Digital Marketing Guide

Google is now sending out notices to those webmasters who have a noindex directive in their robots.txt file. Google Search Console is sending out notices that they should be removed because it is not something Google will support after September 1, 2019.

After several quarters of slowing growth, Google parent company Alphabet reported strong advertising revenue growth in the second quarter of 2019.

Today’s consumers have made mobile calls an integral part of their purchase journeys, as they seek more immediate gratification of their business information wants and needs. Phone calls provide deep-in-the-funnel prospects with fast answers, connections to real people and the type of detailed information that can play an important role in high-consideration purchases.

Ad spend growth on Google search ads slowed while desktop spend on Microsoft Advertising had its strongest quarter in more than three years in the second quarter of 2019, according to performance agency Merkle.

Facebook has been testing ads in its search results for more than six months, but only with a select few advertisers. Now that test is finally expanding.

Recently, a colleague mentioned that she had noticed a significant surge in the number of Instagram ad placements. Conducting a quick test via her feed, she found ads accounted for 22% of 45 posts and 23% of 26 Stories.

Marketers have relied on third-party tracking cookies for the last 25 years to track consumer behavior online. Nearly all ad tech and martech platforms use cookies for targeting, retargeting, display advertising and behavioral marketing in general. Now, that’s all changing.

This may not be groundbreaking news, but it bears repeating: the media landscape isn’t the same as it used to be. And it’s nowhere near ready to stop changing.

Facebook is introducing new details to its “Why I’m seeing this ad” feature for users. It now shows the interests and categories used to target the ad and how the ad targeting information was collected — meaning, the website or Facebook Page a user may have visited. The tool links to options to hide ads from an advertiser or remove ad targeting data from their profiles.

Instagram announced Wednesday that it is introducing ads in its Explore tab, the section where users can browse content and discover new accounts based on their interests.