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Instagram Debuts Ad Analytics Suite for Brands

By some accounts, brands are seeing more engagement from their instagram ads than they are from other social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Instagram, which only began allowing ads less than a year ago, is taking things slow. Your Instagram feed hasn’t been inundated with ads yet because there simply aren’t that many ad partners yet. It appears as if Instagram really wants to avoid a backlash.

But there are some ads on Instagram, and brands need to know how they’re performing. With that in mind, instagram has just announced a new suit of tools for brands to track advertising performance across the network.

It’s a three-pronged approach to ad analytics. Instagram highlights Account Insights, which will “allow businesses to see how they’re increasing brand awareness on Instagram through impressions, reach, and engagement”; Ad insights, which will “show the performance of paid campaigns with brand analytics (impressions, reach, and frequency) for each individual ad delivered to the target audience”; and Ad Staging, which “allows advertisers and their creative teams to preview, save, and collaborate on ad creative for upcoming campaigns.”

All current Instagram advertisers now have access to these tools, and Instagram says their feedback will help fine-tine the product before it goes wide to more brands “later this year.”

According to Instagram, this was an oft-demanded feature.

Instagram is getting more and more serious about ads, even though they’re taking it quite slowly. We’re still waiting for the global launch of the ad product, but Instagram recently made a big personnel move by appointing Facebook Regional Director James Quarles to the newly-created position of Global Head of Business and Brand Development at Instagram.

Image via Instagram

August 21, 2014
Microsoft Adds Custom Reports To PubCenter

Microsoft announced a new feature for pubCenter, its advertising hub for app developers on Windows and Windows Phone. It now offers custom reports, with improved analytics.

Earlier this year, the company announced a complete overhaul to pubCenter, and they’re continuing to make improvements.

In a blog post, Microsoft’s Tyler Young explains how to use the new reports:

Go to the “Detailed reports” icon on the left-hand navigation in pubCenter, then click on “Custom reports” to create a custom report. Next, customize your report using these parameters:
Unit of time: options include hour, day, week, month, or year.

Date range: options include today, yesterday, the last 7 days, this month, last month, last 3 months, and last six months. You can also enter a custom date range.

Filters: options include devices, apps, ad units and geography.

For apps, you can select any combination of apps across Windows and Windows Phone. You are no longer limited to just 5 apps or ad units. The geographic breakdown lets you see ad performance by market.

Young notes that you don’t need to stay in the reporting module while the report is being generated, and that you can view reports you ran before in the “Recent Reports” tab.

Image via Microsoft

August 21, 2014

AdWords Gets New Bulk Editing Features, Conversion Setting

Over on Google+, Google announced some new AdWords features for bulk editing and a new conversion setting.

The bulk editing features are aimed at helping advertisers update settings across campaigns more quickly. They enable you to filter for campaigns targeting a specific location, update multiple campaigns with a new targeted location, and adjust other settings like language, campaign end dates, and ad rotation.

“Let’s say you’ve just extended your business operations to Mexico, and would like all of your US campaigns to target Mexico as well,” Google wrote. “You can filter to quickly find all of your campaigns targeting the US, so you can add Mexico as an additional location to those campaigns with just a few clicks (see image below).”

The new conversion setting, Google said, gives advertisers flexibility to choose which specific conversions to include in bid automation.

“Now you can count all the conversions that AdWords ads drive for your business (leads, sales, email sign-ups, etc.), while keeping bid automation focused on driving only the most important conversions,” Google said. “For example, Mark’s Cars can use conversion tracking to measure the number of used car quote requests driven by his ads, and can now set up his bid automation to only optimize for clicks that drive sales and inbound calls-the conversions that matter most to his business.”

Google Launches App Promotion Ads For Search, YouTube

Google announced the launch of app promotion ads for search and YouTube, following a similar offering launched earlier this summer for the Display Network.

The search ads enable users to get advertisers’ apps, and offer advertisers a three-step campaign set-up flow to promote them. These ads will only be shown to people who don’t already have the app.

