The weekly Digital Download is out. Get all the Marketing hot news, quick tips, and highlights you need to get you through the week, rolled up into a five-minute read.

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In the News

Hot Off the Press

• In 2020, Two Thirds of Google Searches Ended Without a Click
  • From January to December, 2020, 64.82% of searches on Google (desktop and mobile combined) ended in the search results without clicking to another web property. That number is likely undercounting some mobile and nearly all voice searches, and thus it’s probable that more than 2/3rds of all Google searches are what Rand Fishkin has been calling “zero-click searches.” Read more about this means.
• Google Blocked 3.1 Billion Ads, Restricted 6.4 Billion Ads & Suspended 1.7 Million Advertisers
  • Google has published its annual “Ads Safety Report” and disclosed that it has blocked or removed over 3.1 billion ads for violating its Google Ads policies, it restricted over 6.4 billion ads, suspended over 1.7 million advertiser accounts, and removed ads from over 1.3 billion pages in 2020. Google also said it added or updated over 40 policies for both advertisers and publishers.

• Google Ads Tests Smart Matching Match Type
  • Last week, @PPCGreg spotted Google testing a brand new match type in Google Ads named “Smart Matching.” What is Smart Matching? I have no idea but Google Ads confirmed it was a “small tests that select advertisers have opted into.” But I have no idea what makes this match type “smart.” Google Ads replied saying “This filter option was the result of a bug that is now being fixed, but no traffic was affected. This experiment is one of many small tests that select advertisers have opted into. We don’t have anything more to share at this time.”
• Infographic: Unprepared Brands Caught with Hands in Soon-to-Be-Empty Cookie Jar [Infographic]
  • With the recent announcement from Google that it will not use alternate identifiers to track data in its products, even after third-party cookies are phased out, brands and publishers are feeling the heat. Ad-tech company Adform and market research firm Dynata conducted a survey across 12 markets in Europe and the U.S. between Sept. 1-30 around control and transparency, identity, cost efficiencies and user experience. The research shows that three-quarters of those polled believe the removal of third-party cookies will impact their business. Of those polled, a similar number (78%) said they have no plan in place for this eventuality.
• Facebook is working on a version of Instagram for kids under 13
  • Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri confirms that a version of the popular photo sharing app for children under 13 is in the works. BuzzFeed News obtained a message from an internal messaging board where Instagram vice president of product Vishal Shah said a “youth pillar” project has been identified as a priority by the company. Its Community Product Group will focus on privacy and safety issues “to ensure the safest possible experience for teens,” Shah wrote in the post. Mosseri would oversee the project along with vice president Pavni Diwanji, who oversaw YouTube Kids while she was at Google.
• Instagram Tests New Labels to Show When a Feed Post is Re-Shared to Stories
  • You know what Instagram doesn’t like? People sharing their regular feed posts to Stories. Well, maybe it’s not so much that Instagram doesn’t like this as it is that some users have complained about it, and now it’s testing a few different approaches to try and stop people from re-posting their regular, static updates to their Stories as well. Instagram’s latest experiment on this front sees new labels added to Stories posts that have been re-posted from a users’ main feed.
• The Digital Consumer Intelligence Maturity Model
  • Across 13 years in the field, Brandwatch has observed a number of behaviors that typify a healthy approach to incorporating consumer intelligence into decision making. These behaviors develop over time from standard use cases that are based on monitoring through to incorporating consumer intelligence into almost every major business decision. Learn more about the DCI Maturity Model. It’s designed to provide a framework from which organizations can structure and plan their maturity journey, showing how they can level up across a number of industry-defined pillars.

Creativity

Out of the Box

• How to Overcome the Imposter Syndrome as a Creative
  • The act of creating is not the ability to bring something new to the world, but rather associate creation with the ability to evolve existing solutions in order to solve a problem.  It comes from the ability to observe, notice a problem and make the effort to show up in order to make a positive impact on the lives of others. Now, when having to conduct a change in your personal life or leading a project at work, have you ever felt like an imposter? We all have to fight with those thoughts at some point in our lives.
• The Cinnamon Toast Crunch shrimp memes are great, even if the viral photos were gross
  • Try as you might, it’s tough to conjure a more gross food combo than shrimp and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Nobody in their right mind would want to eat that. But that’s allegedly what one person claims they found as an unwelcome surprise with their breakfast.

• March Adness 2021: Vote for the Year’s Best Advertiser in Adweek’s Annual Bracket
  • It’s back: Adweek’s annual March Adness bracket, in which your votes determine which advertisers should advance and even claim the championship. But one brand is certainly still on the board: Aviation Gin. The Ryan Reynolds-owned, Portland-based gin brand has claimed top honors in the March Adness bracket for the past two years, setting it up for a chance at a threepeat.
• The 8 Best Social Media Platforms to Market Your Business in 2021 [Infographic]
  • Are you considering your social media plan of attack for the year ahead? Want to know the best social media platforms to help you grow your business? The team from Tech.co share the stats you need to know about each social network in this infographic.

Tricks of the Trade

Tips and Tricks

• Why Now is the Time to Move to Google Analytics 4
  • In October, Google announced the release of Google Analytics 4 (GA4), which is now the default experience for new Google Analytics users. However, long time Google Analytics customers need to decide when to move to the new platform. There are several reasons why it is essential to switch as soon as possible, from collecting data as soon as possible, to audience configuration, goals and more, the sooner your business starts collecting data in GA4 — the better.

• 5 Fixes to Help Avoid Content Bottlenecks
  • We all know the dream, right? We create and distribute amazing, engaging content because we had:
    • Sufficient time to develop it
    • Effortless collaboration
    • Efficient processes
  • We all know the reality, right? We endure strict deadlines, spend way too long getting buy-in and approvals, and see new content requests pile up. We also continuously fight the good fight for developing worthy, value-rich content for the brand. While we can’t solve everything, we can work to fix the bottlenecks that make the dream a lot closer to reality.

• Google’s 5 Video SEO Best Practice
  • When Google crawls a page and identifies that it contains a video, it begins to look for signals to understand what the video is about. Those signals are what allow the video to get surfaced for relevant searches. Google recommends five best practices for site owners to follow when optimizing video content for search results.

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