We know it can be hard to keep up with ever-changing digital marketing news and trends. But no need to stress – we’ve got you covered! Check out our roundup of the latest news and trends in the world of digital marketing for February 2020.

SEO, Organic Search and Google News

Google Continues to Invest in Connected TV

What Is It: Through Google’s Display & Video 360 platform, marketers have the ability to serve video ads on premium TV content. The beauty here is in the connection to and advantages of digital. Connected TV itself is not new news; however, Google is investing more deeply in order to reach households at scale and provide better capabilities for advertisers.

Google is also integrating with more and more partners to step-up their game in this space. One recent integration is with Telaria, which allows for frequency control. Additionally, Google has integrated with multiple audience and measurement partners to provide a more pleasant, personalized, and targeted viewing experience.

Household reach continues to grow and will only grow further over time. "With Display & Video 360 marketers can now reach 76 percent of all connected TV households in the US and 89 percent of ad-supported connected TV households.”

What It Means for Marketers: Combining the advantages of TV advertising with the tracking, detailed targeting, and insight of digital opens an entirely new world for marketers.

Picture two of countless scenarios:

• Scenario #1: Let’s say you have a pool of website visitors who have not yet converted. You can now target them via TV ads to nudge them along your conversion process. Additionally, you can track how many of the users who saw your TV ad came back to your website and converted. Beautiful, isn’t it?
• Scenario #2: Let’s say you want to reach a new audience to build the top of your funnel. Start by serving TV ads to users based on interests, demographics, and more. Then, to all the users who saw your top-of-funnel TV ads, you can serve them display ads on their computer and mobile devices for an easy click to your website (i.e. mid-funnel). Either they’ll convert, or you can continue to nudge them through your funnel with display and/or social remarketing to bring home the conversion.

How You Should Respond: Explore Google’s Display & Video 360 platform and decide if it fits your business. If you have the budget, I highly recommend testing this channel. If you are running TV ads today, I absolutely recommend diving into this channel immediately.

Google Merchant Center Releases Price Competitiveness Report

What Is It: For ecommerce businesses running Google Shopping Ads, you now have the ability to see how your price stands compared to competitors advertising the same product. This report can be found inside your Merchant Center account, under “Growth” > “Product Competitiveness”. It is important to note that this report is only valuable if other businesses have the potential to advertise the same products you are selling. If you have a proprietary brand that no other business is eligible to sell, there will not be any useful insight in this report for you.

What It Means for Marketers: This is vital insight into how others are pricing the same products.

How You Should Respond: Review this data to see where your pricing stands. Consider adjusting your price points to stay competitive and increase revenue volume.

Social Media News

Video Marketing on Social is Vital in 2020

What Is It: Video marketing is no longer a “Hey, we should really get around to that.” It’s now a vital staple that should be in every marketer’s mix.

Here are a few recent stats from Oberlo to prove it:

• 87% of marketing professionals use video as a marketing tool.
• 88% of video marketers are satisfied with the ROI of their video marketing efforts on social media.
• 66% of video marketers get more qualified leads per year.
• 8 out of 10 people have purchased a piece of software or app after watching a brand’s video.
• Videos are a consumers’ favorite type of content to see from a brand on social media.
• 54% of consumers want to see more video content from a brand or business they support.

What It Means for Marketers: Consumers love video. Video allows you to deliver your brand story. It allows you to hook your audience and showcase your product in a highly engaging manner. Video marketing is now. Video marketing is the future.

How You Should Respond: If you haven’t already, now is the time to put a plan in place and incorporate video into your mix (heavily).