Google is also letting advertisers deep link users directly from Google Search to specific pages of apps they’ve already installed. This is in beta, but you can sign up to use it here. Google explains in a blog post:

Customers like LINE, Zoopla and Booking.com are already testing deep-linking with their apps. Here’s how it works: let’s say someone has the Booking.com app installed on their phone and searches for “San Francisco Hotels” on Google.com; now they can go directly to the specific page in the Booking.com app that shows listings for hotels in San Francisco.

Apps can also be shown to YouTube users as they’re watching videos. This comes courtesy of a new ehancement to TrueView ads. Google notes:

With TrueView, advertisers can reach potential customers based on their interests, previously-watched videos and demographics.

To promote an app on YouTube, you can link your app’s ID to your TrueView campaign. This page tells you how to do that.

Google also touts three new search ad features: measuring app download conversions, integrating analytics data, and automating bid.

Image via Google

August 20, 2014

Snapchat Said To Be Adding Content And Ad Business Called ‘Snapchat Discovery’

Snapchat is said to be readying a new content and advertising business under the banner Snapchat Discovery. This would provide users with news and advertisements that, like the messages Snapchat has built a name for itself upon, disappear after viewing.

This is according to a report from The Wall Street Journal, which cites people briefed on discussions the company has been having with publishers and advertisers. It says the service will launch in November, and that at least a dozen media companies have discussed providing content for it. These include newspapers (like Daily Mail), magazines, and TV networks.

Snapchat isn’t officially commenting on the plans, which would provide at least some stream of revenue for the company, which Facebook once offered $3 billion for. Bloomberg recently suggested the company is worth as much as $10 billion.

The question is, do users want news that disappears? Do Snapchat users even want news (let alone) ads in the app in the first place?

Obviously it remains to be seen just how Snapchat intends to execute the Snapchat Discovery offering. It will be interesting to see how users react. There is already an increasing number of competing apps on the market. A wrong move could prove quite detrimental for a company that some already consider overvalued.

Still, advertisers will no doubt be eager to reach a whole new social media audience.

comScore recently put out a report finding that millennials are really into Snapchat. It’s the third most popular social app for the group.

Image via Snapchat, Facebook

August 20, 2014

Facebook Lets Advertisers Get In Front Of The Same People More Frequently

Facebook recently announced changes to frequency limits on ads in an email to agencies. DigiDay got ahold of the email, and shared the relevant excerpt, which explains the changes for different scenarios.

“We are always looking to improve the News Feed experience for people,” Facebook said in the email. “On an ongoing basis, we implement changes to improve the quality and types of content people discover in News Feed. As a part of these changes, starting August 6th, we’re making changes to increase the number of times people can see ads from a Page in their News Feed per day.”

“We know that businesses like yourself want to get relevant content to people in News Feed but have historically been limited by frequency caps,” it said. “To ensure businesses are better able to build awareness and drive business results through News Feed, we’re making changes that enables (sic) businesses to reach people with more relevant content. With these changes: a single ad can be inserted in News Feed up to twice per day (up from one); ads from a Page a person is not connected to can be inserted into the News Feed up to twice per day (previously only one per Page a day); ads from a Page a person is connected to can be inserted into News Feed up to four times per day (remains consistent from before).”

I suppose this is some small comfort for brands that have taken a beating in organic reach, and are trying to compensate with paid reach. At least now, you can get in front of non-fans a little bit more. This might be slightly more annoying for users, however.

It wouldn’t be surprising to raise the limits another notch in the future. A recent study commissioned by the company found that sequenced ads perform better. It suggests you’re more likely to get a conversion of you tell a story through a sequence of ads.

Image via Facebook

August 19, 2014

Google Announces Website Call Conversions

Google announced Website Call Conversions for AdWords, a new way for advertisers to track calls that occur after an ad click. It involves putting a snippet of code on your site, and measuring calls from potential customers who skipped the click-to-call portion of your ad, and checked out your site first.

According to the company, 70% of all mobile searchers have called a business directly from search ads, but a lot of people also call after clicking through. You could already track the calls from the ad itself, so this will help get an even better picture of how your ads are leading to calls.

