This week on The PPC Show, Paul and JD break down the top news and trends in ad tech and digital marketing. In this episode we dissect Google's new attribution tool, Pinterest Autoplay videos, AdWords ECPC announcement, Bing Standard Text Ads going away, and Twitter's new Direct Message Card. Tune in to get caught up on the top headlines!

https://soundcloud.com/adstage/this-week-in-ad-tech-news-and-headlines-may-22-26th

Episode Show Notes

Marketers are skeptical of Google’s new attribution tool

“Shortly after Facebook introduced an attribution tool for marketers in March, Google started rolling out its own free version called Google Attribution for marketers on Tuesday. While making attribution accessible to everyone is a good thing, marketing executives are cautious about Google checking its own homework — and giving itself glowing grades.”

Doesn’t GA already do this?  Model comparison tool?

New AdWords UI

Pages load much faster -- on average, 20% faster. Customers like iProspect North also reported that the new design and layout saves them 30% more time when completing everyday tasks.

Pinterest Introduces Autoplay Video Ads, New Opportunities for Video Ad Exposure

Pinterest is looking to take their video offerings to the next level, with the addition of autoplay video ads in-stream, a significant shift from their previous video approach. Pinterest’s new autoplay videos – which will only play in the mobile app – will no doubt grab attention, and are more aligned with the user experience on other social apps (though Pinterest has been keen to tell people that it’s not a social network).

• Mobile only
• CPV goes down because you pay per impression.

AdWords Enhanced CPC bidding (ECPC)

Beginning in early June, AdWords will be rolling out changes to Enhanced CPC bidding (ECPC). You’ve probably been seeing the below notification when logged into the AdWords interface. Google’s reasoning for the cap removal is to help advertisers increase conversions. While more conversions sound fantastic, advertisers with strict CPC KPIs or low conversion data should be especially careful when using ECPC.

Last call for Standard Text Ads creation support (July 31st, 2017)

Bing Ads will end support for creating new and editing existing STAs. To help with the transition to expanded text ads, Bing Ads recently made changes to easily convert standard text ad (STA) to expanded text ad (EXTA) via  Bing Ads Web UI and Bing Ads Editor. Since the launch of EXTAs, there has been a great adoption of this new ad format across many of our customers globally and it continues to grow.

Spotted: AdWords reporting dashboards that can be scheduled & shared

After building tables or charts in the drag-and-drop Report Editor, advertisers can embed them to a modular and customizable dashboard. The dashboards can be edited, shared, downloaded as a PDF, and even set on a recurring schedule for sharing. A KPI widget and a text widget are available to include comments to accompany the reporting widgets.

AMP ads: Google will convert display ads to AMP, test AMP landing pages for Search ads

For search advertisers, Google is launching a beta to serve AMP-enabled landing pages on mobile from Search ads. Advertisers that have created landing pages in AMP HTML will be able to designate them as their mobile landing pages at the ad level in AdWords. After users click a search ad from mobile, the ad will direct to the AMP landing page, which should serve up much faster than standard landing pages. Google says early testing has shown improved user behavior and conversion outcomes.

Facebook’s Instant Articles platform to support Google AMP, Apple News

The updated SDK will now include an extension that lets publishers build content that’s publishable in all three formats, beginning with support for Google’s AMP in addition to Facebook’s own Instant Articles. In the weeks ahead it will also include support for publishing to Apple News, though the company didn’t provide an exact launch date for when that feature would be added.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KTeCJtpo4Q[/embedyt]

Twitter adds Direct Message Cards for advertisers to kick-start specific conversations

Twitter is introducing its own kind of ice-breaker. Twitter is rolling out Direct Message Cards that attach a menu of buttons to a Promoted Tweet that people can select to start a DM thread on a particular topic with the advertiser’s bot or the humans that may manage the brand’s private messages.