July Online Marketing Roundup

Another Month is coming to an end, and as usually there's no need to look further. Find here the most important news and updates of July. All you need to know is here!

Facebook: Taking into Account More Actions on Videos

Facebook is studying your behavior to serve you videos you’re more inclined to watch. As part of their ongoing effort to improve News Feed, they asked people to rate their experience and tell them how to improve the content they see when they check Facebook.

One of the most significant findings from this work is that there are many times people don’t want to like, comment on, or share a post, but this does not mean it wasn’t meaningful to them.

Facebook  learned that certain actions people take on a video, such as choosing to turn on sound or making the video full screen, are good signs they wanted to see that video, even if they didn’t want to like it.

So the this new update takes into account these actions to help people see more of the videos they care about and fewer of the videos they don’t.

The 4 Big Changes Coming to Facebook Ads

1. Lead Generation Ads

Nobody likes filling out forms, and Facebok has taken note of that, (correctly) assuming that avoiding forms could help increase conversions. Their solution to the avoidance of filling out forms is their new Lead Generation Ads.

Instead of making people manually type out all the information (and on their mobile devices, no less), Facebook will automatically fill in the forms with information provided by users  like their e-mail addresses or the phone number Facebook has saved on file.

2. Equal Ad Distribution within Ad Sets

Facebook just updated their ads algorithm again this month so that all ads within your ad sets will be optimized individually and separately

Instead of optimizing delivery to the ads Facebook decides will be the best performers before running them, there will be a more even distribution of impressions across all Ads within an Adset.

Facebook will no longer pick one ad from the set and only run that one; each ad will be optimized, and the budget and impressions will be more evely distrubted between the entire ad set.

3. 10 Second Video Preview on Autoplay Ads

Now, Facebook is testing a ten second video preview for their autoplay ads.

If they decide to roll out the video previews, advertisers will have a cost-per-impression option to pay for views on their videos (even if they aren’t watched completely, as is the current system), and a cost-per-view option, in which advertisers can pay only once their ads have been watched for ten seconds.

The ten second preview may guarantee you’re only paying for people actually watching your videos, though the costs could be a great deal higher.

4. Updated Automatic Bidding

Facebook is updating their automatic bidding option. Facebook will allocate your ad set budgets to get the most out of what you’re optimizing for, such as conversions or installs.

Especially for advertisers new to Facebook Ads who don’t know exactly what to bid, Facebook automatically optimizing ads and budgets to be more competitive could lead, long term, to more conversions—but possibly at a slightly higher price.

New Google AdWords Reporting Columns

Google quietly announced on Google+ the addition of three new columns to the AdWords reporting dashboard for AdWords Display reporting for those who use Lightbox ads.

The new columns are Engagements, Engagement Rate & Average CPE. In short, they just renamed other metrics to these new names:

• Expansions will be moved from “Clicks” to the Engagements column.
• Expansion rate will be moved from “CTR” to the Engagement rate column.
• Average cost of expansions will be moved from “Avg. CPC” to the Avg. CPE column.

In addition, the Click metrics columns (“Clicks,” “CTR,” and “Avg. CPC”) will now refer to clicks from the Lightbox ad in its expanded state to a landing page.

Google: No Need to Change Your Links To HTTPS

Google's HTTPS algorithm went live earlier this year and many sites did switch over to the from their HTTP to HTTPS counterpart.

So now SEOs and Webmasters are asking, should we ask people to update their links to the web site. So if they are linking to our HTTP version, should we ask them to change the link to the HTTPS version?

Gary Illyes from Google said, "it's not worth it."

He said the difference is so minimal, since you have the redirects in place, that you can be doing so many other important things to make your web site better than go around asking people to add an S to the HTTP of your links.

Introducing the new Twitter Safety Center

The Safety Center is a resource for anyone to learn about online safety, on Twitter and beyond.

This is organized around Twitter’s tools and policies to address Twitter’s users safety, with sections created especially for teens, parents and educators.

These resources should help you quickly understand how to manage your experience on Twitter and also understand how the community and Twitter take action together when our policies are violated.

Google Panda 4.2 Is Here

Google tells Search Engine Land that it pushed out a Google Panda refresh this weekend. Many of you may not have noticed because this rollout is happening incredibly slowly.

In fact, Google says the update can take months to fully roll out.

The rollout means anyone who was penalized by Panda in the last update has a chance to emerge if they made the right changes.

So if you were hit by Panda, you unfortunately won’t notice the full impact immediately but you should see changes in your organic rankings gradually over time.