Bonded Bitesize – Your Midweek Roundup
Bonded Bitesize – Your Midweek Roundup
Bonded Bitesize – Bringing you your midweek roundup of the latest in digital and media.
Stay connected with recent updates from Microsoft, Google, Meta & many more!
YouTube is introducing 30-second unskippable ads on connected TV’s
At the companies annual Brandcast upfront event in New York, YouTube has announced a new ad offering to advertisers - 30-second unskippable ads on connected TV’s. This new format will replace the two, 15-second consecutive ads that run today for advertisers targeting the platform's top videos through YouTube Select. According to YouTube, YouTube Select is landing more than 70% of impressions on the TV screen - believing that viewers watching through this medium are more likely to be receptive to these longer style ads.
Netflix announces new sponsorship opportunities and campaigns aligning with key brand moments
At Netflix’s first-ever upfront event, the company unveiled some new ad spots for advertisers - including the ability to sponsor popular Netflix series at launch as well as aligning campaigns with local holidays and ‘key brand moments’ such as Valentines Day. In addition, the company also showcased its Top 10 offering, which guarantees ad placement on its daily Top 10 titles. The co-CEO even hinted at a possible “30-minute commercial” that would play out “over several days”, across several different shows that a user watched.
Google will disable 1% of third-party cookies for Chrome users in Q1 of 2024
Google's plan to deprecate third-party cookies may have been delayed several times already, but it seems like the company is finally on track to completely disable the cookies by the second half of 2024. Google has announced plans to migrate 1% of Chrome users to Privacy Sandbox, its privacy conscious approach, disabling third-party cookies for these users. According to the company, this small change will massively help developers assess their real-world readiness for the larger changes coming later in the next year.
Disney to make programmatic part of every upfront ad deal at upcoming upfront
Ahead of their upcoming upfront pitch, Disney has announced that more than 50% of its inventory is streaming. Its trio of platforms, that of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ are coming together on a new “one-app experience”. Bob Iger, Disney’s CEO, commented “We’ve added more than 1000 advertisers over the past year, and now have 5000 advertisers across our streaming platforms - with over a third buying advertising programmatically”.
New report finds paid search conversion rates have decreased YOY, despite cost per lead increasing
According to LOCALiQ’s ‘Google Ads Benchmarks 2023’ report, search ad conversion rates have decreased across nearly all industries year over year. The cost of generating leads however has continued to increase - though not quite as rapidly as in previous years. The report showed that the two industries that managed to avoid a decrease in conversion rates from search ads included beauty and personal care, as well as education and instruction. The average conversion rate in 2022 was 7.85%.
Meta is testing a new ‘Promotional Ads’ feature to help shoppers find deals
Meta has announced that it is testing a new feature known as ‘Promotional Ads’ that will make it easier for shoppers to take advantage of seasonal sales, first-time purchase discounts and holiday promotions. When clicked these ads will automatically apply the discount code rather than users having to type it manually. The tool is available to Select advertisers across the U.S., UK, Canada and India during its pilot stage.
New Google AI tools will let advertisers generate media assets and help creators generate content
According to a report by CNBC, internal Google documents shows that Google is working on generative AI tools that would help advertisers create media assets. These tools are supposedly powered by PaLM 2, and are also believed to help YouTubers generate multiple suggestions on topics to create content on as well as title and video descriptions. More information is expected to be shared during this year's Google Marketing Live.
Trend forecasting predicts an 8% drop in linear TV ad spend, with CTV expected to rise 21% in the U.S.
An analysis of the U.S. TV and Connected TV (CTV) ad spending from 2021-2027 by market research analysts, eMarketer, suggests that linear TV advertising is expected to drop 8% this year to $61.31 billion. On the other hand, Connected TV ad spending is expected to rise 21% to $25.09 billion. The data also predicted that YouTube, Hulu and Netflix are among those that will see big gains - with YouTube set to see the greatest rise.
Recent job postings show Amazon is planning an AI initiative to transform Amazon search
Amazon joins the list of companies jumping on the generative AI bandwagon, publishing a job posting for a senior software development engineer to help transform Amazon Search. According to the listing, this will be a “once in a generation transformation for Search”, with the company wanting to create “a new AI-first initiative to re-architect and reinvent the way we do search through the use of extremely large scale next-generation deep learning techniques”. Amazon’s spokesperson also commented that the company is “significantly investing in generative AI across all of our business”.
Microsoft has rolled out new Bing Chat features including chat history, mobile features and improved Edge support
Microsoft Bing has now rolled out many of the new features it announced earlier this month to celebrate the launch of Bing Chat 100 days ago. These features include a chat history icon, a mobile widget with microphone access, the ability to pick up conversations across platforms and further multilingual support. In addition, Bing has added support for SwiftKey, a mobile keyboard, and is improving Bing Chat on Microsoft Edge too.
Google has released a new crawler used for testing tools in Search console and other Google properties
Google has released a new crawler named Google-InspectionTool, which will be used by Search testing tools such as the Rich Result Test and URL inspection in Search Console. According to Google, this new crawler mimics Googlebot, apart from the user agent and user agent token. Find out more about this new crawler here.
Instagram now supports GIFs in comments on both posts and Reels
Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, has revealed that Instagram has begun rolling out support for GIFs in comments on both posts and Reels. Mosseri added that Instagram is working on a lyrics feature in Reels, that would build upon the auto-captioning feature introduced last year. In addition, the company is also launching a collaboration feature on broadcast channels, which will allow users with broadcast channels to invite other creators or fans to have conversations with them.
TikTok has launched a new mental health awareness hub to offer resources to users
With many countries threatening a TikTok ban, the company is introducing a new mental health awareness hub, to help users access resources, learn about well-being topics and connect with advocates. This new hub can be found using the #mentalhealthawareness page, and will be updated throughout May to showcase educational videos, wellness creators and charities raising awareness of mental health issues.
Google Bard adds genuine citations in responses and more concise summaries
Google has announced a series of upcoming updates to its AI chatbot, Bard, including images, coding features and extensions. One of these updates includes improved citations within responses, with Bard now showing sources with numbers next to the responses like true citations. In addition, Google has updated Bard’s language models helping it to provide more concise summaries to help users get the gist of a topic quickly.
New study has found Amazon leads customer distrust of fake reviews
A recent study of 13,000 consumers from PowerReview has found growing consumer concern over fake reviews. According to the data, 63% of U.S. consumers are more concerned about fake reviews now than they were five years ago - and 84% claimed that they trusted Amazon reviews the least. The data also showed that Gen X trust reviews the least (83%), closely followed by Gen Z and Boomers (81%) and Millennials (80%). 87%of UK consumers believe that they have read a fake review.
