Numerous advertisers have reported “Destination mismatch” ad disapprovals in Google Ads that may be the result of a glitch. “I had five clients impacted; most ads are no longer disapproved (though one account still has some). Of the other four, three have ads Eligible (Limited) for Destination Mismatch,” said Director of Search Strategy at JumpFly, Nikki Kuhlman, who first brought this to our attention.

The Google Ads team is aware of the issue and is currently investigating it, said Ginny Marvin, Google’s ads product liaison.

Several PPC professionals are experiencing the same disapproval. After Kuhlman shared the issue, other PPC practitioners commented that they’re also noticing the same disapproval. “Confirming. We just got 1,000’s of disapproval’s for that,” Andrew Kachel commented. And, as Shaun Maharaj has pointed out, the empty fields in the notice (shown below) may indicate that something isn’t working properly on Google’s end.

Seeing the same. New rejections coming in every couple of hours. Seems like a bug because the fields are blank pic.twitter.com/AcsC78lGBf

— Shaun Maharaj (@shaunmaharaj) November 4, 2021

One professional, Christian Rios, said that he’s now seeing destination mismatch disapprovals for ads that “haven’t been touched in ages.”

One glitch after another? There seems to be another Google Ads issue going around: Since mid-October, some advertisers have reported that they’re receiving an error saying their ads aren’t showing due to a location targeting issue. One advertiser has allegedly been told by a Google representative that the error is now fixed, however many are still reporting the issue. It is unclear whether these issues are connected.

PPC professionals are testing solutions. “Have a look at account settings > tracking and see if you have anything in the tracking template field,” Mark Bissoni suggested, “Could be this. Remove it and appeal.”

If you’re also experiencing destination mismatch disapprovals, but at a much smaller scale than what other PPC professionals are describing, it’s possible that your disapproval isn’t due to a bug. If you suspect that’s the case, you can turn to Google’s Advertising Policies Help page for guidance on how to troubleshoot destination mismatches.

Why we care. “​​I had a client messaging me on Facebook last night because she was freaking out,” Kuhlman told Search Engine Land, “She was also the biggest impacted — she had about 500 ads disapproved.” If you’re suddenly experiencing widespread destination mismatch disapprovals, it may be due to an issue on Google’s end. Informing your clients that others are experiencing the same issue and that Google is aware and investigating it may ease their concerns. It’s also important to make note of the disapprovals for reporting purposes.

We are quickly approaching the height of the holiday shopping season. Hopefully, Google is able to get things working properly, or explain the issue so that advertisers can resolve it themselves, before it begins to impact any Cyber Week promotions that brands may be planning.

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Searcher and user privacy is the topic of the year when it comes to digital advertising. Many search marketers and publishers are wondering how initiatives like FLoC and FLEDGE (if they ever make it to market) will affect their daily practices. The initiatives have spurred on a renewed interest in how advertisers and publishers ask for, collect, and use first-party data.

Google announces new way for publishers to use first-party data. In an announcement today, Google said it is offering a new way for publishers to share Publisher-provided identifiers (PPIDs) with Google’s programmatic demand to better customize ads, targeting, and advertising experiences. “By helping publishers expand the use of their first-party identifiers to more transaction types, like the Open Auction, our partners will be able to show ads that are more relevant to their audiences, which will increase the value of their programmatic inventory,” said Steve Swan, Product Manager, Google Ad Manager.

How do PPIDs work? A “Publisher provided identifier or PPID allows publishers to send Google Ad Manager an identifier for use in frequency capping, audience segmentation and targeting, sequential ad rotation, and other audience-based ad delivery controls across devices,” according to Google’s documentation on the topic.

How the new system works. The announcement says that the new form of PPID sharing will both protect privacy and help publishers and advertisers:

• Before sharing PPIDs with Google demand, Ad Manager turns them into per-publisher partitioned IDs, so users cannot be identified across other publishers’ sites and apps.
• Then Google Ads and Display & Video 360 aggregate the anonymized data from participating publishers to help build audience segments.
• Using these segments, advertisers can programmatically deliver relevant ads on publishers’ sites and apps based on first-party data.
• In addition to helping publishers earn more revenue in the auction, the data also unlocks core functionality for advertisers, like cross-device reach, frequency management, and creative optimization in programmatic inventory without third-party cookies or other identifiers present.

The announcement also emphasizes that advertisers who will be able to build segments off of the PPID data will not be able to see individualized information or user data, “and because PPIDs are unique to each publisher, there is no way to match identifiers or create profiles across sites,” added Swan.

What is first-party data? First-party data is information that websites, advertisers, and publishers collect directly from users and searchers (that they give voluntarily). This includes things like the actions they take on your websites, the data they submit to forms, social data, survey information, and data that already exists in the company’s CRM.

