Marketing O'Clock - Digital Marketing News

TikTok Ban Paused. App Lives to Scroll Another Day.

This week on Marketing O’Clock, an executive order puts the TikTok ban on hold, Google Ads released new guidelines on Value-Based Bidding Experiments, and a Source column comes to Search Term Insights. Plus, is “Search Max” coming to a Google Ads account near you? Catch up on all the digital marketing news you missed this week! Visit us at - https://marketingoclock.com/ Sign out petition to ban page annotations http://bit.ly/pageannotations Interested in hiring us? https://cypressnorth.com/ 👍 Like, Share, and Comment! If you found this video helpful, give us a thumbs up, share it with your network, and leave a comment below with your thoughts or any questions you might have. 📱 Follow Us on Social Media: Twitter: @MarketingOClock -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Intro - 00:00 📰 Main News TikTok ban put on hold - 1:57 🛠️ Cool Tool - 9:10 🔥 Take of the Week - 10:16 ⚡ Lightning Round ⚡ Paid - 12:37 Organic - 31:38 Social - 46:17 ⚙️ Working hard, or Hardly Working - 48:09 🔎 ICYMI - 50:00 🧠 Must Read Marketing Article of the Week - 52:10 🎉 Shootin' The Heck - 54:17

Duration:: 1h 5m
Broadcast on:: 24 Jan 2025
Audio Format:: other

on this week's episode of Marketing a Clock. Gen Z and all the tech moguls were bite-gans in their way to the capital this week after the TikTok band was temporarily lifted. Plus, sources say Google ads has a new column in search term insights. All on today's show. ♪ Welcome you are listening to ♪ ♪ Marketing a clock to stay tuned ♪ ♪ Digital marketing news ♪ ♪ But let's get specific ♪ ♪ Digital ads, SEO and analytics ♪ ♪ Social media and more ♪ ♪ Pretty much everything that I make your website perform ♪ ♪ New shows every Friday ♪ ♪ I give you the news with sats and puns ♪ ♪ And definitely hot tanks ♪ ♪ Thank you for tuning in ♪ ♪ You know what time it is ♪ ♪ It's officially marketing no clock ♪ ♪ Settling, sit back, keep it locked ♪ - Hey, there, I'm Christine Zernheld. - AKA Shop and I'm Greg Finn. - And it is officially marketing a clock. - Here on January 24th, 2025, Shop, it is great to be here with you, even though we are virtual today. - I know, it's hopefully the only time this year, but we've got some pretty bad weather, so virtual it is. - We're good for one weather shutdown once a year. - I mean, it's the worst episode of the year, but just kidding. - Okay, no, this one's good. - It is. We have some good stuff to talk about. You've got snow up in Buffalo, and I've got stir today, and I've got cold. They shut down the schools now a day ahead, because it's gonna be 13 degrees Fahrenheit, mind you. - I woke up this morning, it was negative six. - Oh, that's pretty cold. - I don't do that, you know. - I just look what I got at, I got, it's 13. - Yeah, I think it's everyone in America right now. My brother lives in Charleston, and he has snow. People are tubing down the street in boat tubes. There's like snow in Florida, it's wild. - Yeah. - Okay, well, something that had a temporary freeze here in the main news this week was one social media platform called TikTok. I was wrong, there was about 12 hours where TikTok users were outraged. They were dancing in the streets. - It was, yeah. - I walked out-- - Should I check my personal experience? Oh, they were in the streets? - I walked out of my house, the entire streets were just full of people dancing. - No, they weren't. - It was too cold. - For me personally, this is like the best week of the year on TikTok 'cause they have the collegiate dance nationals, NDA, and it was like the middle of the competition TikTok shut down. I couldn't see who won Minnesota or Ohio. It was terrible, terrible timing. Luckily, it came back the next day, but it was worth it for the content for the people who are like, hey, TikTok down for 10 hours, and I'm like getting to know my house fan today. And there was a lady on the couch and she was like, so what do you do? - Well, you really probably needed that time this week knowing that we have a shoot in the hack that's a review podcast that we talked about last week. So I'm glad you got that extra 12 hours in of QT with your husband. - Yeah, even though most of it was like bedtime, but it was nice, a little break. - So what happened is users were given a message saying TikTok is not currently available in the US. That was about 12 hours. And then after that, there was a note that said, thanks to the legal efforts of President Trump. And I believe this was still before the day of bringing into office. - It was. - That TikTok is back. So it turns out that there was an executive or, I don't even know how you do executive order, can I like do an executive order if I'm not an author? - Seems like it. - I wanna make an executive order. - Give me a try. But apparently the president to be at the time had a 75 day executive order to sort of pause the TikTok ban. And I saw a lot of people getting upset about that. You know, politics aside, I understand you may like things, you may not like things, but I would say the general sentiment was fairly decent for people being back. Everybody's like, yeah, this is a bad thing. - I'm glad it's back. I just feel like I was used and played. And I'm not happy about it. - For 12 full hours. - Yeah. - So what will happen now is sort of the biggest question. And with this administration, I'd say nobody really knows. It's kind of an odd entity where the current leader of the country owns their own social media network, Truth Social, and is very now buddy buddy, at least it appears at the big party of getting into this place of home here and then retaking the throne in a way, let's say, where I saw Zuck, I saw Elon, I saw the US, how did the US TikTok there? Along with soon up a chai of Google, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Bezos, wife, Baron Trump. Like what a-- - I did not like what I was seeing. - No, it was shocking how many tech leaders, insiders, some of the wealthiest, most powerful people in the world were like front and center at the-- - We needed a dedicated survivor for Silicon Valley. Who won it? - Like we've got a great cast. We've got a great cast of six that made it to this event, right? We had Sundar, which I got him out good getting out first. If he's on Traitor, Survivor, he's off. He didn't have any game, right? And then we got Elon, who I think is going the whole thing just 'cause somehow all he does is win. - Yeah. - And we got Tim Apple, who was notorious to call Tim Apple. That's Tim Cook from Apple, was there. Bezos from Amazon. - Dan Lauren, don't forget Lauren Sanchez was there. - She made herself very front and center. And then we had Zuckerberg, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook. And then finally, the sixth person in the survivor pool would be the US head of TikTok. Was there a front and center. So all the who's who intact live at the event. So I would just assume that's probably good for all these tech companies. - Yeah. - Minus the perception that could be very bad. - Right, maybe not necessarily the user experience or the advertiser experience, but it's good for the people at the top, I guess. - Yeah, and I saw, there were a lot of people that saw some of these things and were like trying to talk about how to remove themselves from meta. Is that correct? - Yeah, I guess people are being like automatically, I've heard claims that people who have never followed POTUS or Vodus, VPP Otus, what do we call him? - Vodus. - We're like automatically opted into following them. And then they would try to unfollow. And it just like was a cycle. I keep checking and I have not been, I don't follow anyone, so I'm safe, I guess. - That's, we'll say that's