Google ads have long featured a “Why this ad” feature that explains some of the reasons a particular piece of advertising content was served to a user. Over the coming months, the functionality is seeing several tweaks and will soon be called “About this ad,” while Google today unveiled an Ads Transparency Spotlight extension for Chrome.
Expand Expanding Close
Online shopping is booming in light of prolonged retail closures and Google’s video site is working to make videos “more shoppable.” YouTube is now testing a list of products underneath a playing shopping ad.
Every summer, Google Marketing Live is a conference announcing the company’s latest advertising products. Google is now making these announcements over the next several weeks, and starting with new features for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB), like square-shaped Promoted pins in Google Maps.
Last May, Google officially announced that ads were coming to Discover. As part of that, the company previewed new Google Discovery ads for the Android and iOS feed, as well as Gmail and YouTube. They are now generally available around the world.
Google Preferred lets advertisers pay to have their ads appear in front of YouTube’s top videos and channels. The program is now being updated and replaced with “YouTube Select.”
The COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating many existing problems in society, especially those dealing with cybersecurity. Google today talked about efforts to combat COVID-19 ad fraud, and recapped its work last year.
In 2018, Google required political groups running election ads to confirm and disclose their identity. That verification policy is soon coming to all Google ads with users eventually being able to learn about advertisers right in Search.
Google has now officially updated the Google Ads app with its own dedicated dark mode, giving it parity with the growing array of darkened Android and iOS apps.
Google maintains a sprawling advertising network and has already made moves in the past to consolidate products. The latest improvement is aimed at simplifying the publisher experience in AdSense, AdMob, and Ad Manager by better explaining where advertising can appear.
Following I/O 2019, Google Search gained its first AR objects with 3D animals. Google ads on the web can now feature interactive 3D objects, while YouTube AR lipstick ads are another way the company is making advertising more appealing and useful.
Ads continue to be Google’s key revenue driver, with the company today more widely announcing “important changes” for AdSense publishers. Google is working to modernize its advertising products by phasing out text-only ads, making all units responsive, and more.
Over the past year, more and more users have spotted ads appearing in Google Discover. At Google Marketing Live today, the company officially announced two types of advertising from Google Ads that can appear in the article feed to the left of Android’s homescreen.
With AdSense, publishers can designate a space on their site for Google to serve advertising that is relevant to the visitor’s interests. The popular service this evening is currently facing an outage where estimated earnings, page views, and other metrics are not updating.
Before the teased GDC Keynote on Tuesday, Google is hosting a developer day on Monday focussed on existing Android games. Monetization is continually a big theme and ahead of that Google is announcing two new ad types for game developers.
As online advertising has matured, programmatic buying has become an increasingly complex process. Google is planning to simplify the bidding process by transitioning to a unified first price auction.
As evident by visual feeds like Instagram and Snapchat, images are increasingly used to advertise and directly sell products to users. Google Images is now adding a new shopping ad that lets brands overlay labels and price tags on sponsored picture results.
With Accelerated Mobile Pages, Google set out to deliver a faster web experience on Android and iOS. Developing advertising that worked in a similar fashion was an important step to boost adoption, with Google now displaying AMPHTML ads on non-AMP pages.
Over the weekend, Google presented a white paper at the Munich Security Conference detailing how it fights disinformation across its largest services. This includes efforts covering Google Search, News, and YouTube, as well as advertising platforms.
The Google Manufacturer Center allows merchants that use Google Ads to “improve their presence” on Search and Google Shopping. For 2019, the tool is adding a new Shopping section that allows third-parties to include full product pages in listings, as well as more analytics.
Disney, and its various properties, are getting ready to enter the online streaming market in the coming years. With a number of properties — notably Star Wars, Marvel, and sports — and platforms already available today, the media juggernaut announced a strategic partnership with Google around advertising.
With Pixel, G Suite, and Cloud, Google over the past several years has sought to diversify its revenue streams. However, advertising still makes up a dominant chunk of profit, and today its head of Ads & Commerce left the company for a venture capital firm.
Last year, YouTube began displaying concert showtimes underneath music videos on the web and mobile. The Google video site is now expanding that ad extensions space to include movie showtimes, app installations, and more.
Despite the company itself looking into developing its blockchain, Google’s ads department announced earlier this year that it would be banning all cryptocurrency-related ads in an effort to combat malicious actors in the space.
Now, many reports are surfacing suggesting Google has backtracked on this policy. Unfortunately for companies in the crypto space, however, they aren’t true.