Facebook estimates that, in aggregate, it is now underreporting iOS web conversions by approximately 8%, down from the 15% in September 2021. The company cited increased adoption of best practices as the main reason for this improvement.
Why we care. While this figure can vary for individual advertisers, 8% is roughly half of 15%, meaning that iOS conversion reporting has gotten a lot better for Facebook advertisers. Still, it’s not completely accurate, which could mean that conversions may be higher than reported for some businesses.
In addition, Facebook expects some degree of underreporting to remain as part of its baseline.
Why Facebook is underreporting. The social media company has cited Apple’s iOS privacy changes as one reason for its diminished reporting capabilities. App Tracking Transparency enables iOS users to request that apps not track their activity, which limits Facebook’s (and other apps’) ability to track users for advertising purposes.
Facebook has been very vocal about its opposition to Apple’s privacy measures and has even ran full-page newspaper ads against the changes.
Recommendations for better web conversion campaign reporting. For more accurate conversion reporting, Facebook recommends that advertisers running web conversion campaigns:
Integrate with the Conversions API – This can create a direct connection between your marketing data (from your server, website platform or CRM) and Facebook.
Verify all domains – This can be especially important for conversions across multiple domains (i.e., websites that use redirectors or geo-redirects).
Allow enough time before analyzing campaign performance – Due to the nature of delayed data and modeled reporting, Facebook recommends waiting at least 72 hours (or the full length of the optimization window you’ve selected) before evaluating performance.
Align conversion events with campaign priorities – The order of your events in Event Manager should reflect your priorities (e.g., if purchases are your most valuable goal, ensure that purchases are in the number one position).
Recommendations for better app conversion campaign reporting. For those running app conversion campaigns, Facebook recommends:
Using a 24-hour conversion window – This helps Facebook’s systems optimize for faster and more predictable feedback cycles.
Optimizing for your business objective – Miscategorizing your objective can make it more difficult for Facebook to optimize for that objective.
The Feed will now be the place where users scroll to see the latest updates from family, friends, groups, brand pages and, of course, ads. Exactly the same as it was yesterday, except today it has a different name.
Facebook didn’t announce any changes to the Feed algorithm. So this one seems to be a simple cosmetic change. Facebook introduced the News Feed in 2006.
The death of “News.” So why drop news? Back in October, Facebook the company became Meta, so this could be part of the company reexamining all of its products and making sure they have the correct name.
But, more likely, this is just an attempt for the social network to distance itself from the word “news.” Facebook came under massive pressure with the rise of “alternative” news and misinformation being spread via its platform. Social media is the primary way many people get news, and Facebook’s reach is an astonishing 2.9 billion users. Facebook is a regular source of news for 36% of Americans, according to Pew Research Center.
Perhaps this is how Facebook will attempt to say, “we’re not a news source.” After all, now they don’t have a News Feed. It’s just a Feed, you see. But you can be sure the Feed will continue to be full of news stories that will spark arguments among friends and families for years to come. They may as well have renamed the Feed to the Argument Zone if they were looking for an accurate name.
Why we care. Because names matter. Whenever the Facebook Feed comes up in conversations with your clients, bosses, or peers, you don’t want to be referring to the Feed by its old name. It’s like how people still use the term Google AdWords, even though AdWords was rebranded as Google Ads in 2018.
Snapchat is launching mid-roll ads for Snap Star Stories, the company announced Monday. The new, attributable ad product is currently in closed beta and the company expects to roll it out more widely later this year.
Why we care. This new feature gives advertisers another product they can use to reach potential customers. Being able to tie conversions from these ads to a given creator also helps advertisers understand their ROI.
Since creators will get a slice of the revenue generated by their mid-roll Snap Stories, the format might encourage more adoption among influencers, which could, in turn, also increase user engagement and adoption.
What is a Snap Star? This is a term used to describe Snapchat’s verified users. Eligibility is determined by factors such as account engagement, Stories for a public audience, authenticity, content quality and adherence to Snapchat’s community guidelines and terms of service.
What are Snap Stories? Snap Stories are a collection of Snaps that play in the order they were taken. Snap Stories are only available for 24 hours.
The new mid-roll ads would play in between Snap Stories for verified creators.
Over the past day or so, there has been an unusual spike in the number of complaints around Google Ads disapproving search ads. The disapprovals mostly seem to be around a policy named the “government documents and official services,” and it is confusing a lot of advertisers.
Google has stated there is no bug with the with its ad policy enforcement and Google has not seen any mass disapprovals of search ads.
Google’s statement. Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison said on Twitter “safety is paramount and our policies span range of concerns, including the content of ad creatives and advertiser behavior. The issues addressed in this story aren’t related. We also haven’t seen any “mass” disapprovals that would indicate a bug.”
I followed up to ask if maybe there was a step up in policy enforcement and Ginny Marvin said “No, and there’ve been no “mass” disapprovals.”