a legend that in meta, the case of meta, some people were on Facebook. - According to reports. - Mm-hmm. Well, according to my For You page, it's really. - Okay. Okay. According to TikTok For You page, which again, temporarily unbanned, about 73 more days. Okay. So will this last is kind of what everybody's looking at? And it seems like it's going to be another game time decision. As we talked about, Donald Trump does own truth of social and seems to be in cahoots with all these tech moguls. And Trump said, I may or may not do the deal. TikTok is worthless, worthless if I don't approve it. I learned that from the people that own it. If I don't do the deal, it's worth nothing. - Worthless if I don't approve it. - If I do the deal, it's worth a trillion dollars. - If I do the deal, it's worth maybe a trillion dollars. - Your impression is getting better as you go. - I just started doing a habit. I think the US should get half of TikTok. - The US should be entitled to get half of TikTok. - Half. I think we should have a joint venture, a beautiful venture. - I added a partner. The US should be entitled to get half of TikTok. But if the president doesn't sign, it's worthless. - Then it's worthless. - So I guess we just have to see what happens with TikTok. - It's crazy. The numbers are crazy. - I don't mind the government cut and the profit. Like, that'd be great, cut down our deficit. - Pay my taxes. - Yeah, why? - Maybe he'll rename it along with the Gulf of Mexico and the mountain in Alaska, what to see. - Yeah, or maybe we just need another coin in our lives. I don't even know your life is any more shiny. - I just wanna get out of my house. - I'm just glad I didn't invest in Melania coin. - And now for this week's Cool Tool. - As a reminder, our Cool Tool segment is not an official endorsement or paid mention. We're simply sharing something we found in our travels that maybe have used to our listeners and is really, really cool. This week's Cool Tool is a custom RSA GPT that you can use for free. - So this Cool Tool is from Jeremy Krantz and he shared over on his LinkedIn page this week that he builds a custom GPT to help accelerate the creation of responsive search ads for paid search. All you need to do is feed it a few keywords and landing page, the landing page for the ad group and it should do the trick. He says, you don't need to sign up for anything or post anything in the comments either. Just click below to access it. What a guy. And I tried it for some of my accounts and I was pretty impressed. It really is as easy as that. And they do the character count right there for you. It's all formatted for uploads. So definitely check it out. You can follow Jeremy over on LinkedIn if you want to access it or we will share it in Discord or newsletter, all the places. - And I'm sorry, how much you say it was again? - Free! - Wow. - Now it's time for this week's Take of the Week. This is a hashtag fire. Digital marketing take with extra spice served up for you. We simply delivered the take for your consumption. We give no opinions. We don't influence. You make the call. - This week's Take of the Week comes, we had a lot of great takes this week. A lot of great takes, a lot of inappropriate takes from what we were talking about earlier. But I liked one from Andrew Lolk the best. We're just going to keep it marketing here. And over on LinkedIn, he said just a disclaimer as I continue to see outrageous Google ads takes today. I've read three wrong takes on Google ads here on LinkedIn today. One, search themes now work differently. To his responses, no, they don't. There is no change to search themes and they're still only going to work to steer Google towards new keywords and PMACs campaigns. Two, PMACs in search shouldn't be run in the same account. The Andrew goes on to say, splitting doesn't help the underlying issue. If you struggle with PMACs, cannibalizing search and turn off search from PMACs or use negatives like DSA's takeover. Then he says, they're heavily against combining shopping, search display and video via PMACs when the goal is maximizing Google ads as a channel. And I think so many people miss this part. They think PMACs does everything. Technically it does, but it sort of does everything okay. Shopping ads are fantastic for shopping. YouTube ads are fantastic for YouTube. Search ads are fantastic for search. And I'd rather have everything in multiple campaigns set up the right way, set up pristinely than use one half hazard PMACs account that I have no control of, I'll wear that spend those. So Andrew's on the nose on this. And then lastly, he said, smart bidding over pays for your clicks and makes Google rich. So you could switch to manual bidding again. And he said, I wish I saved this one because you all probably don't believe me. Needless to say, smart bidding is still much better than manual CPC. And those are three takes and that's why he wanted to take the week this week in a very crowded pack. Spit in the truth. - Yeah. - Having to take it aside. - Kind of the anti-take take. - Yeah, and when explaining everything too, like it's not just like, no, no, no, no. It's like, no, here's what you need to do. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's great. We got takes I got. Eggs are back. - Now it's time for this week's Pew Pew Lightning Round. At this point in the show, we split up our content into three parts. Pay, organic, and social. (upbeat music) First up in the paid universe this week, Adrian Decker spotted a new, evaluate-based bidding PDF that Google Ads are leased. And it explains more about testing value. They're spitting using Google Ads campaign's experiments. And there are a couple of things in here that I found interesting. First of all, it says that to ensure sufficient volume in control and trial arms, the campaign should have at least 50 conversions in the last 30 days. And I feel like those recommendations are barely kind of always playing around with them, but that's the latest take from Google Ads. It's 50 in the last 30 days. Also, at the bottom of this and fine print, they mentioned multi-campaign experience in beta, experiments that are in beta, which I think is new to me. And this says it allows experiment campaigns to meet certain criteria to be treated as a group. Audiences are assigned to control or treatment arms, then treated consistently as such using cookie-based splits. You can get aggregated reporting across experiments. So that would be really cool if it rolls out to everyone. But again, just in beta right now. And it also talks about like the timeline of experiments. So like day one is the start and then days one through 14, they say they're at a ramp up, days 14 to 44, you let the experiment run. And then you're supposed to account for a conversion lag, whatever that is in your account. And then 28 days plus lag, you evaluate performance. That's a long time. Like we're changing a lot of bidding targets, 45 days. But I guess if you want to do an experiment, again, that's what Google Ads recommends. So some interesting insights there. - Yeah, it's also weird to me whenever they have time-based 'cause to me, whenever clients ask me, I always say it's a volume-based. If we could get a thousand clicks and get statistical significance in three days, same as a thousand clicks over a month. - Yeah. - This is weird. - That's what I liked about that. The learning phase estimates we talked about last week for demand-gen is it seemed like the learning phase could be shorter or longer if you adjusted your target ROAS. So I feel like experiment should be the same way if you like change your budget or whatever. But this is what they say. - Retie. Next up from Natasha Kurura, she found that Google has a