Google’s iconic logo is changing in a big way

The company announced Tuesday it would be changing its iconic logo to one that “that reflects this reality and shows you when the Google magic is working for you, even on the tiniest screens,” according to a statement.

Though the Mountain View company’s logo has changed many times before, this update is the most significant change it has made yet. It uses an all-new sans serif font with thicker, more uniform, letters and slightly different colors.

The new custom typeface, which Google has dubbed Product Sans “takes cues from that same schoolbook letter-printing style, but adopts the neutral consistency we’ve all come to expect from a geometric sans serif,” Google writes on its Design blog.

Google showcased the new, flatter, logo in its Google Doodle Tuesday.

Facebook Dumps “Likes” In New CPC Calculation To Focus On Performance Outcomes

The once regaled Like is getting another kick in the shin. Facebook is changing up the way it calculates cost-per-click to an approach that moves past its roots as a place for brands to win popularity contests by garnering “likes” to one that puts business performance objectives first.

For advertisers that want to drive app installs or traffic to their websites, the cost-per-click (CPC) will no longer take into account engagement actions such as comments, likes and shares. The calculation will focus solely on so-called “link clicks”.

What counts as a link click?
These are the “link clicks”, which Facebook considers related to certain ad objectives that should impact advertisers’ bidding strategies and will be included in the new CPC definition:

Clicks to visit another website
Call-to-action button clicks that go to another website
Clicks on “Call Now” buttons in click-to-call ads
Clicks to install an app
Clicks to Facebook canvas apps, which are native to the site
Clicks to view a video on another website, such as YouTube (Clicks on a video uploaded to Facebook is still considered an engagement click.)
To be clear, marketers can still choose to target ads and bid for engagement clicks by choosing other optimization options, those actions just won’t be tracked in the new CPC calculation.

The blog post makes the shift in thinking clear, “It’s also important to remember that having lots of likes and shares on an ad or post is rarely an end unto itself. The most important factor for an ad’s success is bidding for the correct business objective.”

A More Precise View For Performance Advertisers
The move makes sense and was apparently advertiser-driven according to Facebook’s head of ads product marketing for interfaces and newsfeed Richard Sim by phone. Taking engagement actions out of the calculation makes it easier to evaluate performance-driven campaigns and set bids based on those desired outcomes.

“The new CPC will enable advertisers to be more specific about the types of ads they use and pay only for clicks that lead to their website if that’s the marketing objective they have in mind,” said Sim.

“If you think back, a lot of advertisers thought of Facebook only as a social platform and were strictly engagement focused. Over the past few years we’ve really been focused on driving business results. The transition to clicks being only link clicks is a big step in this transition.”

Twitter did something similar with its move to Objective-Based Campaigns last year, and Google’s Display Campaign builder in AdWords also walks advertisers through a particular campaign-creation path depending on the marketing objective they select.

Campaign Performance: Comparing Apples & Oranges
Once this new approach goes live, advertisers won’t be able to simply compare current campaign performance to historical performance.  Without the context of knowing when the change goes into effect, Facebook campaigns performance could appear to take a nosedive.

Campaigns will likely generate fewer clicks at higher CPCs once engagement clicks are removed from the equation. “The numerator is different,” as Sim explains.

But for performance advertisers, the new numbers should be a truer reflection of how their campaigns are meeting business performance objectives without being muddled by actions better associated with branding goals.

Back-End Targeting & Bidding Optimizations
Once an advertiser chooses an objective for a campaign, it drives a number of options for advertisers in ad creation. The system’s ad serving and optimization are then informed by campaign objectives.

“There is a lot of stuff on the backend that’s much more simple when we understand the objective,” explained Sim. “People that engage with an ad versus click on it are often very different.” Engagements are public actions that show others what you care about. Clicks, however, are private. Nobody knows whether you clicked on an article or an ad on Facebook.

When a campaign objective is selected, Facebook’s ad engine assesses every impression and makes a prediction on how likely a user is to engage or click, based on past behavior among other factors, to determine which ad should be served and at what CPC.

Roll-Out Timing
Wednesday’s announcement coincides with the new API release. Developers will have the usual 90 days to make adjustments and build for the new API. If you’re working with a Facebook Marketing Partner, check with them to find out when they’ll be implementing the new API.

The update to the interfaces — Power Editor and Ads Manager — is probably about a month away, said Sim. Messaging will be added to the interfaces about the change when it goes live. Sim also added that the SMB team will be doing outreach to help advertisers adjust reporting and expectations after the update.

SMB team will be doing outreach to help advertisers adjust reporting and expectations after the update.

Google releases a tool to track ad effectiveness across devices

The service from the search giant’s DoubleClick unit measures customer responses that may occur days later and on different gadgets.

(Bloomberg)—Google Inc. is making it easier to know when ads are effective, even if they spark sales days after they’re viewed and from different gadgets.

The company is rolling out tools that gauge how well advertisements work across smartphones, tablets and desktop computers, according to Neal Mohan, vice president for video and display advertising. The service can measure customer responses that, for example, start as an ad click on a mobile phone and end with a purchase from a personal computer.

