Digital marketing news is the best kind of news — there’s drama, there’s pizazz and if you’re lucky there’s an innuendo or two to give you a laugh. Every month the Lessing-Flynn digital team meets to decide which current events you need to know about — see which stories made our shortlist…

 

2019 Google Event of the Year

Google Marketing Live is an event every digital marketer looks forward to each year. It’s a time to get the 411 on all the flashy updates that Google is planning to implement. The 2019 event took place in San Francisco, May 14-15 and it’s safe to say it did not disappoint with more than 10 different product and feature releases. This live broadcasting event brings about new ideas and concepts to digital marketers to help them gain better insight into their consumers. It’s also a great opportunity to see Google’s latest and greatest inventions and the ‘how’ and ‘why’ behind each one. To really help digital marketers reach their targeted audience, Google released six new ad formats including SEM gallery ads, expanded local ad functionality and updated shopping ads just to name a few.

>> Read more about the Google releases.

 

Google’s Next Big Thing – Podcast Indexing

Surprise! Google is on to its next big thing. We not only live in a world where we need to optimize for voice search for search engine result pages, but podcast episodes too. And no, we don’t mean they are going to be indexing the title of the podcast. Google announced that they will be indexing the actual content of podcasts to help listeners find relevant content that peaks their interest. Podcasts continue to become more popular — if they are part of your marketing plan, make sure your SEO specialist is up to speed on this tactic because it can bring higher traffic and better content visibility.

>> Find out more on podcast optimizations.

 

Apple Plans To Make Ads More Private, But Give Advertisers Data, Attribution

As the world becomes increasingly digital, user privacy will remain a highly discussed topic in the world of advertising. Today, users are becoming more savvy and thus highly conscious of the information they put online. Apple just recently announced they will be the “middleman” in terms of satisfying advertisers and consumers alike with the Privacy Preserving Ad Click Attribution (yes, it’s a mouthful). In short, this approach will still allow advertisers to measure the effectiveness of online ad placements, but will do so while the consumer remains more anonymous. Currently, technology allows for cross-site tracking of users, where companies can create a robust “persona” of the consumer they’re tracking. With this new approach, the user will go unidentified, which will give privacy back to the consumer, while still allowing advertisers to monitor click attribution.

>>> Read more from Media Post and Tech Crunch.

 

INSTAGRAM’S IGTV FINALLY GETS HORIZONTAL VIDEO, AND ADVERTISERS SEE THE POTENTIAL

IGTV, Instagram’s long-form video platform, has set themselves apart by serving solely vertical videos and also, being an ad-free platform. To stay ahead of competitors, Instagram recently announced they will soon be expanding their “vertical only” services, which will allow Instagramers to also upload horizontal videos. Users have since been limited to vertical videos and this change is believed to spark increased content creation. What does this mean for advertisers? IGTV may soon stray away from their ad-free streaming services. While there has been no definite say on if and when these changes are rolling out, it is definitely something to keep an eye out for.

>> Learn more about IGTV from AdAge.

 

Catch you next month — in the meantime be sure to subscribe to our Lessing-Flynn newsletter below for more digital news, client case studies and more!