new source column in the search term insights report for PNACS. So the column can show whether the source is search themes, URLs or creative assets for a specific search term insight. So I'm guessing creative assets they're saying like based on a certain headline you have or something, they're targeting a certain search theme or like a keyword. That one was a little confusing to me, but that's how I took it. And then also interesting in this, people saw for search category, there was an option for private search terms. So this is the first time people have seen this as well, which kind of accounts for that other search terms that we see in search campaigns, but this is for PNACS. So Google says that private queries are terms that have been searched by fewer than 50 unique users over the past 90 days. So they're putting them into that private bucket. I thought that was interesting. I would like it for search. And I see the. - I don't want less data. - Well, you don't want less data, but if they could like give us reporting on it and not just put it in other. - It's also, is it a private? - I know, I see things with like one impression or click sometimes. - Right. - So how is that not private, but this is? - In this case, you had 49 people search, click on your ad over a three month period or a two month period. And because it didn't have 50, you can't see that term. I don't like that. - Yeah. - And it's just another layer of the word, I can't say, "obstification." I said, "Yeah, they would, we'll try to make it hard to see." - Sounds right to me. - There you go. - Also that 50 unique users over the past 90 days is a new number to me. Like I thought they used to be obscure about what we didn't get to see, but I think for PNACS they're saying it's 50. So I don't know, it's cool that you can see the source for search teams. - I like art. - Yeah. - So if you see something on your landing page or if you have some URLs you're targeting and it's driving you wrong stuff, you can track it back to where it came from. So I do that. - That's a good point. And if we get the campaign level negatives ever, this would be really useful. - Yeah, guess what rolled out before Q4? Private search terms. Guess what was supposed to roll out in Q4? - Natives. - Search terms for key max. Guess which one came first? The blocking of what you're actually showing for. Shocking. - Oh, yeah. - Another update from Adrian Decker. This is kind of an ICYMI. Not everyone can use image assets. When they first launch a Google Ads account or campaign, you have to meet certain requirements. Like you have to have an account open for more than 60 days, policy compliance, active campaigns, active text ads that have been running for 28 days and it has to be eligible for a vertical or subvertical and not a sensitive one, I guess. So I thought everyone could use image assets. So that was news to me. - One note. When we're sitting here and Google's talking about investing in AI and using AI to make Google Ads better and better and better and better and better, it's things like this where use AI to figure out what images are against terms of services or a violation. That's what we want. We want things to prove faster. We don't want to be, oh, you have to wait 60 full days from when somebody opened up a store to be able to use image assets. - Yeah. Like don't you want to take my money and that's what the question I always have. Like just let me upload my images. They want to take your money, but they want you to feel pain while they're taking it. - Yeah. - You're doing good. - Exactly. Thanks Google. - PPC Greg noticed a new little column in the assets tab. His words are not mine that shows when you add in an asset to your account. It's called used since and it'll say when it uploaded. So that can be good. If you're trying to measure performance, you could see how long it's been in there. Another new thing, this was spotted by Lars Thawning, DiBro, Lars was looking at search terms and under the list for match types, there was a new option called search max in addition to broad, exact, et cetera. Adrian Decker found this and then he added like color to the post that I don't know what Adrian sources for this, but he said search max is designed to adapt to the ever changing search landscape by delivering smarter, more effective ads. This innovative feature combined search term matching and text and URL optimization to help marketers broaden their reach, improve user relevance and drive higher conversions. So a broader broad, I don't really know. I don't like the sound of it and everything's unconfirmed at this point. Again, I don't know what Adrian's source was for that. I didn't see anything from Google. - I feel like this is inevitable. Is it this year, next year, the year after? I don't know why everything needs to be called max. When every option you have is max. It's like, I'm gonna use performance max or search max. I just think the naming is lazy. - It's fine if you let me keep the other match types and don't change them. - Yeah, I know. And the thing is like, search is so good. And Mike Ryan was making fun of me last week for me saying that search is search and PMAX is PMAX. And I'm sorry, but they are different things. That was the point I was trying to make 'cause you shouldn't convert your search into a PMAX campaign. And I don't love this. I do feel like it's where we're headed. But again, this is all widely unconfirmed speculation, but search max to me. I likened it to like a goof troop of superheroes. I don't get snoo, where you've got performance max that is like the Incredible Hulk or the Thing or something, but just doing way more damage than good. But like a little bit again, - By the way. - You know, it's one person but wipes out a city. You know, I mean, you got search max and it's just like the dopey detective that is just like framing everybody, I don't know. - Yeah, performance max has always been a stupid name too. So I don't like this anymore. Also by the way, am I like a refreshing co-host after your experiences with Morty this week? - Oh, so on it's new, Barry's out of town and Morty's just trying to drive me insane. That's all I can think of. I dare any of you, I've got to like edit this stuff. I've had two meetings after it and I'm trying to get it up by 10 a.m. I swear he has some agenda. He's like, there's a lobbyist behind him or something. He's just trying to make my life impossible. - He's trying to start a union for Greg Finn co-host. Did you hear? He asked me to join. I feel like I'm a very fair co-host. I did boot him out, I couldn't take it. - Yeah, he deserved it. - You just wouldn't stop talking to my, we need to get to these stories. I'm sorry, it's over 10 minutes. Barry wants these things, 10 minutes and I'm like, kick him out. And I'm like, mad segment. I brought him back in, he was pretty pissed. I love Morty, he's just... - Yeah. - When dad leaves, he goes crazy. - It's also like later in the day when he records and it's like first thing in the morning for you. So it's like, it's not a good mix. - Full board, full Morty. And it's just like, wow. A tag, meaning and devil takes. - Yeah. Okay, more news here. PPC Greg spotted something. So I guess he hasn't been able to run a date or compare a send in Google Ads directly in the option Insights tab, but he spotted a new place to do it in custom reports. So if you're looking for that, go crazy. Another update from Google Ads land from Joey Bittner. He's where it's not mine. He says, yippee, skippee, like. - Joey's great. You met him all day at PPCero. - Yeah. Actually, I didn't get to meet him. It was like while I was doing something else. I know, I was really bummed. But he says, percent served is now visible as a video