“It’s not just one device—90% of consumers move from device to device throughout the course of the day,” Mohan said. “A consumer might see a video ad on a desktop at work, but they may not actually make a purchase until they’re at home on their laptop or tablet.”

The new service is available from Google’s DoubleClick unit, which serves ads on the Internet, though is available for marketing bought from other companies, as well. The service previously was available on Google’s AdWords feature, which businesses use to buy placements next to search results.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company is stepping up efforts to help marketers target users on mobile gadgets as consumers increasingly use smartphones or tablets to fire up apps or visit websites. Users in the U.S., Japan and other countries have shifted more than half their Internet searches to handheld devices from PCs, the company said last month.

Google on Wednesday also released a service to make it easier to sell so-called native ads—marketing meant to blend in particularly well with the content around it. The company also is making it easier to quickly buy and sell spots on premium websites.

SEO Optimization for Video in 5 Easy Steps

Digital video has exponentially increased in popularity over the years, and its growth shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon. In fact, 55 percent of all consumer internet traffic will come from digital video views by 2016, according to a report by Cisco. Because of this, marketers are scrambling to create branded content that can reach this large audience and spread their message.

Picture this: one-third of all online advertising spending will come from video production over the next five years. Online video is quickly becoming a lucrative medium, but also a congested one. As consumers cut their cords, marketers and advertisers are moving towards creating branded video entertainment, over saturating the web with a wide variety of premium content.

Although this is great news for consumers who are tired of obvious advertising, it creates a discovery problem. Making your video stand out in the internet ‘content jungle’ can be a daunting task. However, it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. Stick to these few, vital SEO tips, and your video content will rise above others like a phoenix from the ashes, and dominate major search engines.

Use Killer Keywords

Assigning keywords is one of the simplest, but most important tasks when posting a video. Like with a blog post or article, keywords will make your video more visible. This is important because you want bots to know exactly what your video is about. Implementing effective keywords will help place your content in relevant searches.

Before choosing keywords, pick the search engine you want to promote your video on and then double-check to see how the words you’re considering rank. YouTube will most likely give you a higher ranking given the medium, but it’s possible to also get a high ranking on Google too. To check, go to Google and see if it shows the same first-page results for the same keyword you chose for YouTube. If it is, assign that sucker to your video and watch the views roll in.

Tag It Up

Like keywords, tags help bots categorize your video so targeted audiences can find them quicker. However, tags don’t necessarily need to be reflective of the content. Tags can represent anything within the video.

For example, say you own an ad tech company that offers a PPC product, a fraud protection platform, and a pay-per-call service. You could make one video that highlights all three of these solutions and drives views from a variety of sources. As long as you assign PPC, ad fraud, and pay-per-call as tags, it’s likely that your content will show up in search results for each of them.

Think of an Effective Title

Before search engines, creating titles was all about coming up with something eye-catching that would spark interest. Nowadays, cleverly-named content is hidden several pages deep in search results because search engines are all about relevant keywords. Bots have no sense of humor or appreciation for wit; they’re just looking for keywords so they can deliver users appropriate results.

To have an effective title, it’s important that you include your keyword as early as possible. Say you’re creating a video that teaches tips on how to improve your basketball dribbling. Make the title “Dribble like a Pro in 5 Steps” instead of “5 Steps to Dribble like a Pro.” It also helps to incorporate popular keywords that attract attention in search results. Some good ones to consider are “how to,” “about,” and “review.”

Upload a Transcript

Although this can be a lot of work, the results are worth it. By fully transcribing your video, you’re providing search engines with more content to crawl through. And your SEO efforts will get a significant boost since search engines read interactive transcripts. The folks over at Moz do a fantastic job of transcribing videos like this one for their Whiteboard Friday feature.

When uploading transcripts, you also have the option to add captions. This won’t provide any extra SEO push, but it is quite helpful in reaching out to wider audiences. With captions, your video will become more accessible to those who speak different languages, and to people with hearing issues. As a result, your video will be watched by a broader audience.

Create a Sitemap

Now that video traffic is flowing in, a business owner will want to take that YouTube channel traffic and use it to direct viewers to their website. Using sitemaps is the best way to ensure this happens. As opposed to ranking your YouTube content high on SERPs, sitemaps help inform bots that your video is being hosted on your website. As a result, the link to the video on your site ranks higher, directing interested viewers to your web page.

Although this is more beneficial for businesses, the process is much more complicated than uploading videos to YouTube and assigning keywords. In order to be done correctly, you need to follow specific guidelines and sitemap protocol.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, hundreds and thousands of incredible online videos go unnoticed every day. If you’re not using the right keywords, creating effective titles, or properly tagging your content, it’s likely your videos will never be seen by the right audience. For your productions to shine, you need to implement these SEO tactics otherwise your videos will become lost in the internet’s vast sea of content.

Read more at http://www.business2community.com/seo/seo-optimization-for-video-in-5-easy-steps-01249676#F7MmejxHQ35IxYGi.99