Digital Digest
Marketing Intelligence Weekly
Weekly updates on the digital marketing news you need to know, including data reform, AI, cookie deprecation and platform updates.
AI in digital
OpenAI to show sources and links
- OpenAI has secured a deal with the Financial Times which could be good news for publishers
- “The Financial Times today announced a strategic partnership and licensing agreement with OpenAI, a leader in artificial intelligence research and deployment, to enhance ChatGPT with attributed content, help improve its models’ usefulness by incorporating FT journalism, and collaborate on developing new AI products and features for FT readers.“
- “Through the partnership, ChatGPT users will be able to see select attributed summaries, quotes and links to FT journalism in response to relevant queries.”
- Hopefully more licensed deals like this will come about and ChatGPT will show links to sources from many publishers moving forward.
- Read more.
AI in digital
Platforms
Google on AI and SEO being dead
- Following the recent SERPConf event, Google Search Analyst Gary Illyes shared insights on AI and SEO
- “AI is a tool that you can use and, just like with any tool, misuse. It's not in any way different from any other feature accessible to you. Use it as you like, liberally and innovatively, but perhaps ensure what you're doing with it creates something of high quality and helpful. We have enough crap on the internet already, no need to add to it. If you don't know if you're adding to it, ask a few times someone unbiased to review what you're doing.”
- “Every single time something changes on search engines there's a plethora of posts published about how SEO is dead now. Looking at the history of search engines and according to these posts, SEO has been dying since cca 2003. Hell of a slow death. Or, you know, it's not in fact dying, but changes with search engines.”
- Read more.
Platforms
Helpful content update recoveries could take months
- Google’s John Mueller has responded online to questions around why sites hit by the September 2023 Google helpful content update have not recovered now that the March 2024 core update has finished rolling out.
- Mueller stated that recovery is still possible, "some things take much longer to be reassessed (sometimes months, at the moment), and some bigger effects require another update cycle.”
- Read more.
Cookies
Data privacy
Platforms
Google delays third-party cookie deprecation
- Google is delaying the end to third-party cookies in Chrome.
- The announcement was made ahead of quarterly reports from Google and the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority.
- “We recognize that there are ongoing challenges related to reconciling divergent feedback from the industry, regulators and developers, and will continue to engage closely with the entire ecosystem,” according to a statement Google posted on its website for the Privacy Sandbox. “It’s also critical that the CMA has sufficient time to review all evidence including results from industry tests, which the CMA has asked market participants to provide by the end of June. Given both of these significant considerations, we will not complete third-party cookie deprecation during the second half of Q4.”
- Google did not state a new timeline for cookie deprecation beyond hoping for early 2025.
- Our take: Google is not the only pony in the show. Third-party cookies have been deprecated elsewhere and we advise the industry to push forward with plans for third-party cookie deprecation.
- Read more.
Marketing by numbers
AU vs US digital advertising investment trends
- According to the IAB Australia 2023 Digital Advertising Investment Trends AU vs US report, while growth rates were similar in 2021 and 2022, growth in 2020 and 2023 was significantly less in Australia than the US market.
- The total market investment change from 2022 to 2023 in Australia was just 3.7% while the US saw 7.3% growth.
- However search, video and audio saw a higher percentage growth in Australia than in the US market across 2023.
- Display/native/infeed and classifieds are down significantly in AU.
- Digital video investment is following similar patterns in Australia and the US with comparable share of the total digital ad market (25.6% and 23.2% respectively).
- Unfortunately we cannot share the report from IAB here, however please reach out if you'd like more information.
Platforms
Google March 2024 Core Update finished rolling out
- The Google March 2024 core update has finally finished rolling out as of April 19.
- The core update took 45 days in total to roll out.
- Google said this helped reduce low-quality and unoriginal content in search results by 45%, which is up from their estimate of 40%.
- Read more.
Platforms
“New operating reality” at Google
- Google’s SVP overseeing Search, Prabhakar Raghavan, recently warned employees that the company’s search division faces a “new operating reality” with fewer resources, according to a CNBC report.
- Recent quarters have seen slower than expected growth across search queries and engagement, leading Raghavan to consider shortened project deadlines.
- “People come to us because we are trusted. They may have a new gizmo out there that people like to play with, but they still come to Google to verify what they see there because it is the trusted source, and it becomes more critical in this era of generative AI.”
- Read more.
Platforms
REMINDER: Google Analytics data will be deleted July 1
- Google Analytics historical data will be deleted come July 1.
- Ensure you have downloaded your historical data before then or it will be gone forever.
- Make sure you download your historical data correctly or you will lose it.
- Read more.
AI in digital
Platforms
Meta features Google and Bing search results in AI assistant
- Meta has incorporated Google and Bing search results into its AI assistant.
- Meta users can now search Google and Bing via the AI assistant without leaving the platform.
- SEO strategies need to adapt to include AI assistants as well as search engines.
- Read more.
AI in digital
Platforms
New AI tools for Demand Gen campaigns
- Google has announced new generative AI capabilities for Demand Gen campaigns in Google Ads.
- Advertisers can provide text prompts to generate high-quality unique AI visuals for ads.
- The aim is to help visual storytelling across Google’s platforms including YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Discover and Gmail.
- “Advertisers need to diversify their creative strategy with multi-format ads to keep audiences engaged and deliver results. With generative image tools, you can now test new creative concepts more efficiently – whether it’s experimenting with new types of images or simply building your creatives from scratch.”
- Read more.
AI in digital
Data privacy
Platforms
Brave announces AI search engine
- Brave has announced its AI search engine, Answer with AI.
- Brave’s AI search engine still shows links and does not automatically answer commercial and transactional queries with AI.
- Brave’s AI is powered by its own search index of crawled sites.
- Read more.
AI in digital
Platforms
Google says AI won’t replace search
- Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently spoke about how AI is reshaping search.
- AI enhances search; it doesn’t replace it. “The thing that excites me about AI is it’s the same underlying piece of technology for the first time in our history we have one leveraged piece of technology which can improve search, can improve YouTube, can improve Waymo and we put it all as cloud to our customers outside and so I feel good about that.”
- The relevance of websites and SEO isn’t diminishing. In the interview he talks about search not having been 10 blue links for a long time.
- Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) ensures a diverse, accurate search experience. He said that even with Search Generative Experience, they still want to point users to websites.
- Watch the interview from the 1 hour 17 minute mark.