“The teams are keenly aware that policy flags are disruptive and work incredibly hard to strike the right balance. Safety is critical to a healthy system. Advertisers can request as reviews and/or appeals,” Ginny Marvin added.
The complaints. There does however seem to be an increase in the number of complaints from advertisers. Lior Krolewicz from Yael Consulting posted that they saw widespread ad disapprovals across numerous client accounts. “43 different accounts in our MCC, none of which deal with government documents or services, were seeing ads disapproved for the same reason. Accounts ranging from HVAC companies in California, eCommerce beauty product, to orthopedic insoles, had ads disapproved for this reason. 9 different accounts even had ads in their brand campaign stop serving due to this disapproval,” Lior wrote.
John Doherty from Credo complained on Twitter saying “I’ve had 2 brand new ads accounts for @ninja_editor, that haven’t had the opportunity to spend anything, be suspended for suspicious payments”.
PPCGreg posted on Twitter saying “our accounts were hit, en masse. Support confirmed the error in 1 accouint but said the fix would take 2 days. any chance we can speed that up?”
Hi Ginny – our accounts were hit, en masse. Support confirmed the error in 1 acct but said the fix would take 2 days. any chance we can speed that up? pic.twitter.com/1ycGnBz2CQ
the only thing I can see on the ad (along with the other ads that were popped for the same violation) is the use of the word “Official” in the headline with the brand’s name. @adsliaison any insight? Recent updates to the policy that might have tripped up on these?
There is also a large thread of complaints about this on Reddit and numerous ones in the Google Ads help forums, which I covered here.
Why we care. So there does seem, at least anecdotally, that there is an increase in ad disapprovals and suspensions but Google is saying there is nothing to see here.
If you were impacted by ad disapprovals in the past 24-hours, you should know you are not alone. But Google is telling advertisers to deal with these disapprovals or suspensions via this help page.
Now more than ever, customers seek out information about your business online. If you don’t offer the experience your customer is looking for, your reputation may be at stake.
Discover how A&W Restaurants achieved a 25% increase in 5-star reviews on Google in six months and how you can achieve similar results or more.
Microsoft Advertising has launched in 29 more countries in Europe and Africa, the company announced Monday. This expansion will increase the platform’s reach by 41 million customers, adding 400 million monthly searches on Microsoft and partner sites, according to the company.
Why we care. Advertisers that use Microsoft Advertising can now reach potential customers in 29 new markets. This update may make Microsoft Advertising more attractive to advertisers that sell products or services internationally.
The company plans to continue expanding throughout 2022 by launching in new markets in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
The new markets. Beginning today, the following markets are available on Microsoft Advertising: Albania, Andorra, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lichtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Turkey and the Vatican City.
As such, Microsoft Advertising will also support the following languages: Albanian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Maltese, Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian and Turkish.
Supported products and ad formats. In each new market, Microsoft Advertising will support: text ads, Responsive Search Ads, Dynamic Search Ads, Shopping Campaigns, audience targeting (age, demographic, location, device), remarketing, Dynamic Remarketing, automated bidding (maximum clicks, maximum conversions, target cost per acquisition (CPA) and target return on ad spend (ROAS)), Universal Event Tracking (UET) and Conversion Tracking.
JavaScript frameworks have been growing in popularity over the last few years, thanks in no small part to the flexibility they offer. “JavaScript frameworks allow for rapid development. It offers better user experience. It offers better performance and it offers enhanced functionality that traditional frameworks — non-JavaScript ones — sort of lack,” said Nati Elimelech, tech SEO lead at Wix.
“So, it’s no surprise that very large websites or complex UIs with complex logic and features usually tend to use JavaScript frameworks nowadays,” he added.
At SMX Next, Elimelech provided an overview of how JavaScript works for client-side, server-side and dynamic rendering, and shared insights for auditing gained from implementing JavaScript on over 200 million websites.
Client-side vs. Server-side rendering
Different rendering methods are suitable for different purposes. Elimelech advocated on behalf of dynamic rendering as a means to satisfy search engine bots and users alike, but first, it’s necessary to understand how client-side and server-side rendering work.
Client-side rendering
When a user clicks on a link, their browser sends requests to the server that site is hosted on.
“When we’re talking about JavaScript frameworks, that server responds with something that’s a bit different than what we’re used to,” Elimelech said.
“It responds with a skeleton HTML — just the basic HTML, but with a lot of JavaScript. Basically, what it does is tell my browser to run the JavaScript itself to get all the important HTML,” he said, adding that the user’s browser then produces the rendered HTML (the final HTML that is used to construct the page the way that we actually see it). This process is known as client-side rendering.
Image: Natie Elimelech.
“It’s very much like assembling your own furniture because basically the server tells the browser, ‘Hey, these are all the pieces, these are the instructions, construct the page. I trust you.’ And that means that all of the hard lifting is moved to the browser instead of the server,” Elimelech said.