Why we care. Google prioritized this update based on user feedback, mentioned Swan: “Investing in first-party data is a privacy-forward way that publishers can increase the value of their programmatic inventory now and in the future. Given the feedback we’ve heard from partners, we have prioritized this product area and will continue to develop features that empower publishers with the data and identity tools they need to prepare and grow their businesses.” Given the tumultuous relationship Google has had with publishers, this move could help news and other outlets recoup some of the revenue that might be lost to Google’s other policies. This also could benefit the advertisers who show ads on these publications to show a more targeted and useful inventory to readers while keeping user privacy top of mind.

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Another quarter’s earnings report shows that Google is among the winners when it comes to the shifting pandemic landscape. It makes sense that their investment in e-commerce and multi-channel advertising options continues to pay dividends as many people are still hesitant to participate in in-person shopping, dining, and more. That, plus many have just come to prefer the convenience of pick-up, delivery, and online ordering options.

41% year-over-year growth. Revenues for Google’s parent company, Alphabet, went up a whopping 41% YoY according to the report, with ad revenues driving $51.3 out of the $65.1 billion. Google attributed the continued increases to its big push for commerce in Q3 (and before) in the earnings call. Along with the investment in commerce, Google is offering even more options for advertisers who are seeing a return to in-person shopping, especially as the holiday season nears.

YouTube is the breakout star. “YouTube advertising revenues reached $7.2bn, an increase of 43% from the previous quarter thanks to both direct response and brand advertising,” reported John Glenday for The Drum. This is the result of YouTube’s CTV (connected TV) advertising increases and its competitive product Shorts, which competes with the likes of TikTok and Snap. This increase is a big deal since Apple’s App Tracking Transparency had the potential to affect YouTube similarly to other video social media apps.

Google revenues not affected by legal troubles. Recent lawsuits and controversy with documents being unsealed in those cases don’t seem to be harming the company’s revenues or usage of their products. These controversies include the allegations that the company throttled non-AMP pages, which it “claimed would ‘dramatically improve’ mobile web performance when it launched in 2015, was in fact a scheme to coerce publishers into using the format in order to limit advertising dollars not spent on its own ad exchanges.” Plus, there is a history of alleged collusion with Facebook to “kill header bidding” and essentially rig the ad market in the tech giants’ favor.

Why we care. “Google chief business officer Philipp Schindler explained on the call that while shoppers are returning to physical stores, the company’s also seeing ‘strong growth in local shopping queries’ at the same time,” said Sean Hollister for The Verge. Advertisers can expect to see the continued shift in local and omnichannel search marketing strategies, so if you’re not preparing yet, it’s something to consider for your 2022 strategy.

On the power dynamics side, Search Engine Land has written multiple times before about the juggernaut that Google has become. Many search marketers are aware of (and not surprised by) the moves the company has allegedly made, and many believe we just have to operate in this environment since we lack the control to change it. However, we can still exercise our power to do good in the industry via constant feedback and

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Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.

Good morning, Marketers, it’s funny how the darlings of tech have become, to some extent, monsters.

Perception of Google, Facebook and Amazon has shifted greatly since their earlier days, when they had to compete based on the value they were able to provide. But, that was when they were disrupting entrenched business models; now, they call the shots.

Alleged collusion (Facebook and Google), poor data governance (Facebook) and egregious conflicts of interest (Amazon) are among the more recent headlines about these platforms. Consequently, marketers have become cynical or numb to this cycle, adopting an attitude that I can only describe as “Google’s gonna Google” (likewise for Facebook and Amazon).

We’ve grown to tolerate and even expect this type of behavior because, well, it happens a lot and the businesses we work for rely on the volume of users that are on those platforms. However, an apathy towards these issues means that they’re likely to persist: If they can get away with it, they will take more of your levers away, they will rip off your products, they will find ways to make you dependent on them — because we were too busy with our work to see the larger picture or because we didn’t care enough to speak out.

I’m not proposing a rebellion. I’m just suggesting that ensuring your stakeholders are aware of how industry news may be impacting them can help to shake off some inertia, for their own good. Perhaps they’ll finally start taking first-party data more seriously, or they’ll shift focus from marketplaces and invest more in their own sites. And, it sounds far less glorious, but submitting feedback means that product managers at these platforms have a trail of evidence that they can bring to decision-makers — Google’s rectification of its botched title change rollout is just one example of how valuable feedback was for the search engine. Don’t be afraid to be the change you want to see in the industry.

George Nguyen,
Editor

Google Search Console Search Analytics API gains Discover, News and Regex

Google Search Console Search Analytics API users are gaining data and features that were previously only supported in the web interface. After numerous requests from search marketers, Google announced yesterday that the API now supports showing data for Google Discover, Google News and also supports Regex commands.

