🔊 Google Ads wants advertisers to give broad match another shot

Twitter has launched Fleets, the company’s version of Stories allows users to post content that vanishes after 24 hours. “You can Fleet text, reactions to Tweets, photos or videos and customize your Fleets with various background and text options,” Twitter explained.

Twitter is also testing an audio feature with which users can come together for live conversations, similar to the Clubhouse app that’s still in pilot. In an effort to avoid the moderation challenges that Clubhouse has found, Twitter said, “We are going to launch this first experiment of spaces to a very small group of people — a group of people who are disproportionately impacted by abuse and harm on the platform: women and those from marginalized backgrounds,” TechCrunch reported.

Why we care. Twitter has been slower to develop new product features commonplace on other platforms — even LinkedIn had Stories first — but Fleets and audio features could bring interesting new ways of engaging users on the platform. Twitter also continues to work on voice tweets for Android and is testing audio DMs, said TechCrunch.

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Google is going to start showing new Recommendations for switching to broad match in Google Ads.

“If you’re using Smart Bidding, we’ll identify existing keywords that are likely to improve performance if you switch them to broad match,” Google said in a blog post Monday.

For example, says Google, the broad match keyword “women’s hats” could match to “winter headwear for women” or “women’s accessories.”

“By pairing [a broad match] keyword with Smart Bidding, you can use auction-time signals to set the right bid for each of these queries. This means that you no longer need to anticipate and manage every potential search.”

Leaving keyword to query matching up to the algorithms has been Google’s strategy for some time now as we’ve seen close variants continue to expand.

If you’re skeptical, you are not alone.

Google notes two advertisers who’ve found success with the strategy. “With Smart Bidding’s predictive signals as the safety net, we saw an increase in unique search terms generated by broad match, leading to a 20% increase in conversions,” said Kasper Spanjer, PPC strategist at iProspect, noting they had their doubts about using broad match based on past experience.

Travel company Japan Experience said it was “really surprised” by the results of using broad match with Smart Bidding and saw one-third of its revenue growth come from broad match keywords.

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Hootsuite is now integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 within its Global ISV Program for business applications. Customers of the Microsoft CRM will now have access to over 150 Hootsuite applications.

The integration means more channels for customer engagement and much deeper engagement on social media channels. The partnership will create new customer journey mapping, and will also integrate social data into the CRM.

Why we care. Refreshing Microsoft Dynamics 365 records with the kinds of social data collected by Hootsuite should enrich understanding of audiences.

It’s no secret that the same query will often produce different Google search results in different locations. Someone looking to “buy a bike” in Atlanta will see different suggestions than someone using the same query in New York. And two people looking for a “pizza place” might end up with different results if they are just a block apart.

As an SEO, you should aim for optimizing the version of Google search results that your target audience is most likely to see, which means you’ll need to be able to change locations when researching SERPs as well as monitoring your rankings. In this article, you’ll learn how to research that information for different countries, cities and even streets.

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Digital intelligence company SimilarWeb has rolled out additions to its digital marketing and research intelligence tools to enhance digital strategy and execution efficiency.

Just last year SimiliarWeb added marketing intelligence tools to optimize customer acquisition and research tools to monitor digital market share and trends. Now they have announced product updates for both tools to generate more in-depth customer insights.

SimilarWeb’s intelligence resources are not only for consumer acquisition strategies but also allows users to mitigate emerging threats.

Why we care. Top-line intelligence tools are not enough in a digital transformation where consumers’ needs and actions are changing by the second. Ongoing updates address the need to keep pace and an appearance to be in lockstep with the evolving consumer, the consumer profile of nine months ago might as well be nine years ago at this point.

“Sending prayers to those Social Media Managers whose boss is now telling them I need separate content for…Instagram Stories, Instagram Reels, Facebook Stories, LinkedIn Stories, and now… Twitter Fleets.” Troy Sandidge, marketing strategy consultant.