“Let’s say your Google search ads send people to your website where they research and learn more about your business,” says product manager Anurag Agrawal. “Website call conversions dynamically inserts a Google forwarding number on your website that measures the calls made by these customers. Whether they click on the number or dial it directly from their phone, you can attribute the call conversion and conversion value back to the keyword and ad that drove the customer.”

“With website call conversions, you can understand which keywords and ads are driving the most phone calls from your website and which are resulting in more valuable calls,” says Agrawal. “You can also assign different values to calls originating from different pages of your website. For example, a local car dealership might assign more value to calls from their test drive page and less value to calls from their homepage.”

Google says you can automatically optimize keyword bids to drive more calls or “more valuable calls” using Target CPA or Target ROAS.

You can find the code snippet for Website Call Conversions here. It generates a unique Google forwarding number for each AdWords ad click. The numbers will display for up to 90 days to capture future call conversions.

Image via Google

August 18, 2014

Yahoo Acquires Ad Security Company ClarityRay

Yahoo has acquired ClairtyRay, a company that has in the past dealt with getting around ad blockers, but has since been more about ad security and fraud detection.

In a message on its homepage, ClarityRay says:

Our vision has always been making the eco-system safe, compliant and sustainable for consumers, publishers and advertisers. We helped the online advertising industry take a big step towards that direction by identifying, measuring, and solving many of its unseen hurdles inhibiting that. We brought traffic clarity to an amazing roster of clients, with our findings becoming an industry standard.

Joining Yahoo now will allow us to make use of that momentum and take the next steps (or rather, leaps) towards that vision, and we couldn’t be more excited. This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity enables the mass scaling of our technology, impact and ideas to the absolute forefront of our field, while working with an amazing team who shares our passion. We’re proud to call Yahoo ‘home’.

We would like to thank our customers, employees, partners and investors. You’ve made this voyage fulfilling, challenging, successful and fun.

TechCrunch shares this statement from Yahoo:

We’ve been working on building up security capabilities and making Yahoo a safer place for users and partners. Advertising is an essential part of our business here at Yahoo, and we’re committed to getting it right. ClarityRay is a company with deep expertise in ad-malware detection and prevention. The bottom line for Yahoo is that search is going to get better and safer for users, and advertising will become more reliable and profitable for partners.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Image via Yahoo

August 18, 2014

AdWords Adds Close Variant Matching To All Exact And Phrase Keywords

Google announced that starting in late September, it will be applying “close variant” keyword matching to all exact and phrase match keywords in AdWords. The feature has been available as an option for a couple years, but will now simply be the default for exact and phrase match.

The example Google gives is that a searcher might search for “kid scooters,” “kids’s scooter” or “kids scooters”. With close variant matching, you’ll be able to pick up on each of these phrases.

According to the company, campaigns that have used the option have seen “strong results”.

“In fact, a vast majority of you are already matching to close keyword variations, receiving an average of 7% more exact and phrase match clicks with comparable clickthrough and conversion rates,” AdWords product manager Jen Huang says in a blog post. “In addition to increased keyword coverage, these incremental clicks represent valuable opportunities that are missed by ‘Low search volume’ keywords, common for misspellings and abbreviations.”

“Because close variant matching was already the default setting for campaigns, most of you won’t see a change in your keyword matching behavior,” Huang says. “For advertisers that opted out, the option to disable close variants will be removed in September. Your exact and phrase match keywords will then begin matching to close keyword variations, allowing you to reach more of your potential customers with the right ad while aiming to lower cost per click and improve clickthrough rate.”

As Google notes, the whole thing will save you the trouble of creating huge lists of misspelled, abbreviated, and other close variations of words. Just focus on building your negative keywords lists.

Image via Google

August 15, 2014

New Top Movers Report Added To Bing Ads

Microsoft announced the launch of a new Top Movers report for Bing Ads to let advertisers figure out account clicks and spend variations, and find which campaigns or ad groups see the biggest changes. It can also help them understand the causes.

“A ‘top movers’ list is up to 10 campaigns and/or ad groups that have experienced the largest performance change— by size, not percent— during two specified time frame,” explains Jing Li on the Bing Advertising blog. “With this list, you can quickly identify which campaigns have contributed most to your account’s performance variation, from both a positive and negative perspective.”

