🗞️ Digital Marketing Must-Knows

Hello, marketers - here are the 5 biggest takeaways from last week’s headlines.

Round-Up

Yandex, the 4th largest search engine, had a leak showing how it ranks web pages. Yandex blamed a former employee for the leak. (Search Engine Land ↗️)

• Yandex was built as Russia’s copycat version of Google.

• Search Engines keep their page ranking algorithm for ranking pages a secret to avoid companies 'gaming the system’ to appear at the top.

• The leak is a rare insight into how a large Search Engine has actually been set up. With 1,922 factors revealed (~690 could be active).

• And inevitably, people are looking through each ranking factor and considering if Google might be applying them too. There are no guarantees, but it might give ideas for what SEO teams could test.

• This LinkedIn post includes a breakdown of some of the key insights (and the post is starting to go viral).

Twitter Launches Ad Targeting Based on Search Queries in the App. Twitter has enabled brands to show sponsored marketing messages to users as they use Twitter’s ‘Search’ function. Brands can choose to show ‘Promoted Tweets’ on the search results page based on keywords included in the users’ search queries. The targeting option is designed to help brands meet their conversion/sale objective.

Instagram started rolling out a Lead Form for Business Profiles. Some businesses can now use their profile to collect contact information like name, email, and/or phone number. Or brands can create their own custom form and ask for short or multiple-choice answers. (Social Media Today ↗️)

Disney+ is launching ad targeting. Advertisers couldn’t target specific audiences on Disney when it launched in late 2022. Demographics, purchasing behavior, and psychographics will be available later in 2023. Disney does not allow targeting for users 17 and below. (Tech Crunch ↗️)

Walmart launched a new e-commerce website to sell products to businesses. ‘Walmart Business’ is a one-stop shop for small and mid-sized businesses. It sells office supplies, furniture, food, electronics, and more. (Retail Dive ↗️)

Plus

• Substack announced a private subscription product

• Twitch is focusing on improving its pre-roll ad experience

• Meta’s reels usage is up 20% after machine learning improvements, according to The Wall Street Journal

• Google is being sued by the Department of Justice, which wants Google to sell its DoubleClick business.

• Google is faced with a real ‘Innovator’s Dilemma’ when it comes to integrating AI into its Search business [LinkedIn Post]

🏁🏁

^_✍🏽 written by Kole Ogundipe

P.S. Last week, I announced my live course. Coaching founders and future marketers who want to learn 2023 foundational digital marketing strategy!

I took a few of those nuggets and created a mini-course delivered over a short series of 7 emails in 7 days (for free!).