Below Deck: June 2024

How to maximise ad profit, Instagram’s new ‘engagement bait’ rules, and Google’s algorithm leak are some of the topics that have got the team talking this month. Here, we discuss the latest news from the digital marketing landscape and how we expect brands to leverage updates throughout July and beyond. 

PMax set to maximise ad profit

Still hot off the back of Google Marketing Live 2024 – a recent event in which Google discussed new features and trends – one significant update among its AI news is that there’ll be a new profit optimisation goal for Performance Max (PMax) campaigns. This should help enhance the effects of Smart Bidding to maximise profit. According to Google, ‘advertisers who use this see a 15% uplift in campaigns compared to revenue-only bidding.’

This is promising for businesses and digital marketers who have been unsuccessful with manual efforts in the past. With this AI asset creation, we’ll now be able to create unique assets for PMax campaigns using AI tools at a much quicker rate than before. Advertisers can now incorporate brand-specific fonts, colours, and imagery, use image editing features to add objects, extend backgrounds, and optimise sizing/cropping. Meanwhile, retailers can automatically showcase product feeds in AI-generated creatives. 

Ewan Burkinshaw, digital marketing manager, The Bigger Boat

'Engagement bait’: Instagram’s new advice on combating spam

You’ve probably seen it before, or maybe even used it yourself: social posts encouraging the audience to comment a specific word, emoji, or number in the comments in order to boost engagement. However, Instagram has recently stated it won’t recommend content it feels explicitly asks for engagement through shares, comments, tags, and so on, in order to combat spam. 

In yet another move they’ve made to increase authenticity within community interactions, Instagram reiterated that it encourages social media content that inspires and engages people with genuine discussion and debate. This includes open-ended questions, but there are still debates about how the algorithm will accurately be able to disseminate between each. 

Lauren Boyles, PR executive, Scriba PR

What Google’s algorithm leak means for PR

While Google’s latest leak – a revealing of 2,500 pages, with more than 14,000 attributes used by the search giant – certainly excited our SEO department, it also offered deeper insights for our PR team (such is the beauty of an integrated agency). Most notable was the document suggesting how Google prioritises websites that are frequently updated with relevant links, and may ignore those from non-relevant content. 

From the documentation, it appears that if a page doesn’t get clicked on, the links on that page may not carry much or even any weight. It also emphasises the importance of links from high-quality news sites and those within the same country as the target site. For digital PR professionals, creating campaigns with these factors at the forefront can help us get the very best coverage for our clients, all while boosting SEO. 

Kirstie Wilson, PR account director, Scriba PR