Google’s on trial (again), RIP eCPC, Meta’s new audience data restrictions, and more…

Happy Friday, Digital Darlings,

Another week, another Google antitrust trial. Drama seems to follow G wherever they go, and at a certain point, they have to ask themselves - am I the problem? Let's dish on all the Google drama and cover some paid social tea, too.

According to Marketing Brew, this trial "represents the biggest threat the tech giant has ever faced." Spicy!! The trial is about how Google has made access to Google Ads contingent upon using its ad server, which the DOJ says allowed them to have a monopoly over the digital advertising market. There's so much more to it, and this article does a great job of breaking down all the accusations thrown their way. The trial is expected to last a month or two, and could potentially lead to a forced breakup of Google's ad-tech stack, so I'll keep you in the loop as things progress. Meanwhile, in the EU…

In 2017, Google was fined a whopping €2.42 billion after being found guilty of monopolizing online shopping by giving prominent placement to its own shopping service (Google Shopping) while demoting rival comparison shopping services. This is Google's second time appealing the ruling and losing. Time to accept the L, perhaps?

With their EU lawsuits, Google seems locked in a sisyphean loop of being found guilty of monopolizing, appealing the ruling, and being found guilty again. If they repeat the pattern with the US antitrust trials, it'll be years before we see any impact from guilty rulings. So it looks like our daily workflows as paid search advertisers won't be changing any time soon… for better or worse. In other Google news…

I audibly gasped when I read this headline. Maybe it's just me, but this really feels like the end of paid search as we've known it. They're going to start phasing out eCPC next month, and plan to complete the phase-out by March 2025. All campaigns on eCPC will be automatically switched to manual CPC.

In an email blast to advertisers, Google said they're doing this because more advanced automated strategies like Max Conversions now exist, and are better. Sure, but those strategies also forfeit control entirely to the algorithm. eCPC always felt like the best of both worlds to me-you have control over your bids and get that extra performance boost from Google's algorithm optimizing toward audience signals and such. But no more…

If you haven't switched to fully automated bidding yet, now is the time, because in this modern PPC landscape, manual bidding isn't gonna cut it. In more Google news…

These new conversion types will be exclusive to Demand Gen campaigns (for now) and will give full credit to the Demand Gen campaign if it had any impact on driving a conversion, rather than distributing credit across the multiple ads that contributed to driving the conversion. They said they're doing this so that advertisers can fairly compare the performance of their Demand Gen campaigns with campaigns on other platforms-like Meta, where campaigns take full credit for any conversion that they've touched.

This seems like a step backward, away from accurate attribution and truly understanding the conversion funnel. It's just another reason why advertisers need a third-party conversion tracking solution they can trust, rather than relying on in-platform conversion metrics. In my final bit of Google drama…

The good people at Search Engine Land ran some numbers and found that 20% - 80% of search term data is hidden. What?? Lack of access to this data could be seriously hindering advertisers' ability to optimize their ads. Why would Google do this? We can't be sure, but the Search Engine Land team posits that "It's likely a short-term revenue-increasing decision. The less data advertisers can see, the less they can limit their advertising spend."

The research also found that much more data is hidden from phrase match keyword results vs. exact match. Their solution? Switch to exact match keywords. This goes against all of Google's advice, so it's up to you to decide what's best for your business. Read the article, analyze the details, and do whatever is best for you. Now for some paid social news…

In an email to advertisers, Meta announced that they're going to "automatically restrict data, such as certain parts of URLs and custom parameters." This could impact your custom audiences if the parameters used to collect their data include restricted information. Those audiences will shrink, and if they get too small, ads using those audiences for targeting could be paused. To prepare, check the Events Manager Overview to see what data the changes will impact. You may need to simplify some tracking parameters, or create a new audience with 'standard parameters'. In other social news…

Facebook marketing expert Jon Loomer was filtering by placements in an ad report when a few new placement options caught his eye. The most interesting were placements in the Oculus VR app, in the Threads feed, and in Facebook notifications. Does this mean ads are coming to Threads soon? There's really no way to be sure, but now we know the placements are at least being tested. I'll keep an eye out, and when ads on Threads become a thing, trust me, I'll let you know. And in my final bit of social news…

Attention, B2B marketers! This is great news for us. LinkedIn is rolling out vertical short form video feeds, joining the likes of TikTok and Reels (some are even calling it 'LinkTok'... not me though). We all know that short form video is one of the most engaging ad formats, so it's exciting that LinkedIn introduced a feed users can scroll for everything from career advice to rants about workplace drama. They're still experimenting with where the feed should live in the platform, so in-feed ad placements are probably far off. But organic videos could be a great way to engage with your existing audience and share useful thought leadership content that'll help grow your brand.

And that's all, folks! I know it was a super Google-heavy week and you may be getting tired of hearing about them, but hey, I don't write the headlines, I just spill the tea. I hope you all get a chance to tap out of the matrix and touch grass this weekend, especially now that fall weather has arrived. I'll see you next week. In the meantime, treat yourself to a PSL. You deserve it.

You know you love me.

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