“Another key feature that differentiates the Bing Ads Top Movers report from other search providers is the ease of access to the Opportunities tab—which allows the user to explore keyword, bid, budget and other factors that can drive an increase in clicks/spend for the related ‘top decrease’ movers,” says Li.

You can find the feature under the Dimensions tab in All Campaigns view. It’s available to all advertisers in the United States. Read this post from Li to learn more about how to use it.

You can also expect more functionality to come to the Top Movers report. Bing says it will soon deliver a more granular level of detail for identifying elements of campaigns and ad groups that have the biggest changes.

Image via Bing

August 15, 2014

Instagram Is Getting Serious About Ads

When Instagram announced that the salad days were over and ads – eh, sponsored posts – would soon be landing on the previously ad-free social network, you could hear the collective groans from heavy users but you couldn’t register any shock. Nobody was surprised that Instagram had finally decided to make some money.

I mean, Facebook didn’t pay almost a billion dollars to let Instagram sit around treading financial water.

Since Instagram ads’ hard launch in November of 2013, the company has seemed rather pleased with the program’s performance.

“The results for advertisers have been positive—and in some cases, well above the ad industry’s average for performance,” said Instagram in June, when announcing that they would soon go global with the ad product.

And there’s some analysis to back that up. A recent study found that brand ads posted on Instagram see 58 percent more engagement than Facebook and Twitter – and it’s not even close.

But good in not good enough, and the Facebook-owned Instagram knows there’s still a lot of untapped ad revenue to be had on a network that is the second most-popular among millennials.

Cue the news that Instagram has made a big hire. Or more like a resource shift. According to Recode, Facebook Regional Director James Quarles is your new Global Head of Business and Brand Development at Instagram.

This is an entirely new position at Instagram.

Can you hear the ad blades turning?

From my personal experience, Instagram ads are less intrusive than ads on many other social networks. This is a conscious effort from Facebook and the Instagram team. Considering how sensitive Instagram users can be when the word “ad” is merely hinted, Zuckerberg and crew know they have to be cautious not to alienate.

As Instagram ramps up their advertising product, which is inevitable, finding that balance will be the key to success.

August 14, 2014

IAB: Global Mobile Ad Revenue Hit $19.3B In 2013

The IAB released new global figures for mobile advertising revenue, finding that revenue hit $19.3 billion in 2013, up 92% from $10.1 billion in 2012.

Mobile display was up 123.4%, with mobile search, up 92.1% Search represented 48.9% of the total global mobile advertising revenue in 2013 at $9.5 billion.

“These powerhouse numbers directly reflect mobile’s rapidly increasing role as a vital part of the marketing media mix,” said Anna Bager, Vice President and General Manager, Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, IAB. “In particular, as mobile ad campaigns become easier to plan, create, buy, and measure – in great part due to programmatic strategies – these operational efficiencies are spurring the growth of the mobile display ad market. And, this impressive rise in mobile advertising is unquestionably a worldwide phenomenon, with strong year-over-year upticks being seen in every corner of the globe.”

“The Global Mobile Advertising revenue study emphasises the importance and adoption of the mobile platform, both in Europe and globally,” said Townsend Feehan, CEO, IAB Europe. “Businesses of all sizes are now able to engage their customers via mobile and demonstrating a clear opportunity for publishers to take advantage of. However many publishers still need to hone their mobile advertising strategies and acquire mobile skillsets as growth has been largely driven through in-app and native advertising whilst the delivery of a qualified audience at scale with demonstrable campaign impact is still a work-in-progress in some markets.”

Growth was strong all over the world, but Latin America led the charge with 215% growth.

Image via IAB

August 13, 2014

Facebook Ads Get Cross-Device Reporting

Facebook announced the launch of cross-device reporting for ads, giving advertisers the ability to see how people are moving across mobile apps and the web before they convert.

You can access cross-device conversions and campaigns via Edit Columns in Facebook Ad Reports. You’ll see “Cross-Device” on the left-hand side.

