This week: Bing Ads offers price extensions, digital marketers love Pinterest, and structured data just might improve your search rank.
Here’s what happened this week in digital marketing.
Bing Ads Rolls out Price Extensions
Bing is making it easier for people to shop with its search engine.
Now, price extensions appear in text ads at the top spot in both mobile and desktop search results. Bing is also allowing advertisers to add a short description with each extension.
If you’d like to use price extensions in Bing Ads, you can set them up in the UI or via the Bing Ads API.
Bing has already rolled out the extensions in the U.S. They’ll start rolling out in other countries next month.
Pinterest Reports 50% Year-Over-Year Growth in SMB Advertisers
Advertisers are loving Pinterest.
This past week, the social media company reported that 1.5 million businesses are connecting with people every month on its platform. Additionally, Pinterest saw a 50% increase in small-to-medium sized business (SMB) advertisers during the past year.
Pinterest Promoted Pins
Pinterest also said that it’s extending the Promoted Pins ad strategy to business accounts outside of the U.S.
The company released the numbers as part of announcement marking the first year anniversary of Pinterest Propel, a program that offers brands personalized advertising support.
Facebook Expands Split-Testing Capabilities
Facebook is adding new features to its split-testing tool.
In the past, the split-testing feature was only available via the Facebook Ads Manager’s Guided Creation workflow. Now, it’s available in the Quick Creation flow as well.
Facebook has also enabled split-testing based on engagement objective. Previously, A/B testing only allowed advertisers to test headlines, calls to action (CTAs), ad formats, and visuals.
Additionally, Facebook has created a new reporting dashboard that makes it easy to track specific key performance indicators (KPIs), such as the click-through rate (CTR) and the cost-per-click (CPC).
Facebook Will Require Consent in Custom Audience Targeting
And now for the latest chapter in the never-ending saga entitled “How Is Facebook Handling Damage Control This Week?”
According to reports, now confirmed by Facebook, the company is working on a tool that advertisers can use to verify they have consent when targeting people by email address.
In other words, if you have a Custom Audience populated with email addresses, you’re going to have to use that tool to get consent from every single person in your audience. You won’t be able to target people whose consent you don’t have.
Facebook plans to launch the new tool “soon.”
The company says it’s not adding the tool in response to the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal. But feel free to take that with about 20 pounds of salt.
Google: Structured Data Can Improve Your Search Rank
This past week, Google’s John Mueller confirmed that structured data can improve your search rank.
Although he made it clear that markup is not a ranking factor, he did say that it can give you a boost in the search results for the right keywords.
Here’s exactly what he said: “There’s no generic ranking boost for SD usage. That’s the same as far as I remember. However, SD can make it easier to understand what the page is about, which can make it easier to show where it’s relevant (improves targeting, maybe ranking for the right terms).”
Effectively, structured data helps a page rank in the same way that great content helps a page rank.
Structured Data Can Help Rankings
YouTube Allows Advertisers to Buy Ads Based on Reach
YouTube is adding a new advertising model. It’s called “TrueView for Reach.”
Normally, when advertisers run TrueView ads, they only pay YouTube if a user watches the ad for 30 seconds or clicks on it.
The TrueView for Reach strategy allows marketers to buy ads based on their total reach. In other words, advertisers will pay for those ads even if users don’t watch them for 30 seconds or click on them.
It’s basically a CPM model.
Of course, those TrueView for Reach ads can still be skipped after 5 seconds. That’s why it’s important for advertisers to create a quick “hook” in the ad intro that will convince users to keep watching.
Google: URL File Extensions Don’t Matter
Concerned that your URL file extension might be adversely affecting your rank? Don’t be.
This past week, somebody asked John Mueller the following question: “Will removing .html from my URLs help my site?”
In response, Mueller said that Google doesn’t care about file extensions:
So if your URLs end with .php, .html, .do, or have no “dot” extension at all, it shouldn’t make any difference. Just optimize with great content.
Also, removing file extensions might actually harm your ste. That’s basically a restructuring of your website and might push you down in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
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