Why we care. Many of you use APIs to help automate and streamline your day-to-day SEO practices and reporting. Having access to these additional data points and adding in Regex controls should make these reporting tasks easier and more automated. This should save you time for other SEO-related tasks, tasks you might have a harder time automating.

Read more here.

Google allegedly creates ad monopoly with Facebook to favor its own exchange according to new, unredacted details from Project Jedi

This past Friday a New York judge unsealed previously redacted documents in the lawsuit against Google led by the State of Texas. One of the main allegations of the antitrust lawsuit is that Google and Facebook colluded to rig ad prices and “kill header bidding” (the attempt by competitors to make the ad market less Google-centric).

“The lawsuit claims that when Facebook began to gain traction as a rival advertiser, Google made an agreement with Facebook to reduce competition in exchange for giving the social media company an advantage in Google-run ad auctions. The project was called ‘Jedi Blue,’” we wrote in April of this year.

The newly unredacted information shows just how deep the alleged agreement went between Facebook and the search engine giant. 

Jedi Blue and Facebook/Google ad exchanges. Code-named “Jedi Blue,” the arrangement between Facebook and Google meant that Google would “​​charge Facebook lower fees and give Facebook information, speed and other advantages in header bidding auctions in exchange for Facebook’s support of Open Bidding, Google’s header bidding alternative,” wrote Allison Schiff for AdExchanger.

Why we care. There is potential that publishers and advertisers have been overpaying and missing out on placements due to Google’s alleged collusion with Facebook to essentially rig the ad market. Also with Google promoting FLoC, FLEDGE, and the rest of their sandbox as a privacy solution for the open web, these revelations call into question their motives (especially if the company is sharing sensitive data with other firms that have agreed to terms with them for ads).

Read more here.

Google throttled non-AMP page speeds, created format to hamper header bidding, antitrust complaint claims

“The speed benefits Google marketed were also at least partly a result of Google’s throttling,” a freshly unredacted complaint from 16 plaintiff states alleges, “Google throttles the load time of non-AMP ads by giving them artificial one-second delays in order to give Google AMP a ‘nice comparative boost.’”

The point of slowing down non-AMP ads would be to discourage advertisers from using header bidding —  “In Google’s own words, header bidding was an ‘existential threat’,” the complaint reads. This is because header bidding brings multiple demand sources together, which may undermine the dominance of Google’s ad business and cut into the company’s revenue.

Why we care. Eligibility for the Top Stories carousels was a big reason for publishers to get on board with AMP, perhaps at the cost of limiting their ad revenue opportunities. If the allegations are true, then what Google was doing is essentially equivalent to making publishers spend more in its ad ecosystem while lying about why it’s better than header bidding — all the while, dangling traffic and visibility (from the Top Stories carousel) to tip the scales in its favor.

But, without seeing all the internal documents, it is difficult to tell whether some of these claims represent flawed interpretations. However, Google’s lack of transparency has always worked against it in terms of public trust.

Read more here.

We’re always learning how to manage our businesses, but are we also learning how to manage ourselves?

How many leads does Google My Business drive? More than the organic section of Google (although that’s still a good source of leads and shouldn’t be ignored), according to Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky Inc. In her writeup, Hawkins emphasizes leads, not rankings, and compares GMB with organic, noting that both show year-over-year growth for her clients. There’s also a solid reminder in there about GMB not being able to track all phone calls.

The 411 on internal links. Does anyone even call (or remember) 411 anymore? Anyway, Lyndon NA, better known as @darth_na on Twitter, has created a thread covering the types of internal links, optimizing considerations and more.

Sorry, I got distracted. “Leaders can influence how their teams use always-on 24/7 tools like Slack to avoid the drawbacks of always-on 24/7 working,” said Marketoonist creator Tom Fishburne, “We have to learn to navigate the tradeoffs of faster communication and productivity — and set boundaries.”

What We’re Reading: ‘All social media companies want teens to use their services. We are no different.’ — Facebook

“Most young adults perceive Facebook as a place for people in their 40s and 50s,” according to a presentation by a group of Facebook data scientists to Chris Cox, the company’s chief product officer. “Young adults perceive content as boring, misleading, and negative. They often have to get past irrelevant content to get to what matters.”

Marketers have felt it for some time but now it’s all out in the open: The platform’s decline in younger users poses an existential threat (there seems to be a lot of those going around — see our story about Google and header bidding above). Teenage users of the Facebook app in the U.S. have declined 13% YoY since 2019 and are forecasted to decrease another 45% over the next two years. Additionally, adults between the ages of 20 and 30 are also expected to decrease by 4% over the same period. “Making matters worse, the younger a user was, the less on average they regularly engaged with the app,” Alex Heath wrote for The Verge.

Instagram is still popular with teens, but Facebook’s own data shows that it’s losing engagement in important markets, including the U.S., Australia and Japan. Development of “Instagram Kids,” the company’s product planned for children and a somewhat desperate attempt to regain market share amongst youths, has been halted after lawmakers denounced the initiative.

