In this week’s edition we hear from addmustard’s digital experts on ad blocking, display ad formats, website conversion testing and Bing outages. If PPC is your game, we reveal insider tips on how to maintain your position and drop CPCs.
Bing ads two day outage
The Bing Ads interface experienced a 43 hour reporting outage last weekend meaning PPC accounts were reporting zero traffic, spend or conversion over that period of time. Advertisers have been reassured that their accounts were still running as usual over that period and that Microsoft are working on a fix to recover the data. Read more.
Bad ad blocking policy
Wired are restricting their site for people that use ad blockers. Their reasoning being that advertisements are what fund the site and keep it running. “Blocking users who use ad blockers is beyond stupid, especially to a tech savvy demographic” reports Joe, addmustard’s technical services director. Read more.
Superbowl social failures
Superbowl ads fail to spot the winning formula this year, with ad 2.9m fewer social shares than in 2015. It seems that divisive humour and overexposure to vast volumes of content is causing hesitation when hitting the share button for users. Read more.
Google combats deception
Google has once again demonstrated its commitment to combating spam and deceptive download buttons by warning users with a page as part of Google’s Safe Browsing program. Read more.
GDN’s shift to HTML5 ads
In September, Google started pausing Flash ads on the GDN in an attempt to get advertisers using HTML5 ads. This week Google announced that in June, they are stopping Flash ads from being used on Adwords or DoubleClick. In January ’17, no flash ads will be shown on the GDN or through DoubleClick, meaning that all display ads will need to be updated to HTML5. Read more.
A/B conversion testing
What’s the best way to test your website’s impact on conversion rate? Test, test, test… but be smart about how you do so. “Always making changes to your website based on what the industry is doing or because in your opinion it just works is in no way sustainable when it comes to conversion optimisation” states Reece, addmustard’s head of creative. Read more.
EXPOSED
We’ve got seven insider tips and tricks from our experts on how you can reduce your CPC without losing your position. Read more.
SEO Battleground
This week we see previous contenders and offenders reappearing in our battleground. Read more.
