[Ep113] - New Promotional Options From Pinterest

In 15 mins, get up to speed on the must-know Digital Marketing updates from the week of 13th June 2022.
1. TikTok To Show Who Viewed Your Post - In addition to the “Profile View”, TikTok is now working on a new feature that will allow users to see who viewed their posts. This is another set of data you can use to identify your most engaged followers.

The trade-off is that your followers will be able to see when you view their posts too. If you’re not comfortable with that, you can opt-out of post view history. But then you won’t be able to see view history for your content either. TikTok’s post view history isn’t like Instagram and Facebook stories, where it’s turned on for everyone by default.


2. Making Your Pages Appear As A Sitelink In Search Results - Sitelinks are the additional results that are sometimes shown below a Google search result, where it’s usually just a one-line link to a different part of the website.

And there is no meta tag or structured data that you can use to kind of like enforce a sitelink to be shown. 

It’s for Google Algorithm to figure out what is actually kind of related or relevant for users when they’re looking at this one web page as well.

To improve your odds, Mueller recommends to have a good website structure, to have clear internal links so that it’s easy for Google to recognize which pages are related to those pages, and to have clear titles that they can use and kind of show as a sitelink.

This is also covered in the Google’s Search Central page.
We only show sitelinks for results when we think they’ll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn’t allow our algorithms to find good sitelinks, or we don’t think that the sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user’s query, we won’t show them. 

  • Make sure that the text you use as your page titles and in your headings is informative, relevant, and compact. 
  • Create a logical site structure that is easy for users to navigate, and make sure you link to your important pages from other relevant pages. 
  • Ensure that your internal links’ anchor text is concise and relevant to the page they’re pointing to. 
  • Avoid repetitions in your content.

3. ‘Warning’ Labels In Google Search Console Going Away - There seems to be a lot of confusions around the ‘warning‘ label for URLs and items in Google Search Console. So In an effort to help people focus more on critical issues, Google will now label top-level items as either valid or invalid.

‘Valid’ refers pages or items without critical issues, while ‘invalid’ to pages or items with critical issues. You’ll also see ‘valid’ and ‘invalid’ labels when looking at reports rendered by Google’s URL inspection tool.

Individual issues are still classified as error, warning, or good, which is communicated through use of color and icon rather than a text label. The following reports are affected by this update:

  • Core Web Vitals: Poor/Need improvement/Good categories are retained, while pages are grouped into good and not-good tables.
  • Mobile Usability: Categories are labeled as either ‘Not usable’ and ‘Usable.’
  • AMP report: Warnings are replaced with ‘valid’ and ‘invalid’ labels.
  • Rich result reports: New labels will apply to Events, Fact checks, Logos, and other types of report.
  • URL Inspection: The top level verdict for a URL will be either:
    • URL is on Google
    • URL is on Google, but has issues

    • URL is not on Google

4. Microsoft Implementing Advertiser Identity Verification - Microsoft Advertising now requires advertiser identity verification, which the company claims improves customer experiences by ensuring that customers see ads from reputable sources. "Advertisers will be required to go through a verification process to confirm their legal identity as part of this program," Microsoft wrote. 

Advertisers can complete this process with Microsoft Advertising by using government-issued, photograph-enabled personal identity or business-related documents issued by relevant regulatory authorities. Microsoft claims that the process is highly automated, and that it has been simplified so that "advertisers can finish it fast."

The current scope of the program has been restricted to advertisers belonging to specific verticals or unclear business models. The program is currently available in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, the Netherlands, Poland, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

How does advertiser identity verification work?
  • Microsoft Advertising will request advertiser identity verification for one or more of your accounts via email. 
  • Follow the instructions in the email request that you receive to complete identity verification. You may be required to verify your status as a business, an individual, or both. 
  • You must complete all identity verification related tasks within 30 days of receiving the email request or we will pause your account and your ads will not show. In that case, once you have successfully completed identity verification, we will enable your account and will start showing your ads again. 
  • Review and approval of your verification submission may take 3-5 business days to complete. To appeal a decision, please contact support. For more information on verification status, please see Identity verification status below.
You can learn more in this help document.