metric in Google Ads to man Jen. So he says in an area of low attribution to YouTube. It's helpful to see which ads within an ad group are delivered comparatively to others as Google will use the signals other than just conversion value. So that's something you can add if you want. - Great. Speaking of Brightnessio and HeroConf, we have a bunch of videos rolling out on our marketing clock channel. You're gonna be able to hear from Joey. I just interviewed Barry Schwartz. All I talked to him about the entire interview. I'm sure everybody's gonna be mad at having a look at the comments yet. I just talked to him about his flights. That was all I talked to him about was his travel. And I thought that the clip the tables made was hilarious. Did you watch that? - I haven't seen it yet, but I watched the live interview. - Okay. - I didn't know how to see what it does. So if you want more of that, please subscribe to marketing clock on YouTube. We've got a ton of awesome interviews, getting the best from the brightest folks out there at HeroConf. - Next up, we got a Higman corner here. He's, as always, making a lot of news this week. And you're gonna hear from him again in a little bit at the end of the show. So first of all, Google Ads has updates to their child and teen ads policies. No changes are being made. They're just like rewriting it to increase transparency, no enforcement changes. Same with an update to advertiser verification. They just reorganized the help center for clarity. No changes there. Next up, something that is changing. He's doing what he does, just like googling things all day long and getting mad about the stupid things that he sees. So one example this week, he saw a result and in the SERPs, it says mirror test as the headline and then the body or the description is transaction ID, conversions, fruit text. And then if he looks up who the verified advertiser is, it says Google internal test. So it seems like just like a bug, like you were testing something and it goes into the SERPs, but Anthony's really mad and he says, they're testing different ad blazes and changing how the options work. Crazy like a Fox, LOL. Crazy like a Fox. Yeah, why like a Fox? I think it's crazy like a Fox. Or Fox is crazy? I think they sound crazy. We're here with the Fox says. I unfortunately. No, yeah, I wanted what the mirror is. And if you look at that example, again, this is nothing but wild speculation that we have here. But if that is like a mirror placement, they could potentially be out there to mirror something that's above it. That was sort of my take on, right? And I think that would be pretty wild if you had an advertiser show up in the top spot, which Higman's arrow is making it look like that's the case. And then also showing two below that in the third spot before any single organic SERP comes through. And I know Shup, you had made that point a few weeks back when there were double placements happening. I made a video on it and said, here's some things that you can do about it. But if there is a way that Google is testing to mirror, like try to mirror a result to be first and third above the organic placements. RIP to your brand spend. Yeah, I would not, that would not be good for any branded campaigns, so. Yeah. So I made a whole video of it. Over on LinkedIn, if you want to check it out or there's a blog post over on cypressner@.com talking about that double serving update and how it could impact your brand. But as often brainache up, I just stole it and made a video. Thanks. Anthony's mad again. He says he just went through 14 pages of search results. Sounds like a typical day for him. For the same keyword, he says half. Let me repeat, half of those pages do not have PPC ads on them, but have LSA at the top of every page. On 14 pages of results, there were only 12 PPC ads shown and LSA's were on every page. And then he asks, how is it okay for Google to preference one platform over the other for all of these results? The answer is it's no longer an auction. I mean, I would have to agree. I think this is why they want to saw him smart bidding, but. I can sell how great it takes this week. We just have him as news this week. Next up, this is something people should really know about. And there is an ad exchanger article by James Hurcher this week. It's called people managing Google ad campaigns or getting their account seized by scammers. So I guess they're scammers who are placing their own search ads for queries related to setting up or logging into Google ads and Google ads is serving them. And then when people click on them, they fall into a phishing scam. Like, you want me to trust you again and your AI and you're letting people run ads on your branded terms for phishing scams and you're not even noticing it. - Well, I think some of our emails, right? Like the emails are coming from sites that Google, it's coming from a fake site on Google's hosted sites. - Don't you think Google should make that a high priority to like figure it out? - I don't know if you're like trolling me right now. - This is just, I'm mad, this is so pathetic. - Do you want to ask what I would do if I'm Google? - Protect your on products. Like, this should be your highest priority, getting the shutdown. - I'm making the best possible ad product with the best possible support that people would want to willingly spend their money on. That's what I would do. I'd be like, oh, people are scamming, cool. Anybody with the sites.google that is doing this is completely out of it. And I'm going to come up with something immediately to stop this. And I'm going to make everything advertiser friendly if I'm Google. Instead, that's not the case. They're working to get as much out of those cushets as we've said. - If Google cared about us, they would be telling us about the scam, not ad exchanger, of course not. Next up, Joe DiBazio is letting us know that there are new Google ads integrations with Microsoft clarity. So that'll be really cool for heat mapping and testing. Boris Beckerick is also sharing that there is a new negative keyword cleaner powered by Gemini. And of course, it removes negative keywords unnecessarily blocking us. No word of them building out like a negative keyword build out tool. - Recommendation tool. - That would be excellent. - It's like, oh no, we would like you to spend more. So we're going to remove all these different things. And that's the thing when there's only a recommendation going one way and not the other way. I don't trust those recommendations. It's just me. - That's every recommendation there is. - Thomas Assell is sharing that there is a new test for larger YouTube shopping product carousels on mobile. He suspects that this is for a demand-gen ads with a product feed. And if you're watching the YouTube video, you can see an example of one of Greg's favorite type of ads. It's a perfume visual ad that you can't smell where you're judging just based on the thought. - And it's got like candles in the background. Some of them are lit, some are unlit and like widey of some of them unlit. And also, I feel like that stuff is highly flammable. Like, why are you, there's wax melting all over this table. There's fire everywhere and this person has their hand and inch away with this, you know, very flame capable spray. - And I can't smell it. That's the punchline. - Final here, Brom Bander healing has another meta ads news story for us. This is an account where they have data sharing restrictions applied because it's been categorized in a health and wellness category. And he's telling you everything you need to know about that. I guess it's a big problem in Europe. So if that is a problem for you, you should definitely do it. And if you're using that ads