Can you believe it? It’s almost the end of the financial year already. With the next couple of weeks traditionally being a time when activity slows down and budgets are assessed for the next 12 months, let’s take a look at what’s been happening in the industry over the last seven days.
Google Removed 3.2 Billion Ads In 2017
Google announced this week that it took down more than three billion ‘bad ads’ last year, considerably more than the 700 million it reported two years prior in 2015. That’s more than 100 ads per second.
In total, 320,000 publishers, 90,000 sites, and 700,000 mobile apps were removed from the ad network.
But, what constitutes a bad ad? Well, 12,000 of the ads removed were websites duplicating content from other domains, 7000 AdWords Accounts were involved in tabloid cloaking, 130 million tried to trick or circumvent the ad review process, and 48 million were ‘trick to click’.
Google’s Director of Sustainable Ads Scott Spencer has said:
“Whether it’s a one-off accident or a coordinated action by scammers trying to make money, a negative experience hurts the entire ecosystem. That’s why for the last 15 years, we’ve invested in technology, policies and talent to help us fight issues like ad fraud, malware and content scammers. Last year, we were able to remove more bad actors from our ad ecosystem than ever before, and at a faster rate.”
Reddit Announces New Native Promoted Ads On Its Apps
Reddit’s iOS and Android apps have introduced native promoted ads to give advertisers a way of reaching users in their feeds. These in-app promoted posts will look like a standard Reddit post and will include familiar features such as upvoting, downvoting, and comments threads, however they will also include comments – unlike previous mobile ads.
As the most popular way for users to access Reddit content is on mobile, the apps now have 330 million monthly active users which accounts for 41 per cent of time spent on Reddit across all platforms. Logged-in app users also spend 30 per cent more time per day on Reddit than desktop users. Therefore, a focus on this medium is a sensible move for the social platform.
Google AMP Launches ‘Render On Idle’
We’ve spoken quite a bit about Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) in recent Figaro Digital Digests, and this week is no different. Earlier this week, Google’s AMP team announced the launch of its new ‘Render on Idle’ feature.
This new feature is designed to increase ad impressions per page by increasing ad load times if a user isn’t taking any action in a browser. Available to anyone using the DoubleClick AMP ad tag or any network using Fast Fetch, this update will reduce the likelihood of users seeing empty ad slots.
Google reports publishers who tested this feature saw a 13 per cent increase in impressions per page and 0.5 per cent increase in clicks.
Email Volume Rose 18 Per Cent In 2017
According to research by Yes Lifecycle Marketing, more than 30 billion emails were sent in 2017 – up 18 per cent year-on-year. Nine billion of these were sent in Q4 alone!
The study also found that the number of emails from brands had increased, but the percentage of new subscribers was down. By Q4 these new subscribers accounted for just 3.5 per cent of marketers’ mailable audiences.
It was also revealed that 20 per cent of brands’ mailable audiences hadn’t opened an email in more than a year – a 22.5 per cent year-on-year increase.
For more news updates, guides and opinion pieces, take a look at a few more of our articles.