Navigate the always-changing world of digital marketing with our latest curated news. Two Octobers’ experts break down the most significant happenings that affect marketers over the last month.
Paid Media
Updates by Casey Anderson
Meta Catalogs to Include Video
Meta has yet another automated feature to keep up with the likes of Google Shopping. Now Meta will be able to pull videos from your website’s product pages and add them to your catalog. The idea is that this will improve conversion rates and reach more users. As most of these enhancement updates have gone recently, the automated feature requires advertisers to opt out if this format does not fit their overall goals or brand.
None of this will replace your feeds, but we highly encourage auditing your product catalog and ads that are using your product catalog in the upcoming weeks to understand what has been auto-applied and what is working.
Meta Automatic Adjustments
It seems like every month we are warning fellow advertisers about sneaky changes in ad platforms that could dramatically affect performance. The latest from Meta in this regard, are automatic adjustments happening without user consent. This was recently silently implemented on some ad accounts giving Meta more control over ads and raising concerns among advertisers. With this, Meta can:
- Pause or activate campaigns.
- Adjust budgets up or down.
- Consolidate ad accounts.
- Make changes without notifying advertisers.
- Consolidate audience segmentations and more.
Here’s how to opt out:
- Navigate to “All tools”
- Select “Automated rules”
- Click “See automatic adjustments”
- Access “Manage automatic adjustments” page
- Toggle the feature OFF
Business Links in Google Search
Google is piloting a new way to improve dynamically targeted customer intent – enter Business Links, or “site links max” as we’re going to refer to them for now. They function much like sitelinks but with a bit more flexibility and intelligence, making them adaptable to different parts of the customer journey. They are both customizable and AI enhanced. (You can choose to opt out of the enhancements.) Beyond capturing different user intent with a single Business Link, advertisers will be able to leverage the AI in this new feature to optimize ad performance, as the assets will help generate additional headlines and improve query relevance.
It’s important to note that Business Links and Sitelinks will compete in the auction, so there’s a chance they work together or work against each other. As always, testing can provide a better idea of usefulness.
SEO
Updates by Randy McFadden
Google is Lowering Rankings for Content that Differs Vastly from Other Sections of the Site
Google has introduced ranking systems that identify when sections of a site significantly differ from its primary content. This helps ensure that the most relevant and helpful information surfaces from various sources, which has led to drops in search rankings for certain site sections, such as Fortune Recommends and Forbes Advisor, over the past weeks.
This update contrasts with previous statements from Google representatives like John Mueller, who, in August 2023, emphasized that content does not need to strictly adhere to a niche to rank well. However, the new guidance implies that covering topics unrelated to a site’s main focus may now impact rankings.
If you’ve ever wondered why Forbes is ranking for something not business-related, evidently Google did too. And shout to Lars Lofgren for a detailed article about Forbes SEO practices just a month ago.
Google Increased the Amount of YouTube Citations in AI Overview
YouTube citations in Google’s AI-generated Overviews (AIO) have jumped by 310% since August. Through the Gemini multimodal model, Google’s AI can now integrate video and spoken content even without accompanying text, highlighting the rising value of video in search results.
Analytics
Our analytics update now has its own blog, the Analytics Roundup by our Head of Analytics, Nico Brooks. This month, he covers:
- Website traffic from people clicking over from AI services like ChatGPT
- New GA4 features, including saved segments, peer benchmarks, and the realtime pages report
- Exploring GTM first-party mode
Learn more about services from Two Octobers. We love helping great companies and great people demystifying digital marketing analytics so marketing teams can improve performance, grow teams, and build better companies.
