Hello Click-Through-Readers! How many of you had to console your pre-teen/teenagers this weekend after the TikTok ban announcement? I am raising my hand.
While the ban does not take effect till September, there is a chance that it might not happen if an American company purchases it. Right now Microsoft and one other company are in talks with TikTok, we cover this in the news this week. There is hope for TikTokers and social media marketers in America.
We will also cover new lead form ad extensions from Google, updates to Google Customer Match lists, and updates to Google app install campaigns. Let’s get into the news!
This will make it easier for businesses to capture leads and follow up with tailored messaging. Besides name, phone number, email and postal code, advertisers can now add in fields including: city, state, country, company name, job title, work email, or work phone. Advertisers can take it a step further by adding some pre-existing questions Google has generated based on verticals, allowing them to collect more information about the user’s intent.
To make it even easier for small businesses, Google will also be automating data imports. Currently, most advertisers have to connect Zapier in order to transfer these leads into their CRM, and then into Google Ads. Google plans on “just using the information people already give you in your lead form” to automatically upload them into a customer list to be used in campaigns. They will also be able to see customer match rate in real time.
Historically, maintaining lists was a manual process of sorting, removing, and uploading your contacts, but Google has collaborated with Zapier to help streamline this process. The partnership will allow advertisers to automatically maintain contact details directly from a CRM.
App campaigns in Google Ads can now be optimized specifically for driving as many app installs within as short a timeframe as possible with max conversions bidding. Later this year, Google will release an update that will simplify the campaign creation process with a new tool for optimizing images.
App campaigns currently accept over 30 different sizes and dimensions for image assets. That can get complicated, so Google Ads is shifting from size-based to ratio-based image specifications. Google says this will make the creative process simpler and more efficient. Now, advertisers only need to upload three aspect ratios:
1:1 (Square): Minimum size of 200 x 200, recommended size of 1200 x 1200
1.91:1 (Landscape): Minimum size of 600 x 314, maximum size of 1200 x 628
4:5 (Portrait): Minimum size of 320 x 400, Recommended size of 1200 x 1500
Will TikTok be purchased by Microsoft or Twitter?
Twitter and TikTok had preliminary talks about a possible combination. TikTok faces a Trump administration ban because of national security concerns over the social video app's ownership by Chinese company ByteDance. It is likely that the purchase of TikTok would help Twitter to expand its market share, especially with a young audience. Twitter in many ways pioneered the sharing of short video clips with Vine, a social media app whose focus on user-generated content acts as a sort of predecessor to TikTok. Vine was shut down in 2017 as a result of a lack of monetization. Microsoft already is in advanced talks to buy TikTok's operations and appears likely to receive approval from the Trump administration on an acquisition. Microsoft has a market value of $1.61 trillion, compared with Twitter's $29.4 billion, which gives the software giant far greater financial resources for a deal.