5. Google Ad Manager Integration With GA4 For Web In Open Beta - The Google Analytics 4 integration with Google Ad Manager for web data is now in open beta. Follow the steps to link your Ad Manager account to Google Analytics 4 properties. To view reporting on Google Analytics metrics and dimensions, you can use the Analytics report type.


6. YouTube Now Allows ‘Corrections’ After Publishing - Per YouTube,

Up until now, if a creator wanted to correct an error in an existing upload or provide an update to information that was no longer accurate, short of editing and re-uploading the video, resulting in loss of engagement metrics and comments, the options were limited to adding a note in the description, responding to comments calling out the error, pinning a comment or doing nothing. With the launch of Corrections, creators will be able to call attention to corrections and clarifications in the descriptions of their already published videos.

The new Corrections info card will show up at the top right of the playback window, at the timestamp of the first Correction in the clip. Clicking on the info card will expand the video description, where the creator will be able to provide a written correction or clarification based on the change.

But as YouTube explains, that could save creators from having to re-upload their clips – and it could be a particularly big help in adding important context to timely and evolving news-related videos shared in the app.

Creators could also use the option to direct viewers to newer clips on the same subject. So if you’ve posted a popular tutorial video on, say, a certain app or device, you could add a note that it’s since been updated via the Corrections marker, where you could also point users to your newer video on the topic.

To add a correction to your YouTube clips, you can write “Correction:” or “Corrections:” within the video description, followed by the timestamp (00:00), and an explanation of your update. You can read more about video Corrections here.


7. 1.5 Billion/Month YouTube Users Engage With YouTube Shorts Content - YouTube Shorts are now being watched by over 1.5 billion logged-in users every month.” That is a huge amount, especially when you also consider that YouTube’s total monthly ‘logged in’ audience is 2 billion total users. That means that around 75% of YouTube users are engaging with Shorts.


8. Additional Reels Remix Options In IG - Remix for Photos enables users to create Reels based on your feed post content, which they can then download themselves, within their own clips. Which means that people can re-use your content however they like – but you can switch off the option in your settings if you’d prefer that not to happen.

Remixing your existing videos into shorter clips - Meta is notifying Creator Studio users of its new process to trim your existing videos into Reels clips. The process guides you through the editing process to create Reels and Stories clips, by using the best parts of your existing video uploads.


9. New Promotional Options From Pinterest - Pinterest is introducing two new ad options to enable marketers get into its Stories-like Idea Pins, as well as a new 'Paid Partnership' tagging procedure that will provide creators another way to profit from their Pin efforts.

The 'Idea Ads' feature, which are full-screen, multi-page presentations with unique links, similar to Idea Pins. Pinterest's interest targeting technologies will be used to increase response for Idea Ads, which will show in user feeds. It's basically an Idea Pin that you can boost with paid marketing to get your content in front of even more app users.

Meanwhile, Idea ads with paid collaborations allow marketers to promote user-created Idea Pin content. This feature enables businesses to increase the reach of collaborative Pin projects, putting your promotions in front of the creators', your, and those you pay to reach audiences.

Paid partnership Idea Ads feature a 'Promoted by' badge beneath the creator's name, as well as links to both the creator's and partner brand's app accounts. It's another method for the app to generate more lucrative creative collaborations, which helps brands create better content while also paying creators for their platform knowledge.

According to Pinterest, brand collaborations with creators result in a 38 percent increase in brand recognition and a 37 percent increase in Pin awareness. This method allows creators to tag a partner brand in their Idea Pin, alerting the brand to the possibility of collaborating. The creator and the company then work out the details of their collaboration, and brands can promote the content further if they want to.

This is another method for creators to generate money streams while also serving as a showcase for them, with free ad examples accessible for approval in the app.

It could be a smart way to streamline brand relationships while also offering up new avenues for promotion through collaborators you might not have considered before.