The Funnel

Our roundup of the most important PPC news this week.

PPC News Roundup is a weekly roundup of all news related to the major PPC and digital advertising platforms. Published on Fridays, “PPC News Roundup” will help you stay up-to-date on all the important PPC ads news you need to know.

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Amazon Ads News

42% of ad spend through Amazon goes to brand awareness

A new study shows that advertising on Amazon is increasingly going toward brand awareness, instead of just product promotion. The report points to continued momentum in Amazon as an advertising platform to help drive sales and awareness both on and off Amazon.

Amazon profit slips 26% amidst increased shipping times

Amazon reported that third quarter fell 26% to $2.1 billion, the first profit decline since 2017. The company said profit was down due to heavy investment to reduce shipping times.

Amazon Echo speaker spied on owners via third-party speakers

Amazon is pushing a deal to sell its voice-activated smart speaker Echo for $1. But an investigation by a Berlin-based research agency found that it was relatively easy for third-party apps to eavesdrop on users and steal passwords and other sensitive information. The breach undermines the assumption that voice apps are only active as long as they are in dialogue with the user.

Facebook Ads News

New Facebook features fight election lies everywhere but ads

Facebook is trying to preempt any inappropriate use of its platform with a slew of new features, including Facebook Project which adds an extra layer of security to politicians when using their Facebook accounts. Other features include taking down foreign influence campaigns, labeling state-owned media on FB pages and Page ownership transparency. But misleading political ads are still allowed, prompting anger from some congress members.

Facebook News to launch very soon, local newspapers under threat

Facebook announced that a new section of the app would be dedicated to news, promoting a wide variety of stories. Algorithms will be used to provide personalized recommendations for further reading, based on the news you read, share and follow.

Facebook getting a face lift

Facebook is drastically changing the look of its interface, including introducing dark mode. The new look will emphasize three main tabs: Facebook Watch, Marketplace and Groups. There were also be a less prominent, Gaming tab.

Google Ads News

Google Is Making A Big Change To The Way It Serves Search Results

Google is switching to a new machine-powered language processing technology called BERT, which looks at the sequences of words in searches, not just the words themselves, to glean more information on the intent behind them.

Google Ads to Improve the Optimization of App Campaigns

App campaigns use text, image, video and HTML5 assets to deliver relevant ads. Soon Google will update campaigns to attribute traffic to each of these creative assets.

Capture leads with Google Ads latest ad extension test

Google is beta testing a new ad extension for advertisers looking to capture leads from their text ad campaigns. Searchers can submit their information to request or download information from Google Search ads through the new lead form extension.

Google Ads Rolls Out 2 New Tools for Responsive Search Ads

The two new tools include performance column, which identifies the exact creative assets which are driving results in high volume ad groups, as well as ad variations which now support responsive search ads and lets advertisers run their own ad copy tests.

Google Adds New Features For Advanced OTT Ads

Amidst the growing popularity of over-the-top and streaming TV services, Google's ad manager has now launched a new sharing feature allowing programmers and distributors to configure flexible inventory sharing tools.

Microsoft Ads News

Microsoft Advertising goes through a redesign

Microsoft announced that its advertising interface has gone through a redesign to give it a more modern, sleek look.

Twitter Ads News

Twitter admits that it showed more ads to less popular users

The platform has admitted that in the past it has shown more ads to users with less followers, in an attempt to not alienate more influential figures from using its platform.

Twitter Shares Plunge as Ad-Business Troubles Weigh on Growth

Technical glitches in Twitter Inc.’s advertising software roiled the social-media company in the third quarter, as a pullback in spending from some buyers and weaker pricing for ads also cut into revenue and profit even though it added millions of new users.

PDFs Worth Reading This Week

Amazon Ads Benchmark Report Q3 2019

The report includes figures and trends related to Amazon Advertising, such as how marketers are using recently released new-to-brand metrics, the growth of clicks, spend and CPC on Amazon Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products and more.

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