at all, you need to be following Brom Bander healing on LinkedIn. What is happening in organic? - All right. And before we get into the organic news this week, we don't have the sponsor this week, but we actually for the first time in a long time have room for one client. So if anybody wants to hire us on, if you listen to us every week and somehow decide that you want more of this, is what goes on our client calls. And we have some ability to help anybody on a paid campaign side of things. And you heard us talk about Google ads, we're gonna talk about a whole bunch more. But if you are interested or you just need help with your analytics and want to see all of your data from GA4 and non-sampled, we can help you with that attribution whenever you're looking for. We can help you out at Cypress North and heading into the organic news this week. Google has some new volatility coming back according to where your shorts over search engine round table. There was a low in volatility for a while. So spike pickup and then it's starting to be more and more volatile. We've talked about this over the past weeks that this may be something that's kind of gonna be like ever flux with more and more volatility throughout the year instead of one or two or three or four or five core updates throughout the year. So we'll see how that goes, but things are heating up according to very shorts. Also, there is some clarification about the site reputation abuse policy. Google move some of the things that we're gonna have fake use into the main help section. Mainly talking about what you need to do to decide what to do with this content that it hit. I have got a manual action against it, including that you should no index it from the search, results and you should also redo that content with first party writers. And I've talked about this many, many times, the site reputation abuse policy is morphed into something where there is more of a third party writer versus first party writer rather than a reputation or abuse. It seems like it's very strict on who is writing that content. - Yeah, they need a lot of clarity as it's a terrible name. - It is. And then they also a couple of weeks ago, they're like, oh, if you have a manual action against you, you can't run ads. And my thought and take on that was this ridiculous. Your ads teams don't talk to your organic teams and know about the ins and outs of manual actions and things of that nature. And Anthony Higman this past week spotted in the wild Forbes advisor, which is now no index and allegedly had a manual action against it, was running ads for the best SEOs. And they landed on a Forbes advisor page. I'll put it in the notes so you can upload it tables. So allegedly, I guess you can now run content that has manual actions against it with ads. So who knows what's happening? Okay, additionally, there is a brand store expansion panel that Google is testing out. There's an example that Barry Schwartz and Sachin Patel had found over at Search Engine Roundtable. For the example, you can see new balance. There's a little kind of soft gray button with a carrot aiming to the right. And when you click on that, the new balance kind of expands out. And there's a blog post, there's some product images. I think this is good for brands. So I'm all here for it. The more that you can match the intent with the query, as Google once said, that was their goal. Instead of matching other brands, I'm all for it. Yeah. Let's get more space. More space for organic brands for people looking for you. The mix of products here too, lots of different new balance examples. Yeah. You got the dad shoe, you got the mom shoe. Come on, I can squeeze the dad shoes right now. Absolutely crazy. Really? Yeah. (laughs) Are they slippers? No, they're like dino-sombers. Were you gonna show us? Yeah. We'll get the hat. The dad shoe. What brand are those? Under Armour. My local dick says to close out the section and they're like 35 bucks and they're like the most comfortable things in the world. You just wear them around the house? I just like, I'm just gonna only look them like a dad. Okay. Bring it back. Well, be who you are. Well, Canada's SEO over on Blue Sky was being who they are, trying to offer helpful information. And they said, if you're not using SEO to your advantage, you're basically at a disadvantage to other people, to everyone else out there. The good news is that utilizing SEO for your new website can have a positive impact on business. Very nice statement. Think tag anybody like John Mueller, who was living over on Blue Sky these days. And John Mueller commented from the clouds and said, though sometimes, quote, "doing SEO," and quote, " would cause a site more problems than not doing anything at all." Where did he find this post? Also, Hayden's SEO didn't say doing SEO. They said, if you use it to your advantage. Why are you then taking that and doing SEO? That's a troll comment. And yeah, anything can be bad. If I go on a diet, it could be bad. If my diet is the freaking donut diet, and all I eat is donuts, it's gonna be bad for my health. Those are also diets that are good. And right now, I don't eat carbs, and I feel amazing, except for the fact that I'm super sick and I have no energy. And I'm starving. - Seems like you're doing amazing. This was too, should we just not try John Mueller? Like, I don't understand. - Yeah, it's like you can do anything good or anything bad. I don't get it. If I go run and I don't stop running for two weeks, I'm gonna hurt my body, but running it like, it's so dumb. Yeah, if you do SEO poor, if you're anything poor, they could be bad for you. - Anywhere's been the same company that runs the Google Small Biz X account. Like, can you use this troll energy for them, please? And not this nice SEO platform. - Just trying to help people, this poor cadence SEO, we're here for root cadence. - Okay, and from Glen Gaby said, I've covered many, many times, including how recently with the December spam update, how scaling via AI generated content can add up very badly for sites. If you're pumping out tons of AI content without human involvement, Google systems will catch up at some point, and he links to a job description posted by Google. Very short, I found it. And the experience needed for a senior staff analyst for search ranking, one of the lines was, address novel content issues. Example, detection and treatment of AI generated content. They're just, hey, we can AI everything, everything in your accounts will be AI, but don't you try to AI us. AI in no way. - And this is a senior staff analyst, they have like, don't you have tools like AI generated content. - You just look at a content, you're like, yeah, that's probably AI. - Isn't that exactly which we should be using AI for, like? - Yes! - Detecting AI, I'm losing my mind. - Yes, shot. - All right. - It's all but, hey, you got to try to go apply, just go look at lines of code, it's like severance. You watch that show? - No, but I heard about the whole pop up. What's the vibe of the show? It kind of seems like not for me. - Not for you. - Yeah. - No. You need more singing, more witches, more fairies. - Draw them up. I like housewives if we're talking TB. - Okay. It's more sci-fi, dystopian, sci-fi. - Oh, really? - Yeah. - I thought they were just working in an office. It's more than meets the AI. - You don't have memories when you're working in an office. - Oh. - You're severed, okay. Also, there was a very popular blogger, currently popular blogger, wherever Scoble, one of the OGs in the blogging space, and he said blogging is being crushed by AI. Oh, I'm trying to find our blogs and take this away. And then he had, quote, tweeted somebody that linked it to some website out