All good things must come to an end. And so does the 2019, which has been a great year for digital marketing. As we draw the curtains on this great year, let’s take a look back at some important changes that happened this year from January to December.
Nothing is permanent except change. This holds true for MasterCard as of January 2019. The brand underwent a branding change in the form of it’s logo. The woodmark that been been part of the brand’s logo for decades has finally been done away with. What we now have is a flatter and trendy yellow and red circles of the brand minus the woodmark.
Our reaction: We didn’t see this coming to be honest. But we do like the new look in keeping with the minimalistic trends of current day branding.
In February, Quora added search-like keyword targeting and auction insights for advertisers. With these additions, advertisers can now use keywords relevant to their products or service in their website and ads to be listed atop search engine results.
Another update from February is the launch of a new URL submission tool from Bing. The new submission tool allows up to 10,000 URLs a day to be submitted to its search engine for indexing and crawling. This allows new content to be found faster on the search engine.
Our reaction: We have got our keywords in place, and Thank you Bing!
In March this year, Facebook introduced Facebook Showcase. The new feature is a premium video ad program which gives video and TV advertisers an opportunity to reach target audience withing the highest quality videos on the Facebook. The products of the new feature are In-Stream Reserve, In-Stream Reserve Categories and Sponsorships.
Our reaction: As viewers, we love the content, and as digital marketers we love the new feature.
Another major rebranding that happened this year is that of Discovery. The television network underwent rebranding for it’s logo typeface and tagline in April. The logo which earlier contained a photorealistic globe has been replaced with a 2D, black and white globe enclosed within the letter ‘D’. The new logo bears a minimilastic and elegant look that suits today’s brand recognition strategy better. The new typeface bears a sans-serif font, while the tagline has been changed to, “The World is Ours”. The tagline makes a really nice connection with the 2D globe on the logo which displays every continent of the planet.
Our reaction: The world is definitely yours, Discovery!
To assist advertisers in the quest to maximize ad efforts, YouTube made updates to its Preferred Score algorithm in May. The algorithm, which has now been named P-Score, has been updated with changes to Google Preferred offerings. This has enhanced advertisers’ ability to tap into key trending content on the video sharing platform.
Our reaction: It’s definitely easier and cooler to use P-Score than Preferred Score. Thanks for making official what we have been doing all along!
To allow additional ways for businesses to maximize their influencer partnerships, Instagram launched its new Branded Content Ads option in June. With this option, brands can add creators’ Instagram handle that they partner with to their business accounts.
Our reaction: Partner with us for pixel perfect branding!
LinkedIn, in July, added five new custom CTA buttons for business pages. The custom CTA buttons help businesses to get more favorable actions from audience and drive more traffic to desired pages on their websites. The new custom CTAs are Contact us, Learn More, Register, Sign up, View website.
Our reaction: Contact Us | Learn more | Subscribe to our newsletter | View website
Finding something at a stone’s throw away is the need of the hour when searching for something urgently. Like always Google has the answer to it. Google finds us just what we need and just where we need it. Making the search even better is local results in a scrollable carousel format. And that’s just what Google tested in August.
Our reaction: Where’s the nearest Subway?
Following in Google’s footsteps who introduced responsive search ads (RSAs) last year, Microsoft now allows advertisers to test responsive search ads in their Microsoft Advertising accounts. With this feature that was launched in September, the ad system automatically dishes out various combinations of headlines and descriptions that have been fed in by the advertiser.
Our reaction: We’ll do our best with headlines and descriptions. You do the rest!
What’s good for the good is not necessarily good for the gander. Snapchat seems to be firm believers of this. And so they have a solution - Dynamic Ads. The feature launched in October, automatically creates variants of Snap ads based on product information uploaded. The feature creates five variants of an ad and displays them to relevant audience it finds suitable for.
Our reaction: Less work for us, more gains for our clients!
In November, Facebook announced updates to its video view metrics. This includes the removal of 10-Second Video Views, Cost per 10-Second Video Views and Unique 10-Second and Unique 10-Second Video Views which were on of its 10-second video view metrics.
Our reaction: We miss those 10-seconds!
December not only gives us anxious moments about expectations from a new year. It also gives us the color for the year to come. This month, Pantone announced its color for the next year. And the color for the year 2020 is Classic Blue’.
Our reaction: Let’s paint the digital world Classic Blue in 2020!
iMeadiaBay, this year, has added its two pence to the notable happenings of 2019. We simply pieced them together under one blog for you to read at just a scroll. And we hope you found it informative.
Time for your reaction: Send us your reactions and enquiries at [email protected].
See you again next year!