Five most important search marketing news stories of the week

Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the latest news and research from around the world of search marketing and beyond.

This week, good news for YouTubers but bad news for Vine stars and anyone who wants a bit of privacy.

Twitter kills Vine

Sad news for those with short attention spans, Twitter is killing off Vine, the six second video app it purchased a couple of years ago.

According to a statement, despite discontinuing the app in the coming months, your Vines will still be available.

“You’ll be able to access and download your Vines. We’ll be keeping the website online because we think it’s important to still be able to watch all the incredible Vines that have been made. You will be notified before we make any changes to the app or website.”

On the plus side, Twitter’s been far more entertaining for the last 24 hours than normal. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Bing Ads reveal the most searched Halloween costumes

According to the latest research from Bing Ads, adults are more interested in performing Halloween searches than teenagers, although that may change as teenagers have even less to do on the internet now (see above).

Here’s some more spooky insight:

• 32% of the searches were made from people aged 35-49 and 28% of them were made from people aged 50-64. This is probably the reason why 72% of the searches occurred on PCs, with just 14% of them taking place on both tablet and mobile devices.
• Teens aged 13 to 17 are 473% more likely to search for Pokémon, compared to young adults aged 18 to 24.
• Young adults aged 18 to 24 are 8% more likely to search for Little Mermaid than Deadpool.
• Adults aged 25 to 34 are 10% more likely to search for Deadpool than Little Mermaid.
• Adults aged 35 to 49 are 242% more likely to search for Harry Potter, at least compared to 25-34-year-olds.
• Baby Boomers and Gen Xers aged 50 to 64 are 8% more likely to search for Alice in Wonderland than Pokémon.
• Older Baby Boomers aged over 65 are both likely to search for Five Nights at Freddy’s and Deadpool.

No word as to why nobody in the US dresses as anything remotely terrifying during Halloween. Come on, zombie-up that Little Mermaid costume just for this year!

Google comes under fire for its privacy policy change

As reported this week by Al Robert, Google made a change to its privacy policy that’s now drawing criticism from privacy proponents.

As detailed by ProPublica, Google “quietly erased [the] last privacy line in the sand” by allowing for data it collects on its services to be combined with DoubleClick.

Previously, Google’s privacy policy read:

“We will not combine DoubleClick cookie information with personally identifiable information unless we have your opt-in consent.”

That was replaced with:

“Depending on your account settings, your activity on other sites and apps may be associated with your personal information in order to improve Google’s services and the ads delivered by Google.”

According to ProPublica’s Julia Angwin, “The practical result of the change is that the DoubleClick ads that follow people around on the web may now be customized to them based on your name and other information Google knows about you. It also means that Google could now, if it wished to, build a complete portrait of a user by name, based on everything they write in email, every website they visit and the searches they conduct.”

By default, all users who create a Google account post-privacy policy change are opted in to data sharing and must opt out if they don’t want their data shared. Those who already have accounts must opt in.

Bing Ads provides all new campaign creation workflow

Bing Ads has unveiled an all new campaign creation workflow designed to help you optimise search campaigns on its network.

Here’s a brief guide to the new features:

Establish a business goal to guide your campaign’s creation

You can select a marketing goal for your new campaign, which will be used to recommend different features or different defaults to launch your campaigns. Regardless of which goal you choose, your campaign will still have access to all features.

Copy campaign settings & target specific locations

You can now quickly copy the campaign settings from an existing campaign. You can also set up the locations where you want your ads to appear.

Target the right searchers with tailored keyword recommendations

Bing Ads now offers improved keyword suggestions to help you target the right search results. These suggestions can even be based on a URL from your website. For each suggestion, Bing Ads will show how popular, how costly, and how competitive each keyword is.

YouTube rolls out ‘end screens’ for every user

YouTube has announced a new feature that lets you add a thumbnail overlay to the end of your videos, called an end screen.

This is described as a “new mobile-friendly tool that lets you engage viewers right as your video finishes and encourages them to watch more on their devices.”

For the last 5-20 seconds of your video, you can add a thumbnail overlay that tells viewers to watch other videos, subscribe to your channel, visit collaborators’ channels, and more.

This is apparently easier to use than its current desk-top only tool, Annotations.

And to end the round-up, let’s finish with an appropriate end screen of our own.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/10/28/five-most-important-search-marketing-news-stories-of-the-week-9/