there. I have not seen this website in those content creator summits folks, so something a little bit different. And then Matt Mullenwig from Automatic and WordPress fame and more recently Infamy, I would say, with some of the stuff that is going on over there, had jumped in and said the one thing that all those folks that went to the content creator summit, hate hearing, absolutely hate hearing. He said, that blog is hard to read with all the ads and pop-ups. But that is why their traffic is down, not AI. That's like something you just don't say to those folks. - Yeah, it's tough enough for them right now. - I know, but they're like, well, Google said it's not the ads, that's what that's their go-to's. Google said it's not the ads. And oh, look, here's another site out here, Nike, or somebody else, it's not Nike. They usually go to like media sites and look at all these ads. Sorry, if you are a big brand, you get treated differently by Google than if you're a small brand. They literally told you this at the content creator summit. They said, wouldn't Nike be mad if we ranked you over Nike? So you don't get to do the same things that all these big companies do. That's just a fact in the way the world works, whether you like it or not. It's why six of the biggest tech moguls are at the presidential (beep) All right, and from Barry Schwartz and Glenn Gabe, Glenn had a post over on LinkedIn and he said, it was talking about the fact that many tools ran in some issues over the past week that we're not able to have JavaScript turned on. It seems that Google is cracking down some AI and LLM scraping of content and according to Glenn, and searches around table, I guess. They said, the Google spokesperson declined comment on search engine round tables reporting about tracking tools being blocked. Seems like the tools have recovered, although some of the tools are differently. So if you see any weird outages or data, just know there could be some adjustments being made, but it doesn't seem like it was targeting the tools themselves more scraping. All right, also from Glenn Gabe here, he said, based on auto-translating content to expand internationally, and he's talking about Reddit and he says, other sites have got manual actions over that, but allegedly Reddit is looking to auto-translate into different languages and the shares of within 7% and hit a record as Raymond James raises price target from 200 to 150. It also doesn't seem like a race. This seems like a drop. I mean, I'm not a math guy, but 200 is higher than 150. Yeah, but just a little typo, I don't know. So we'll see if that works. And then speaking of translation, Google has a translation button showing up on some AI overviews now. You can translate it in the case of the example of on screen. You could translate over to English or to different languages and it will translate the AI overviews for you. So again, manual actions in many cases when you translate to different languages, but not for AI overviews. - Perfect. - All right, and Jason Kent has some good findings about the AI lawsuit against Facebook. Allegedly, according to the documentation, Meta was using some files that had quarantined and pirated copyrighted copy written copy right works. - I don't know. - You guys figure it out. And so it's called this LibGen data set and everybody was like dancing around the fact that probably shouldn't use this. It looks like there were millions of pirated books that were in LibGen and some of that may have been used allegedly in AI within Meta. So wonderful. And then lastly here, we've got the Stargate project. And this is a new initiative from OpenAI and Sam Altman, that crazy I'm effort. He is, it's a new company which intends to invest 500 billion over the next four years building a new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States. They are gonna begin deploying 100 billion immediately and they're going to make any of these partnerships and videos, soft bank, OpenAI Oracle, MgX, Microsoft, whatever, all these companies. And it was this big long tweet that was put out by OpenAI right after the tweet. There was a response by one Elon Musk who said they don't actually have the money. This is hysterical. And then Sam Altman went back at him and then Elon Musk, or maybe he didn't go back yet, but Elon Musk said soft bank has well under 10 billion secured. I have that on good authority. So apparently out of the 500 billion needed, there might only be 10 billion, oh no. And then Sam Altman responded to Elon and said, "Wrong as you surely know, wanna come visit the first site already underway? This is great for the country. I realize what is great for the country isn't always optimal for your companies. But in your new role, I help you most of it put America first." - Wow. - Old-fashioned petty off. - Does this be for the 20th? - I'm just a second. - Sam was there too, right? - No, I didn't see Sam. - Oh, he wasn't, okay. - Maybe he was, he wasn't front and center with all those other guys. - I was gonna say I haven't been out there. - I'm sure, he probably was there. Who knows, I don't know. I'll look it up. Okay, and then finally just one more recommendation. And it's our segment to stop page annotations at all costs. If you wanna sign the petition, go to bit.ly/page annotations. And Glen Gabe has some good news. He says the opt-out form does work. Here's a quick update. And he has an example of a page that had page annotations showing. And then after three and a half weeks, the opt-out eventually worked. He has no page annotations where Google and checks links under your site is the Google app in iOS. That is no longer, so use that opt-out form if you don't want Google siphoning your traffic off, just to make themselves more money so they get a better seat at the next party. - Okay, are we gonna tag team social? Is that the plan here? - Yeah, let's go. - Okay, first up, meta is reportedly offering creators cash bonuses of up to $50,000 to post their videos on their app first. In order to do this, the creator has to agree to an exclusivity period that could be up to several months. It's giving desperate, not cute. What else? - All right, well, from Instagram, they have announced the story highlights tab. And I'm assuming this is like something like TikTok adjacent but more people that you follow. - So if you add something to your, I think, we don't have our Gen Z girl here, but if you add something to your story, you can then save it as a story highlight. And then you have, you know, when people have their profiles with the different circles and they're all different things at the top. - Yeah. - So you can now put those in a grid, which is nice because you could like click around and see just the thumbnail and decide which one you wanted to watch. I just saved my story highlight so I can re-watch videos I posted of my children. So it'll be nice for me to be able to find them quicker. - Okay, funny enough, Julia hasn't even been to work since TikTok came back. Interesting. That's not true. - That's not true. (laughing) - Okay. And X is also doing something similar to a TikTok-y. Well, I'd say this is way more TikTok-y. It seems like it's only on Haps, but there's a dedicated video tab. And it seems like you could just watch quick videos similar to what TikTok would do. So, height. If everybody's mad about meta and following things, everybody's mad about Instagram. I don't know where you go. - I'm surprised they didn't do that sooner, personally, but... I think we did it. That was all the social news. Good job, us. And that brings us to our real life segment, straight out of our accounts and into your ear holes. It's time for working hard or hardly working, where we talk about what's going on in our