Digital Marketing News 08/16/2022 – 08/22/2022

Social

Meta Announces New Targeting Options for B2B Marketing

With Meta’s new set of advertising audiences, B2B marketers can use targeted ads to reach key decision makers.

After Apple’s App Tracking Transparency update resulted in users opting out of having their data tracked by apps, Meta was forced to face its consequences, which includes standing to lose $10 billion in 2022.

In an effort to mitigate the impacts of Apple’s privacy update, Meta announced the global launch of their new B2B targeting audience segments. This will allow B2B marketers to reach key decision-makers across small, medium, and enterprise businesses.

While LinkedIn is the go-to platform for B2B marketing, Meta’s impressive user count of 200 million businesses and 2.9 billion people makes it a viable platform for B2B marketers looking to drive business-to-business engagement and establish a connection with their customers.

Now when creating a campaign in Meta, you can access the following targeting options:

• IT decision-makers: A B2B audience segment that targets ads to people who are IT decision makers based on their job titles.

• Business decision-maker titles and interests: A B2B audience segment that targets ads to people who are business decision-makers based on their job titles and interests.

• Business decision-makers: A B2B audience segment that targets ads to people who are business decision-makers in engineering/IT, operations, HR, strategy, or marketing, based on their job titles.

• New active business: Admins of engaged businesses that were created in the last 6, 12, or 24 months (Note: This reflects three segments, with one for each timeframe).

These audience groups are broader compared to Meta’s personalized targeting. However, it will allow Meta to utilize the data insights they’re able to maintain, and boost their capability to help marketers reach key decision-makers.

Meta encourages businesses to test the new targeting options and observe its impact on B2B campaigns.

PPC

Microsoft Bing Updates Shopping Searches with Three New Annotations

Microsoft Bing’s shopping search results now show available coupons, Ethical choice annotation, and price history.

Microsoft Bing has added new smart features to shopping search results in the form of annotations. These are meant to save shoppers time and money as they transact online. There’s no need to install a browser extension or plugin to access the annotations, but third-party cookies must be enabled.

First, Microsoft Bing now provides information on available coupons right within the search results, so you can see them even before you click to enter the site. With this smart feature, you won’t need to do a separate search for a code. And if you decide to complete a transaction, the coupon will be automatically copied and applied. This feature is now available across the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, and France. 

If you are looking for eco-friendly, upcycled, or fair-trade fashion, Microsoft Bing helps identify them via the Ethical choice annotation. Powered by the ethical fashion app Good On You®, the Ethical choice ratings are based on a brand's impact on three areas: people, planet, and animals.

Lastly, price history is also now available in Shopping Searches. This feature reveals an item’s pricing over time, with a handy graph that helps shoppers determine if it’s the right time to buy. This feature is available across US, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Australia, and India.

Social

Meta Launches Automation Tools for Advertisers and Small Businesses

Meta is introducing new tools to help advertisers leverage the power of AI and automation, and maximize the performance of their ad spend.

Meta Advantage has new AI and automation tools to help advertisers get more out of their ad spend. Meta is also introducing Advantage+ shopping campaigns to advertisers globally. Through Advantage+ solutions, advertisers can tap into the power of AI to provide more relevant campaigns to their target audience.

Advantage+ shopping campaigns eliminates the manual steps of ad creation and automates up to 150 creative combinations at once. This helps you quickly learn what ads are working, while making the most of your advertising budget. The Advantage+ shopping campaigns were rolled out to ecommerce and retail advertisers on August 15, 2022.

Small businesses will also be able to use Advantage+ creative and Advantage audience to create ads through their Facebook Page. These tools help you save time while using less dollars to learn which ad is performing best.

Advantage+ creative automatically adjusts ad creative for each person who views your ad. This way, they’re shown the version they’re most likely to respond to, delivering better ad performance. On the other hand, Advantage audience creates a personalized audience based on your Page details and automatically adjusts over time to help you reach more relevant people with your ad.

Meta also made additional updates to Advantage+ solutions:

• Advantage+ app campaigns - More creative flexibility with asset pairing and improved stability, 7-day click attribution capabilities to improve performance for campaigns with longer conversion windows, split testing capabilities to identify effective strategies, and more granular reporting insights with region and ad-level reporting.

• Advantage+ creative - When an advertiser uploads an image or video for a campaign, they can create multiple versions of an ad that are optimized for what the viewer is most likely to respond to with standard enhancements. Meta is also beginning to test a new optimization that will add music from their sound catalog to image-based ads, creating a more immersive experience for placements in Reels ads.

Shops as a destination for Advantage+ shopping campaigns - Soon US businesses with a checkout-enabled Shop will have the option to add their Shop as a destination for Advantage+ shopping campaigns. Meta will then use AI to direct people to the Shop or the seller’s website based on what has the highest likelihood to result in a transaction.

Social

Meta Introduces a New Way to Publish Facebook Reels

You can now use the web browser version of Creator Studio to create, schedule, and publish Facebook Reels.

With the new Reels desktop composer in Creator Studio, you can now create, optimize, and publish your reels in just three steps. In a video announcement, Meta for Media shared the following steps to create, schedule, and publish Facebook Reels from your desktop’s web browser:

• Create and upload videos up to 60 seconds, add a description, and watch the Reel preview.

  

• Optimize and reframe a horizontal video to either vertical or square.

  

• Publish and schedule a video to be posted as a Reel or post a video in real time as a Reel.

  

Social

LinkedIn Rolls Out Clickable Links for Posts

There’s a new way to drive traffic to your website and other online platforms with the new clickable links in LinkedIn posts.

In a post published by Geri Silver, LinkedIn’s Creator Manager, the professional networking site announced that they’re rolling out the ability to add a clickable link to posts. The link can direct users within LinkedIn or to external sites. This new feature is designed to drive traffic and increase conversions in a more convenient and faster way.

However, LinkedIn’s Creator Manager notes, “If you don’t see the feature yet, stay tuned as we’ll be rolling it out in phases. We’re also starting with creation on mobile, so it’s not available on the web yet.”

Influencer marketing specialist Lindsey Gamble also shared this new feature on Twitter, with several screenshots that show how the clickable link looks like on mobile, both in photo and video posts.

So far, there seems to be only one design for the link sticker, but the sticker text is customizable. You can add clickable links to your posts through the post creation tool in the LinkedIn mobile app.

The impact of the clickable links on the reach of posts remains to be seen, as it can be used to drive traffic away from LinkedIn. When you use this new feature, try to observe its impact on your post reach, site/platform traffic, and conversion rate.

What you can do next:

• Use Meta’s new targeting audience segments to run a sustainable B2B ad campaign that can help you reach key decision-makers.

• Leverage the automation tools of Meta Advantage to create ads that are tailored to your audience so you can maximize the performance of your ad spend.

• Efficiently drive traffic to your website or other social media platforms and increase your conversions by using clickable link stickers on your LinkedIn posts. This feature provides a convenient way to connect with your followers outside of LinkedIn, or to boost your engagement within the platform.

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