Client-side rendering can be great for users, but there are cases in which a client doesn’t execute JavaScript, which means it won’t get the full content of your page. One such example may be search engine crawlers; although Googlebot can now see more of your content than ever before, there are still limitations.
Server-side rendering
For clients that don’t execute JavaScript, server-side rendering can be used.
“Server-side rendering is when all of that JavaScript is executed on the server-side. All of the resources are required on the server-side and your browser and the search engine bot do not need to execute JavaScript to get the fully rendered HTML,” Elimelech explained. This means that server-side rendering can be faster and less resource-intensive for browsers.
Image: Natie Elimelech.
“Server-side rendering is like providing your guests with an actual chair they can sit it on instead of having to assemble it,” he said, continuing his previous analogy. “And, when you do server-side rendering, you basically make your HTML visible to all kinds of bots, all kinds of clients . . . It doesn’t matter what the JavaScript capabilities are, it can see the final important rendered HTML,” he added.
Dynamic rendering
Dynamic rendering represents “the best of both worlds,” Elimelech said. Dynamic rendering means “switching between client-side rendered and pre-rendered content for specific user agents,” according to Google.
Below is a simplified diagram explaining how dynamic rendering works for different user agents (users and bots).
Image: Natie Elimelech.
”So there’s a request to URL, but this time we check: Do we know this user agent? Is this a known bot? Is it Google? Is it Bing? Is it Semrush? Is it something we know of? If it’s not, we assume it’s a user and then we do client-side rendering,” Elimelech said.
In that case, the user’s browser runs the JavaScript to get the rendered HTML, but still benefits from the advantages of client-side rendering, which often includes a perceived boost in speed.
On the other hand, if the client is a bot, then server-side rendering is used to serve the fully rendered HTML. “So, it sees everything that needs to be seen,” Elimelech said.
This represents the “best of both worlds” because site owners are still able to serve their content regardless of the client’s JavaScript capabilities. And, because there are two flows, site owners can optimize each to better serve users or bots without impacting the other.
But, dynamic rendering isn’t perfect
There are, however, complications associated with dynamic rendering. “We have two flows to maintain, two sets of logics, caching, other complex systems; so it’s more complex when you have two systems instead of one,” Elimelech said, noting that site owners must also maintain a list of user agents in order to identify bots.
Image: Natie Elimelech.
Some might worry that serving search engine bots something different than what you’re showing users can be considered cloaking.
“Dynamic rendering is actually a preferred and recommended solution by Google because what Google cares about is if the important stuff is the same [between the two versions],” Elimelech said, adding that, “The ‘important stuff’ is things we care about as SEOs: the content, the headings, the meta tags, internal links, navigational links, the robots, the title, the canonical, structured data markup, content, images — everything that has to do with how a bot would react to the page . . . it’s important to keep identical and when you keep those identical, especially the content and especially the meta tags, Google has no issue with that.”
Image: Natie Elimelech.
Since it’s necessary to maintain parity between what you’re serving bots and what you’re serving users, it’s also necessary to audit for issues that might break that parity.
To audit for potential problems, Elimelech recommends Screaming Frog or a similar tool that allows you to compare two crawls. “So, what we like to do is crawl a website as Googlebot (or another search engine user agent) and crawl it as a user and make sure there aren’t any differences,” he said. Comparing the appropriate elements between the two crawls can help you identify potential issues.
Image: Natie Elimelech.
Elimelech also mentioned the following methods to screen for issues:
Visual inspection by switching the user agent in the browser and/or turning off JavaScript to see if anything changes between the versions.
Google Search Console can be used to see what kind of HTML is returned to Google and how it can render it.
“Remember, JavaScript frameworks aren’t going anywhere,” he said. “Chances are you’re going to meet one of them soon, so you better be prepared to handle them.”
Google Ads suffered from a reporting delay for a portion of conversions using data-driven attribution. The issue occurred between 7:54 p.m. and 12:34 p.m. PST on February 9.
The issue has been resolved and the company is working on recovering the attribution data. Once resolved, the data will be reflected in reporting. Bidding was not affected, Ginny Marvin, Google’s ads product liaison, has confirmed.
Why we care. If you’re missing conversion data in Google Ads from February 9, this could be why. Any time data goes missing, it can impact your ability to assess campaign performance (and make decisions based on those assessments) as well as reporting for stakeholders.
The issue has been fixed, so we shouldn’t have to worry about it moving forward, but it’s a good idea to make note of when the issue occurred and to let stakeholders know.
About data-driven attribution. Data-driven attribution uses machine learning to understand how each marketing touchpoint contributed to a conversion, which may result in reporting that more accurately reflects your users’ full marketing journey. In September 2021, Google announced that this model would become the default attribution model for all new Google Ads conversion actions.
This is a move away from last-click attribution, the previous default model, in which only the final interaction is counted toward the attribution.