IRL work. Good, bad, or otherwise. Hardly working for me this week. Custom columns in Microsoft ads are severely lacking compared to Google ads. Like I couldn't filter by device, which is something that I like to do for custom columns in Google. And it also didn't give me that text option that you have in Google ads. Like it's really nice when you find an article with different custom columns and you can just copy and paste the text. You cannot do that in Microsoft, so I think they need to catch up there. What about you, Craig? For me, we've got a client that is in the financial space, very sensitive space within meta. There's not a heck of a lot we can do, just due to the circumstances. We are in sort of many peak season for this client and we're looking at just different programmatic placements. And we're using some very specific lists from Chisel on top of trade desk. And it's doing really, really well. Like I'm just very surprised that some of these lists as to how well we're doing from a cost per approved app for this certain client, it's just been phenomenal. Where if you are stuck, especially with some of the new meta changes, this is your calling to try to do a little bit more than just what you've done in the past. You are a marketer and if you're a good marketer, you need to adapt and find out different ways to find value. And for us, it's been a lifesaver. I mean, we're racking up conversions and are under our goal CPA or cost per approved app. So doing really, really well. - Awesome. (upbeat music) Now it's time for this week's IcyMI. IcyMI people, this is something you just might not have seen. Maybe something that you overlooked, but you shouldn't have. (upbeat music) IcyMI people, Andrew Loke asked Jenny Marvin or Adlaze on this week if standard shopping campaigns cover YouTube product ad placements and he has a screenshot of YouTube with some different ads for golf bags. Jenny says, yes, if your standard shopping campaign is opted into search partners, that includes YouTube. So again, probably a good reason to check your search partners. Why don't they give you the option to have like search partners only on a campaign? And you could have like a really low, a really high target row as. If you wanted to try YouTube or something, I guess then you might just do PMAX. - It's up to campaigns. - I would be willing to test it more if I could like have more control over it, but they only let you do it all together. - Well, you could do it all together higher rows and then the one with the lower rows would take precedence over the higher rows so you'd get the scraps. - But I wanna just, if I could just test search partners in its own search campaign, right, or shopping and turn off normal search and just see what it did and have a really, really high row. That would be cool that I would try it. - I mean, you can, you can report on it, you can segment. - Yeah. I'm asking for control, Greg. I don't know if you've ever-- - You're never gonna-- - Google's never-- - I'm just trying to help you deal with reality on reality's terms. - Asking for control from Google. - If you want me to use search partners for non branded, that's the only way I'm gonna do it. - Yeah, and if you want, I also made a blog post over on Cypress North about this with the video, talking about how this might actually be impacting some of your demand gen, YouTube, or PMAX campaigns because if you got a span turned on, you might be having YouTube inventory from there. Also then you got YouTube on demand gen, YouTube on YouTube, and then YouTube on PMAX. So be smart about it. And honestly, not a lot of good reasons to keep search partner network on for shopping. Now it's time for our Must Read Marketing article of the week. An article so advanced, so in depth, so detailed that we simply cannot cover it in its entirety on today's show. - All right, this week's Must Read Marketing article of the week comes from Emily Wood over on Search Edge and Land, and she has an article called How to Combine Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads for comprehensive B2B campaigns. I just like some different thinking, and this has that. Emily talks about some of the individual strengths, talks about some combination strategies where you can do top a funnel with one, bottom a funnel with another, some cross-channel audience targeting, customer matched and matched audiences, and how you get the most out of your specs. So if you're just looking for something, new strategies, new tactics, new you 2025, Emily has you covered. Thank you, Emily. - And now on to our playlist of curated sons who work too, you can head over to playlist.market.com to listen to marketing a playlist. Greg, what will you be adding this week? - Two hours later. - This week, I'm gonna be adding No Plans by Novo Amor. - And I'm gonna do, baby, it's cold outside the one from Elf. All right. - Yes, January 24th. - It's, I've never been colder in my life. There's no mention of the holidays in that song. - Okay. - It's just a vibe. - Probably. - Yeah, you're gonna come from me, like, people like wanna cancel that song. - I mean, it's a creepy song of face value. - Well, I like to live in Lala, Lynn. All right, that's what we're today to show. - It's now officially not marketing a clock. - Thanks for listening. - We miss your ID. - And we can't wait to see you next week. - Thanks for listening to Marketing a Clock. If you're looking for more information on today's topic, head over to marketingaclock.com/newsletter to receive every single article we cover. - We share the news as it breaks in our Discord community. Head over to community.marketingaclock.com to join. - Welcome to this week's shooting a hap crafter, our famous Friday news show. We don't talk about marketing anymore, we just-- - Shoot the heck. And this week, we're kind of talking about marketing. - Yeah, I don't know why we're here. - I don't know why we're here, because of the one man who is joining us here today, one Anthony Hedman. Hedman, I don't know your mental name. Then it's-- - But it's a we owe me. - It's LSA. - That's even better, yeah, LSA. - So Anthony found a new pack of, within the SERPs, there are some new podcasts that are showing up within SERPs. And they were showing up for divorce lawyer. Hedman is big in the law of space, maybe the most famous digital marker in the lawyer space. He was astounded, I would say, when you saw a podcast showing up for a generic term like divorce lawyer. So we thought we were gonna have some fun and say, "Is this a good result, or is this not a good result?" And so we tasked everybody with homework and we listened to the most recent episode of "The Divorce and Beyond" podcast with Susan Guthrie's wire. - Is that correct, Chuck, did I miss anything? - That's exactly what happened. - Okay, so I figured ways to do like book club style. - And you linked to Podbean in the UK. Was that what it was in the, like you couldn't have a Spotify link? Is that what the Google result was? - I just searched it. I was in a hurry. I was trying to get this meeting on the books. - Okay, well, this is really what a journey. - Okay, so-- - Was ever heard of Podbean. We have now. - It's like a big thing. - Definitely. - I've been there, too. Was on Podbean. - What were our thoughts with this being listed in the SERPs for that specific query? Any initial thoughts? Absolutely not. Jess. - I raised my hand to Bob on the show. We kind of wrapped up a little bit. I thought that depending on where you are in the journey, it was a healthful result. - I gotta say, I have your estimate as to Susan Guthrie. The woman points on a very sharp podcast, like very succinct and wonderful points. In the middle of the podcast, she breaks it down and stops, and