Digital Marketing News: Referral Traffic from Search Trumps Facebook on Mobile and Other Updates

Digital marketing strategies change quickly, so to remain competitive marketers and business owners need to understand the whole ecosystem and not just the specific marketing strategies they already use. Unfortunately, even if you check top digital marketing sites every day, there’s still a chance you’ll miss something, like a minor change in Google’s search results, or a new feature on Facebook.

Whether you read up on industry changes or not, we have you covered. Here are some of the newest developments in the world of digital marketing.

Surprising Mobile Traffic Results, New Google Maps Features and More Digital Marketing News

1. Facebook Alerting Users to Update their Privacy Settings

Facebook recently updated their privacy policy in light of complaints about their ads and information publicly available on a user’s profile. This move is also one way Facebook is complying with Europe’s GDPR enforcement.

Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Erin Agan wrote, “We’re now showing people an alert as they visit News Feed so they can review details about advertising, face recognition, and information they’ve chosen to share in their profile.”

The prompt will show up in a user’s news feed and includes:

• How Facebook partners with other apps and websites to show them relevant advertisements
• Relationship, political, and religious information visible on your profile
• Facebook’s use of face recognition and how it protects your privacy
• Updates to the platform’s terms and data policy

Here’s a video from Facebook showing how the alerts look like:

2. Referral Traffic from Google Search Higher than Referral Traffic from Facebook on Mobile

Who could’ve guessed it? Facebook isn’t the number one source of referral traffic on mobile.

Recent data from Chartbeat’s traffic data shows that more and more users are arriving on the mobile-version of their websites via Google search instead of a referral link from Facebook. The increase is due in part of pages using Google AMP and Google Suggestions, another browser-based source of referral traffic.

Previously, people thought mobile readers are more likely to find and read content they find on social media but it turns out that’s not always the case. And this is an important milestone that suggests publishers don’t have to be at the mercy of Facebook’s algorithm just to get their content read. Some readers may be more loyal to the publishers they like, so they don’t mind going to the site directly.

What does this mean for publishers and business owners? You don’t have to rely on Facebook or any social media platform for traffic or users. If you have good content and your website is optimized for search engines, you can get lots of visitors too. Do both and it’s even better.

3. Overexposure to Podcast Ads Leads to 3 Lost Listeners for Every 1 New Paid Subscriber

Can showing more ads increase sign-ups for paid subscriptions? As with every marketing campaign, you’re bound to lose a few users who either found your ads intrusive or just aren’t interested in what you’re offering.

Research from music platform Pandora shows the impact of advertisements on listening time and increase of new paid-user subscriptions.

The results are in, finally, after two years of data collection. Airing more ads decreased a user’s listening time, specifically a 2% decrease in average listening time due to one additional ad per hour. They also found that Pandora loses three users for every one new paid subscriber.

While this study is specific to music-playing apps, the same might hold true for other digital subscription services.

4. Google Maps Now Allows Users to Search Reviews using Keywords

Google Map users can now find reviews that tell them exactly what they want to know, such as if a certain restaurant is wheelchair-accessible or has Wi-Fi.

Here’s how:

• Look for a place on Google Maps
• Click “Reviews”
• Type the keyword you’re looking for in the search bar (e.g. wheelchair, Wi-Fi, vegan, gluten-free, etc.)

Here’s what it looked like when I searched for “wheelchair” on Google Map’s Disneyland Park listing.

5. Walmart to Pay for College Education of Qualified Employees for $1 a Day

Walmart wants to look like an employee-friendly company, so in an effort to support that rebranding initiative, the company is now offering to subsidize the college education of its 1.5 million US employees.

Only employees with at least 90-day tenure will be eligible for the benefit. The education subsidy is limited to courses in supply-chain management or business, which are subjects related to Walmart’s business. So in a way, this could also be interpreted as a company training initiative, where Walmart subsidizes an employee’s education but only if what they study is helpful for the company.

Interested employees may take online classes at any of the three non-profit universities Walmart chose: the University of Florida, Bellevue University, and Brandman University. Employees will only pay $1 a day, while Walmart will subsidize their tuition, books, and other school fees.

Tool of the Month: Keywords Everywhere

Do you dream in keywords like I do? Then you will love this free browser extension that throws keywords all over the place like as you search Google.

It shows you search volume, cost per click and competition data etc. and saves time by adding keywords when you search even on Amazon, Ebay, YouTube etc.

From a Google search it looks like this below.

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At McDougall Interactive we do our best to keep up with changes in the digital marketing industry so we can better serve our clients. Follow us on Facebook to receive our monthly news compilations or find out how we can help you generate leads here.