Facebook is now 17 years old, giving it a longer run than any other social media network. Unfortunately for the platform, the decline in daily users is likely to be accompanied by a decline in ad revenue as marketers look elsewhere to reach younger audiences.“Our products are still widely used by teens, but we face tough competition from the likes of Snapchat and TikTok,” Facebook spokesperson Joe Osborne told The Verge, “All social media companies want teens to use their services. We are no different.”

The post Makes you miss the ‘Don’t be evil’ days; Tuesday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land.

This past Friday a New York judge unsealed previously redacted documents in the lawsuit against Google led by the State of Texas. One of the main allegations of the antitrust lawsuit is that Google and Facebook colluded to rig ad prices and “kill header bidding” (the attempt by competitors to make the ad market less Google-centric).

“The lawsuit claims that when Facebook began to gain traction as a rival advertiser, Google made an agreement with Facebook to reduce competition in exchange for giving the social media company an advantage in Google-run ad auctions. The project was called ‘Jedi Blue,’” we wrote in April of this year.

The newly unredacted information shows just how deep the alleged agreement went between Facebook and the search engine giant. 

Read more >> Google accused of colluding with Facebook and abusing monopoly power in new lawsuit

Jedi Blue and Facebook/Google ad exchanges. Code-named “Jedi Blue,” the arrangement between Facebook and Google meant that Google would “​​charge Facebook lower fees and give Facebook information, speed and other advantages in header bidding auctions in exchange for Facebook’s support of Open Bidding, Google’s header bidding alternative,” wrote Allison Schiff for AdExchanger.

Some suspect that Facebook initially backed header bidding in order to force Google’s hand in the arrangement and force a mutually beneficial deal. “Partnerships like this are common in the industry, and we have similar agreements with several other companies. Facebook continues to invest in these partnerships, and create new ones, which help increase competition in ad auctions to create the best outcomes for advertisers and publishers. Any suggestion that these types of agreements harm competition is baseless,” Facebook said in a statement.

The internal documents at Facebook reveal that the company had “four options: to ‘invest hundreds more engineers’ and spend billions of dollars to lock up inventory to compete, exit the business, or do the deal with Google.”

Meanwhile, Google’s main goal was to figure out any way to stop header bidding from gaining steam in the industry.

What is header bidding? “Header bidding helped website publishers circumvent Google’s exchange for buying and selling ads across the web. The exchange auctions ad space to the highest bidder during the split second it takes a webpage to load. Header bidding allowed the publishers to directly solicit bids from multiple ad exchanges at once, leading to more favorable prices for publishers,” explained Ryan Tracy and Jeff Horwitz for the Wall Street Journal.

Google worried, according to court documents, that having a large ad rival (like Facebook) embracing header bidding would disrupt what was essentially their monopoly on the ad market. “Header bidding was bad because it allowed publishers to bypass fees which we now learn ranged between 19-22% of revenues,” said Jason Kint in a tweet thread analysis of the court docs.

Read more >> Google throttled non-AMP page speeds, created format to hamper header bidding, antitrust complaint claims

How Project Jedi worked. In order to win in the exchange, Google created the Open Bidding program. This program, in theory, let publishers display their inventory to multiple ad exchanges at once. This was presented as a competitor to header bidding. However, the lawsuit alleges that Google manipulated Open Bidding to give Facebook’s Ad Network (FAN) an unfair advantage. “Jedi’s success was measured not by financial targets or output increases, but by how much it stopped publishers from using header bidding,” said Janice Tan with Marketing Interactive after an assessment of the documents.

From there, the partnership with Facebook meant the social media giant also threw its weight behind Open Bidding over header bidding. In exchange for backing Google’s open bidding over header bidding, Facebook received “information, speed and other advantages in the auction it runs in the US,” added Tan.

“Both companies also had an illegal advertising deal that allowed the social media company to appear more in Google Ads. Google did this by fixing bids in ad auctions to Facebook’s favor,” alleges Nalin Rawat for FossBytes.

Why we care. Well, firstly, it’s a lot to digest. There is potential that publishers and advertisers have been overpaying and missing out on placements due to Google’s alleged collusion with Facebook to essentially rig the ad market. According to the unredacted documents, Jedi “generates suboptimal yields for publishers and serious risks of negative media coverage if exposed externally.” Also with Google promoting FLoC, FLEDGE, and the rest of their sandbox as a privacy solution for the open web, these revelations call into question their motives (especially if the company is sharing sensitive data with other firms that have agreed to terms with them for ads). Many advertisers complain about the lack of reach with other competitive ad networks and the revelations in the unredacted Google lawsuit show that the tech giant’s leadership worked diligently to ensure that competition was squashed. 

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