it's like, here's what you're in here next. Just keep listening. And that has the ads. It's like-- - There, I want to buy one of the evil eye bracelets. - That's the thing. The ads were so spot on. I think she does a great job. Like she really connected with her audience. She's like, you need protection. Do you need head space? Do you need to focus on yourself? I think she's got all the angles. I don't know. - Yeah. I thought A, she was very pro-attorney, and then I realized halfway through the podcast, she was an attorney, and I'm the coach. - Yeah. - That's a good opportunity. - Oh. I'd have to imagine this drives business for her, not just the podcast, but if she has more of those placements and the serves. - Yeah. - For sure. Yeah. - And it came very well. I actually take everything my joking back. I thought if somebody's looking for a lawyer, I thought it was a very fair argument made. Crows and cons, some of the downfalls and things like that. I was going into it thinking it was going to be totally negative, and thought like, wow, this could be something. I don't know what somebody's looking for a divorce lawyer, but on topic of divorce lawyer, the topic that you search for, Higman, you thought it was a decent result. - Yeah, I agree. It was informative. I said like, I'm not their target demographic, but definitely from like a user's perspective, that being an entry point, it wasn't for real. I wouldn't hear the jokes though. - Why? - I take on which like, I like other just like, LOL January's divorce month. - Yeah. - Yeah. - I was like, what? It's so sad. - It's so sad. - It's so sad. - All the thing in general was very sad. - Yeah, that, none was super sad. - I thought in particular, if you're looking for a litigation lawyer in the state of California, like this is a great result. Is that what you're looking for Anthony when you found this? - It was not, I was just really weird lawyer searches, but it was fascinating to me that feature. I found the feature like more fascinating in the podcast. The podcast was good informative. I thought it was like a little too like, monitor throughout, but I'm like used to marketing a club and like, comfortable. - We are anything but, yeah. - No, no, stop breathing your ear holes. (laughing) - Oh my god, it was informative. Well, I found like, fascinating was the feature because it was like, there's three podcasts and then more videos and where more videos took you was just to YouTube videos. Like it wasn't to more podcasts. Those three podcasts were featured and then it was back to YouTube, which I thought was weird but interesting. - So do you have clients that routinely put out podcasts in the law field? - No. - Is it something you would recommend now seeing all this, you know, all the hype that Susan Guthrie Esquire is getting? (laughing) - We definitely pushed people into YouTube videos. I think podcasts are a heavy lift. I don't know if that's the truth or not because I don't actually like, produce podcasts. - There, you got one right now. (laughing) - I'm just saying, I feel like it's more involved. She's definitely got something to the fact where she showed up in that feature. And obviously like Google is going that way with more video stuff. So yeah, I mean, I think it's an angle if you can gain a following and have an audience like that. And I guess it does start little by little. So yeah, I wouldn't say it was a bad idea. - I would also say you can probably hire someone to edit your podcasts every week for less than like one click on an ad for a legal related term. - Not very true. - Yeah. - 14,000 referrals on our inbox of people if you need somebody to edit a podcast for you. - Okay. - Oh, okay. - It's all with me. (laughing) - Okay. So I'm in some of the parts of the podcast. - Yeah. - There was one trial that was going on 13 years. - Yeah. - It's like they started this process when they were two and now the daughter's 15. Don't you? - You're so sad. - So crazy. I thought the guy she had on, I don't need to go buy Susan. I'm a Susan Stan. I don't know the name, but I thought he did the job one, two salesy. He's like, - It was a little too pro man for me. - But he's also like, - Did you think he never talked to one player? - Yes. When he was like the judge, maybe he doesn't like you because the color tie you wore that day. - I used to wear a tie. - Are you saying that's all your male clients? - Well, to be fair, Susan chimed in to that point and Susan said that the judge may have not gotten his regular smoothie that morning and might be in a bad mood. And that's what judges can do? - Yeah, overall. - She's like, - I'm running through the legal system. - Yeah. - It's crazy. - You're like, "That's zero faith." - This is why it takes 13 years to get through something because if you're having a bad day, just like table it. - I thought you signed like a judge, Hippocratic oath to be a good person, not just to be a psycho 'cause you don't get a smoothie or everyone color tie. - I don't know. Did you guys catch though the point? I forgot what they were talking about, but I feel like lawyers could be SEOs because the guy was like the only good lawyer answer is, it depends. - Oh, I don't know. - I would say that. - I don't know. - Did anybody always, you heard that? - Yeah. - I don't know. - It's like, this is us. They make us our comments. And then I just gotta say I thought this is not a bad result. And I came away and I thought Susan Guthrie is a boss. I wrote it right down here. - I agree. - Yeah. It was good. - Not gonna ever listen to another episode. - Right, yeah. - No. - I wonder if we're controversy. Was the only like crit sheet kind of. - Yeah. - Controversy for you. Did you see it, see it's your image? It's not, it doesn't match her thumbnail. Is that the same woman? Go to Pod, not have. - In the pink? - She's in the pink, for sure. But then there's a woman in the yellow shirt. If you click the Pod B on Lacey and you look at it. - I think that might be a weird Pod Bean thing. - That's Pod Bean, yeah. - Can't have that. - Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised. I see it and I'm like these could be results for somebody who was just googling around for a divorce lawyer. Not the worst. Not the worst. - Not the worst. - And I hope Lacey hears the same cause Anthony up. And this is all for somebody's side because my husband was very confused. You know, was around your day. I'm listening to the divorce and beyond podcast. (laughing) I'm usually happily married. (laughing) No, not after that. (laughing) - But I know this is you in the hack and we don't talk about marketing stuff, but if you have a certain vertical and more of these starts showing up, this could be a good way to hop in there. I would just imagine the name of your podcast is likely something that's huge. You know, looking at all those examples, segment that you pulled up, they're all very divorce specific and that. - Yeah, this one like stuck out the best, I think. 'Cause I don't remember necessarily the other two that were on the other side. I don't know why, necessarily using Gulfries stuck out, but maybe it was the name that stuck out to me. - Well, that's what we gotta do. We gotta have the opposite of the divorce and have a little marriage between Susan Guthrie and Ad Squire. I have to run all the other things to listen to a nice, happy story. (laughing) - Love it, love it. - Okay, well that was our podcast book review club. (laughing) The divorce and beyond podcast with Susan Guthrie, a Squire. - We're the segment we've ever done. - I love it. - Very, very, yeah. - Thank you, Higgins. - Absolutely, anytime you guys need a weird segment, holler at me. (laughing) ♪ Bit locked ♪ ♪ That keep it locked ♪ (upbeat music)