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Click Wars: How Companies Are Removing Their Competitors' Ads
An apparent glitch in Google's ad system lets bad actors remove the Local Service Ads of their competitors
by Tod Maffin (LinkedIn • all social media)
Today's News:
Google Ads • Local Service Ads Being Nuked
Snapchat • More Users, But Fewer in North America
TikTok • Dedicated “Search” Shortcut on Phones
Ad Tracking • Google’s Plan Faces More Scrutiny
TikTok • Finally, a Tablet Version!
YouTube • Bringing Live Streams to Vertical Feed
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Google Ads • Local Service Ads Being Nuked
Reports say a strange but devastating loophole in Google’s business profile system is letting companies knock their competitors’ ads offline.
…You can essentially hijack or destroy a Google Business Profile that is also using Local Service Ads.
What happens is if someone else links their Local Service Ads to that same Google Business Profile, the Local Service Ads will stop performing.
There is a complaint about this in the Google Business Profiles forum… “A [company] makes a new LSA for a competitor and because the link to GBP is automatic the system will essentially nuke the competitor out of existence.”
The story quotes one business owner:
We had a Google LSA account that was working pretty well.
All of a sudden we quit getting leads, and even spam.
Every time I call LSA customer support they give me a scripted runaround. I finally got a rep to look into it and he told me that our Google my business profile has two LSA's linked to it, which is causing our ad to be invisible.
When I check our GMB there is only one account linked to us, and it's the one that I set up. I've only ever set up one LSA account, and I'm the only one with the access and credentials to do so.
I'm being told that I cannot unlink this other unknown LSA account because I don't know any of the credentials of that other account.
Their solution was for me to unlink our 10 year old account with established reviews and start a new google business profile from scratch.
These reports only recently started circulating around social media.
Google’s liaison to the advertiser community said she would alert the appropriate team inside Google.
But if you’ve noticed a sudden drop-off with your brand’s local service ads, this might something to check up on.
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Snapchat • More Users, But Fewer in North America
Snapchat reported its Q4 numbers yesterday.
Daily active users rose to 414 million — that’s a 10% year-over-year increase. But the platform lost a million users in North America during the holiday period, with most growth coming from the “Rest of the World” segment. The company says it plans to shift focus to more mature markets like North America and Europe.
User engagement on Snapchat's Spotlight feed surged, although funding for Snap Originals programming was discontinued. Instead, Snap aims to collaborate with popular creators and facilitate brand deals for them.
Augmented Reality (AR) remains a focal point for Snap, with more than 350,000 creators building AR Lenses. The company shut down its third-party AR development platform last fall to cut costs.
Revenue for the quarter was up 5% year-over-year, which fell short of analyst expectations.
One thing is clear — despite its niche audience appeal, especially among teens, Snapchat faces some big limitations in resonating beyond its core demographic. And its AR ambitions face new competition from tech giants like Apple and Meta.
TikTok • Dedicated “Search” Shortcut on Phones
TikTok has, for some time now, been trying to position itself as a search app too — kind of like how YouTube was once thought of only as a place for entertainment, but now many people (myself included) often turn to it first if I need a walkthrough of how to program my coffee machine, or which kitchen weight scale is best.
Now, TikTok is upping the ante with a dedicated mobile shortcut people can add to their home screens that, when tapped, will bypass the usual For You feed, and pop people right into a search bar.
How much of a threat is TikTok search to Google search?
Consider this: Back in 2021, Cloudflare said in that year, more people went to TikTok’s web site than they went to Google’s.
Source: Cloudflare
Back in 2022, a Google exec even acknowledged the threat that TikTok poses to its core search business. It’s not close as yet, but if TikTok can encourage more search related activity, it could become a more embedded process for the next generation of consumers.
And as noted, that’ll also give the platform more opportunity to build on what users go looking for in-stream.
In China, for example, on the local version of TikTok, you can already search for local businesses, restaurants, entertainment, etc. You can even order food to be delivered direct from the app.
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Ad Tracking • Google’s Plan Faces More Scrutiny
Google's Privacy Sandbox, their alternative to traditional online tracking cookies, is facing more scrutiny from the advertising industry.
The IAB Tech Lab recently released a 106-page analysis [PDF] highlighting how the Privacy Sandbox falls short in supporting crucial advertising functions like measurement and brand safety, compared to the current cookie-based system. Critics argue that while striving for a privacy-focused digital advertising future is important, the focus on the Sandbox's limitations might hinder that progress.
Event-based impression and click metrics will be abandoned in favor of aggregated reporting. IAB Tech Lab says this will make bid loss analysis impossible.
The implementation of an ad exchange and ad server itself will require significant changes within the programmatic advertising ecosystem, impacting reporting mechanisms, ad rendering and bid decisioning.
The IAB spent more than six months consulting with leaders from 65 companies to produce the report.
For its part, Google has criticized the report saying it contains errors and inaccuracies, but expressed a willingness to work with the IAB Tech Lab towards more private advertising solutions.
The analysis now open for public comment until March 22.
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TikTok • Finally, a Tablet Version!
One of the big complaints people had about TikTok is that there wasn’t a tablet version. Sure, you could use the regular mobile app, but the tablet would just increase the whole screen size and call it a day. That meant all the UI elements were bigger, the video quality wasn’t as good, and so on.
Now, TikTok has unveiled a tablet edition, and it comes with orientation support — in other words, you can turn it 90 degrees to watch landscape videos like the ones TikTok started recently pushing creators to upload, apparently in a full frontal assault against YouTube and its lucrative ad dollars.
YouTube • Bringing Live Streams to Vertical Feed
YouTube is adding livestreams to its vertical video feed — much in the same way TikTok does. Viewers can join the livestreams by tapping on the “Watch Live” button.
Although vertical live streaming isn't new on YouTube, this is the first time these broadcasts have been put in the Shorts feed, which many people just swipe through from video to video.
Another update: They’re letting podcasters upload their RSS feeds directly into YouTube Studio. This will generate a static image for each podcast episode, making it easier for users to discover and listen to podcast content through the app.
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