Daily Minute Master Series – August 23, 2019

Social Media

Google Outlines Proposal for Improved Data Transparency Measures in Online Advertising

This week, Google has outlined the next steps its looking to take to improve online ad transparency, including measures to block digital ‘fingerprinting’, a more obscure tracking technique, and a new proposal for improved data transparency measures across the industry. In terms of fingerprinting – which utilizes device data to establish a unique identifier for each user, regardless of any privacy settings – Google says that this practice may help publishers and websites, by providing an alternative data funnel, but it doesn’t address key user concerns on data privacy. Google says that it is now advancing its efforts to restrict the use of fingerprinting, blocking processes within Chrome and its other applications in order to disincentivize the process. Google’s proposal to the broader industry, meanwhile, which it has published for discussion, outlines the measures which Google believes are key to solidifying the future of online advertising, including improved data usage transparency and controls. 

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LinkedIn Launches New Insights Hub to Provide Additional Audience Insights

LinkedIn has launched a new element of its ‘Success Hub’ marketing data and insights platform, which aims to provide additional information on specific audiences and verticals, in order to help better inform marketing decisions and understanding. The new Insights and Research hub collects a range of LinkedIn resources into one place, while also mixing in few new, broad-ranging data insights. The main element of the new hub is the People Insights section, which enables marketers to drill-down a little further into key trends of note within specific sectors. This can help improve your marketing, not only by highlighting the key topics of focus, which you may want to explore in your content efforts, but also the key people to tune into, and the brands that are being followed by these professionals on LinkedIn. In addition to this, LinkedIn also provides new hub sections for Industry Insights and Advertising Insights, each of which is essentially a collection of LinkedIn blog posts and resources, which, again, you can sort by vertical. The aim of the new hub, according to LinkedIn, is to better enable marketers to target the right audiences on its platform.

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Marketing

What is ‘Google Screened’ and how does it differ from ‘Google Guaranteed’?

Google Guaranteed was introduced a few years ago, largely to boost consumer confidence in-home services providers appearing in Local Services Ads. More recently, this year, the company introduced another program for professional services, dubbed “Google Screened.” Businesses must also possess a star rating on Google of 3.0 or greater to be eligible. There’s no application fee for Local Services advertisers (in the relevant categories and markets). If Google decides to expand the program, there are dozens of available subcategories, including marketing and advertising services. To become Google Guaranteed, businesses must pass a background check and have their license and insurance details verified. Google Screened businesses must also pass a similar license and background checks (civil and criminal). Google Guaranteed or partner-screened status (HomeAdivsor, Porch) is a requirement to appear in Google Assistant results on the smartphone and Google Home devices. It will be interesting to see, going forward, whether Google Screened expands and whether Google makes it available (as it has with Google Guaranteed) to non-advertisers. And if it does, the next question is whether the company offers any rankings boost to pre-screened companies as a defense against fake local listings and spam — which is precisely what it’s doing with Google Guaranteed and the Google Assistant.

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You can now add custom JavaScript to AMP pages

Custom JavaScript can now be added to AMP pages, Google announced this week. The amp-script component can be used to enable user interactions, and to share code across AMP-enabled and non-AMP pages. The AMP team said this was one of the most requested features from developers using AMP. It enables web pages delivered via AMP to incorporate more of the interactivity features that JavaScript offers. Prior to this update, AMP pages have been mostly static, which limited its uses and forced publishers to compromise features for speed and potentially visibility in mobile search results.

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