“Imagine seeing an ad for a product on your mobile phone while in line at the bank,” Facebook says in a blog post. “Do you immediately make a purchase on your phone? Probably not. But perhaps you go back to your office later that day and buy on your desktop computer. Such cross-device conversions are becoming increasingly common as people move between their phones, tablets and desktop computers to interact with businesses.”

“Facebook already offers targeting, delivery and conversion measurement across devices,” it adds. “With the new cross-device report, advertisers are now able to view the devices on which people see ads and the devices on which conversions subsequently occur. For instance, a marketer can view the number of customers that clicked an ad on an iPhone but then later converted on desktop, or the number of people that saw an ad on desktop but then converted on an Android tablet.

This could be of particular use as Facebook moves to start letting businesses actually sell things right from their ads via the Buy button.

Image via Facebook

August 13, 2014

Google Launches Shopping Campaign Upgrade Tool

Google just announced a new Shopping Campaigns upgrade tool for advertisers preparing to switch their campaign to the new format. Regular Product Listing Ads will be retired and replaced by Shopping Campaigns at the end of the month anyway.

The tool lets advertisers create a Shopping Campaign from their regular PLA campaign, with a structure and bids based on that along with historical performance data.

“If you haven’t started your upgrade, we encourage you to use this tool as a jumping off point for your Shopping campaigns,” says Eric Tholomé, Director of Product Management for Google Shopping. “Be sure to check your campaign budgets, settings and bids so they’re customized to your business needs.”

“Note that not all campaigns are compatible with this upgrade tool,” notes Tholomé. “If, for example, you use AdWords labels or groupings in your product targeting or inventory filters, you must update your data feed with custom labels before you use the upgrade tool, unless you’re happy to use another attribute to subdivide your inventory in AdWords directly.”

The tool can be found in the Settings tab of Product Listing Ads campaigns.

Here’s an overview of Shopping Campaign features:

Image via Google

August 11, 2014

Google Shows ‘Listen Now’ Ads For Music Searches

Google is now displaying “Listen Now” ads in the Knowledge Graph section of search results pages for some music queries. From there, it offers options from advertisers like Rhapsody, Spotify, and of course, Google Play itself.

It includes the price to listen for each service. In this Lady Gaga example, you can see that Google will let you listen for $1.29/song, while Rhapsody will let you listen with a free trial, and Spotify will just let you listen for free.

It’s somewhat interesting that Google chooses to show the purchase price for a single song in this section, rather than plug its new(ish) streaming service alongside these other services.

The test was reported on earlier by the Wall Street Journal, who got a statement from Google:

“We’re happy to help users quickly find legitimate sources for their favorite movies, music and more via Google search,” a Google spokesman said.

Two people familiar with the test described it as having started in the past few weeks. A Google spokesman confirmed that the music services pay for each click they get, the same way Google gets paid for its traditional text link ads.

Google has shown “Watch Now’ ads for movies and TV shows that are pretty much the same for quite some time now.

Image via Google

August 8, 2014

Google Merchant Center Gets Shipping Configuration Tool

Google announced this week that it has launched a new shipping configuration tool in Merchant Center aimed at making it easier to configure shipping rates. The idea is that this will help merchants’ prices remain consistent with what Google shows users.

“Imagine a shopper has searched for a product on Google Shopping and found the perfect offer at the perfect total price inclusive of shipping,” explain Angelika Rohrer and Sven Herschel of the Google Shopping Team. “They reach checkout on the merchant’s site only to realize that the final price differs from what they’ve seen on Google due to inaccurate shipping costs. Our users consistently tell us this is a primary source of frustration.”

The tool lets you select from more shipping methods, including customizable methods based on a hierarchical set of rules. You can differentiate between various shipping methods (like ground versus express) for the same country. This lets Google display the lowest possible price to the user.

It also lets you configure rates based on shipping destination using countries, states, or cities. You can indicate when products don’t shop to certain regions, and create a repository of shipping methods to reuse across configurations.

The company also added a new shipping attribute to assign a shipping label to specific products.

