Digital Buzz – Interesting Updates From Google, Facebook & LinkedIn!

It can be difficult to keep up with all of the technological advances happening in our world – there’s always so much going on! As part of our weekly blog, SponsoredLinX takes a look at 3 recent developments in the world of Google, Facebook and LinkedIn!

Facebook Slideshow Ads get a new look!

Since launching last October, Facebook’s Slideshow Ads have been a huge success – viewed across more than 200 countries in the last year! Created as a user-friendly, cost-effective solution for advertisers looking to showcase their products or brands in areas with slow connection speeds, Facebook Slideshow Ads are now set to be more effective than ever! So what new features can we expect?

Vibe to the Music

Want to give your slideshow some character or atmosphere? You can now add music (select from the many different audio track options), select templates, choose different colours and even add text!

Find the perfect slideshow picture

Wondering how to make your slideshow stand out without forking out thousands for an SLR camera that can take the world’s greatest pictures? Not the most creative guru around? No problem! With Facebook’s new stock image library, you can select the perfect image for your slideshow. It’s as easy as that!

Slow connection? No problem

Now you can reach even more customers – even if they’re on a connection as slow as 2G. According to Facebook, advertisers can now upload their videos into the slideshow tool, which will then ‘automatically select ten image stills to use for building a slideshow’. As explained in the Facebook Business blog: “This can be combined with 2G targeting to simply and effectively deliver video creative to users on low-bandwidth connections.”

To read the full list of new features, click here. 

AdWords Universal App Campaigns

Universal App Campaign updates: Example of the user journey from install to viewing a deal on a hotel room

As per their recent blog announcement last week, Google’s Universal App Campaign aims to help advertisers drive better engagement and clearer actions, as opposed to just achieving higher install rates. According to Google, their new ‘in-app activity’ options will now allow advertisers to choose what they want to optimise for and then use a third party measurement partner, (or a measurement solution app such as Google’s Firebase Analytics) to ‘measure those activities.’

What this means, is that once a user has defined their analytics solution, selected their in-app activities and set their cost-per-install, Google will ‘put to work’ their machine learning algorithm.
The algorithm will determine where the highest value is for users and can deliver the ad across Google search, Play, YouTube and the Google Display network, according to the results. As explained on Google’s blog:

“Universal App Campaigns evaluate countless signals in real time to continuously refine your ads so you can reach your most valuable users at the right price across Google’s largest properties. As people start to engage with your ads, we learn where you’re finding the highest value users. For example, we may learn that the users who tap into the most hotel deals are those who watch travel vlogs on YouTube. So, we’ll show more of your ads on those types of YouTube channels.”

Google have stated that they are committed to helping advertisers achieve better engagement and value, as opposed to just ‘app installs,’ and with the advancements to Universal App Campaigns it’s likely that advertisers will see huge benefits and more conversions!

LinkedIn Conversion Tracking

In a move that has many marketers and business owners jumping for joy, LinkedIn will now allow you to better track the performance of your LinkedIn advertising campaigns! Announced in early September, LinkedIn’s new conversion tracking is a ‘set of capabilities built directly into LinkedIn Campaign Manager’ that allow advertisers to more easily measure the number of leads, signups, content downloads, purchases and other specific results that have been generated from Sponsored Content and Text Ad campaigns. According to their announcement post:

“With conversion tracking, you can understand more about the specific ads and even the unique LinkedIn audiences that are driving your campaign conversions — including the seniority, industry, job function, and company size of the people you’re converting to leads.”

According to LinkedIn, with the new conversion tracking users will be able to track the metrics that matter most to them, record conversions from desktop/mobile and whether users converted, and optimise their campaigns to better drive performance. Read more via LinkedIn’s blog.

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