safe solutions and machine learning at its core. Today, we’re introducing the new Analytics 360, which builds on the foundation of Google Analytics 4 properties to address the measurement needs of large advertisers and agencies with more customizations, increased scale, and enterprise-level support.
As a large company, you may have multiple teams that need access to different insights, depending on their job function, products and markets. Let’s say your teams in the United States, Canada,https://toplistwp.com/weekly-news-google-adsense-moves-to-a-first-price-auction-model/ and Mexico need to view the data about your four product lines to understand what’s driving sales in their markets. With the new Analytics 360, you can create four product line sub-properties for each country team and customize their settings.
Read more: Introducing the new Analytics 360
