Covid-19 Pandemic Drives Record Online Ad Revenue – Ignite Friday

This week: Google spills the beans on what holiday shoppers are searching for, LinkedIn rolls out a new report, and COVID-19 pandemic drives record online ad revenue.

Here’s what happened this week in digital marketing.

Google Shares Details About Behavior of Holiday Shoppers

Here’s some free keyword research offered by Google.

In a recent document released by the Big G, the company shared some useful details about what consumers search for when they’re browsing online.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Searches for “best affordable” rose 60% since last year
• Searches for “fashion online shopping” rose 600% (not a typo) since last year
• Searches for “online clothing stores” rose 100% worldwide since last year
• Searches for “available near me” rose more than 100% worldwide since last year
• Searches for “curbside pickup” rose 3,000% worldwide since last year
• Searches for “support local businesses” rose a whopping 20,000% since last year

Here are a few other fun stats:

• 69% of U.S. shoppers plan to shop online for the holidays more this year than in previous years
• More than half of U.S. shoppers tried a new shopping service for the first time in 2020
• About 10% of U.S. shoppers tried a new shopping app for the first time in 2020
• 70% of U.S. shoppers said they’re open to buying from new retailers

LinkedIn Rolls out Company Engagement Report

If you’re in the B2B space, you’ll love this news.

LinkedIn is rolling out a new Company Engagement Report that will help you understand if you’re reaching the right audience on the platform.

Here are the stats you can expect to see in the report:

• Total Engagement Level – Adds up website visits, ad engagement, and organic engagement.
• Members Targeted – Sums up the number of members who work at a company and have been targeted by the campaign.
• Total Ad Engagement – Shows the total number of likes, comments, clicks, shares, and video views.
• Total Organic Engagement – Sums the interactions from your posts.
• Total Website Visits – Shows you how many times members visited your website.

The new report is free for all users in the Campaign Manager.

Report: Pandemic Drove Record Online Ad Revenue

Thanks to the new normal, big-tech is raking in ad revenue bucks these days.

Take Amazon, for example. The e-commerce giant’s ad sales topped $5 billion last quarter. That’s an increase of more than 50% year-over-year.

Google reported about $37 billion in ad revenue. Paid search accounted for more than $26 billion of that figure (a 6% YoY increase) while YouTube brought in $5 billion (a 32% YoY increase).

Facebook generated a total of $21.5 billion in revenue for the quarter. Almost all of that money (99%) was from ad sales.

Apple likely also did well, but that company doesn’t report ad revenue.

Google Ads Sunsets Target Ad Spending

Pay attention if you’re using target spend with the Maximize Clicks bid strategy in Google Ads. As of January, you won’t have that option for new campaigns.

Existing campaigns that use the strategy will switch to daily campaign budgets.

Here’s what Google said about the change:

Google places the final nail in the “target spend” setting, removing it entirely from campaigns with Maximize clicks bidding in January 2021 #ppc #ppcchat pic.twitter.com/sTeyLSr2hW

— Mark Irvine (@MarkIrvine89) October 29, 2020

Google says that you should update any campaigns that use target spend by switching them to budgets.

TikTok Stars Win Injunction Against App Ban

The Trump administration tried to ban TikTok in the U.S. But then some TikTok stars took the president to court.

And won.

TikTok creators Douglas Marland, Alec Chambers, and Cosette Rinab successfully argued that they’d lose their livelihoods if the government banned the app.

Those three creators, by the way, have a combined 7 million followers.

Here’s what they said in their filing: “[TikTok] gives content creators like Plaintiffs the opportunity to profit from the videos they post on TikTok. Plaintiff Rinab, for example, creates videos for fashion brands and other companies, and earns between $5,000 and $10,000 per video. Further, the exposure Plaintiffs have obtained through TikTok has resulted in promotional and branding opportunities. For instance, Plaintiff Chambers earned $12,000 for promoting the Extra gum brand in a TikTok video… Without access to the TikTok app, Plaintiffs will lose access to all of these followers, as well as to the professional opportunities afforded by TikTok.”

The federal government is still pursuing a ban on the app.

Search Revenues: Up for Google, Down for Bing

Bing still struggles to gain traction in search.

According to recent earnings reports, Google said its revenue rose 14% year-over-year. However, Bing’s revenue declined 10% during the same period.

Not sure what Bing needs to do to turn things around.

Facebook Posts Strong Q3 Results

Facebook released its quarterly earnings report during the past week. And they’re pretty good numbers.

The platform saw Daily Active Users (DAUs) increase to 1.82 billion globally. That’s an increase of 35 million from the previous quarter and a 12% year-over-year increase.

However, DAUs for the U.S. and Canada took a slight dip. According to the company, that’s because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Facebook expects that trend to continue into Q4.

The company saw its most significant user growth in the Asia Pacific region.

Twitter User Growth Slows

Twitter only added 2 million Monetizable Daily Active Users (mDAUs) in Q3. That’s a sharp drop from the 20 million users added to the platform in Q2.

Still, the company now boasts of 188 million mDAUs. That’s an 29% growth over the same period last year.

On the revenue front, Twitter hauled in $936 million. That’s a 14% increase year-over-year.

According to Twitter: “Advertisers significantly increased their investment on Twitter in Q3, engaging our larger audience around the return of events and increased product launches.”

Twitter also says that R&D expenses grew 17% to $209 million.

Homework

Not a whole lot of news this week but there are still some to-do’s you can add to your list:

• If you’re using target ad spending in Google Ads, make sure you switch to budgets. Otherwise, Google might make the switch for you.
• If you’re in the B2B space, take a look at the Company Engagement Report on LinkedIn. Use it to find new ways to reach companies in your target market.
• Take a look at the Google doc that shows us how holiday shoppers are spending their time online. Optimize your holiday-themed pages for those keywords so you can generate more business.