“You can configure shipping rates based on this label,” the team says. “For example, you could apply a label like ‘perishable’ or ‘bulky’ to a group of products requiring special shipping rates or a label specific for promotional items. After adding this attribute to a group of items, you may manage or configure the custom rate in shipping settings in Merchant Center.”

Google says it has already migrated current shipping settings to the new tool, and it doesn’t require any updates.

Image via Google

August 8, 2014

Twitter Gives Advertisers Objective-Based Campaigns, Pricing

Twitter announced a new way to optimize Twitter Ad campaign performance with objective-based campaigns, reports, and pricing. Advertisers will be able to create and optimize successful campaigns, while only paying for the actions that are “aligned with” their marketing objectives.

These campaigns and pricing are available in beta to SMBs and API partners around the world, and will be rolling out to managed clients on an invitation basis over the coming months.

“Since we launched Twitter Ads in 2010, advertisers have used Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts to connect with an engaged audience at precisely the right moment,” says Twitter senior product manager Christina Lee. “Over the last four years, we’ve analyzed thousands of Twitter Ads campaigns and identified best practices to help advertisers effectively achieve their marketing goals.”

“With objective-based campaigns, we’ll provide a custom workflow aligned to your campaign goals,” she says. “You can select from a range of key objectives, including driving Tweet engagements, website clicks or conversions, app installs or engagements, followers, or leads.”

The workflow recommends the best ad format to use, and includes tools like an image cropper and drag-and-drop feature to make ad creation easier. You can create a website clicks or conversions campaign, and promote a tweet with a ink or a Website Card.

Reports for the campaign will display metrics deemed most relevant to your campaign’s goals.

Image via Twitter

August 7, 2014

Google Acquires Directr For YouTube Ads

Google announced that it has acquired Directr, which will join its YouTube ads team. The company revealed the acquisition on its YouTube Creators Google+ account, after Directr announced it on its own site.

The acquisition even got its own video:

The Directr team had this to say in a blog post:

Our small band of scrappy film lovers set out 2 years ago to help regular folks make great video. Today, we are incredibly excited to take the next step on that journey and announce that we are joining the video ads team at YouTube.

For now, everything you love about Directr is staying the same and we’ll continue to focus on helping businesses create great video quickly and easily. One immediate bonus: Directr will soon be all free, all the time. Thanks, YouTube!

A heartfelt thank you to everyone who’s downloaded and used Directr – we are grateful for your support.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Image via Google

August 7, 2014

Google Adds Features To Web Designer

Google gave an update on what’s been going on with Google Web Designer, which includes some interesting stats and some new features.

During the first half of the year, Google says, DoubleClick Rich Media ad impressions from HTML5 grew 140% year-over-year, and ads built with Google Web Designer garnered 2.5 billion impressions since the launch of the product. Over 20% of its user base are returning users, and 72% are located outside of the U.S.

“Today’s launch provides more granular control and creative flexibility to creative developers and designers, and allows them to easily build more interactive and animated HTML5 content and get it published quickly,” says Google in a blog post. “Revamped Events and Components allow designers to make any element interactive, and customize the types of interactivity within their creative. The updated timeline provides more granular control for designers to easily build animated content. Tighter integrations with Google Drive, DoubleClick Studio, DoubleClick Campaign Manager and AdWords let users collaborate on their works-in-progress and publish finished units more quickly. This integration marks the first time that AdWords will support HTML5 ads.”

Google says it’s also continuing to develop tools to make it easier to build successful cross-screen campaigns, citing recently launched DoublClick features like in-app remarketing, conversion tracking in DoubleClick Campaign Manager, and MRAID 2.0 support in DoubleClick Studio.

“Through its integration with Google Web Designer, AdWords now supports HTML5 ad creatives,” Google says. “In addition, Flash ads that are uploaded to Adwords will automatically be converted into HTML5 ads and can be uploaded via AdWords Editor and other 3rd party tools coming soon. Over the next few months, we’ll also be releasing tools and services that will resize ads to some of the most popular mobile sizes, without requiring any additional work on the part of the agencies.”

Google is hosting a webinar on the 13th to give an overview of Google Web Designer. You can register for that here.

Image via Google

August 5, 2014