2019 is upon us - can you believe it? At the back end of last year we wrote about the trends we’re expecting to continue or emerge in the next 12 months. So, we thought we’d return the favour and take one last look back - below are the top 11 SearchStar blog posts from 2018.
1. 3 Must-Have AdWords Scripts for Smarter Bidding
Perhaps somewhat predictably - given the direction of our industry - Sian’s blog post about AdWords (now Google Ads) scripts led the way by a comfortable margin.
Here she takes an in-depth look at three of her favourite and most useful Adwords scripts. Crucially, these scripts will help you automate time-heavy processes, freeing up resource for doing things that will truly make a difference to your PPC campaigns.
2. Conference Summary: Analytics and Conversion, 2019 & Beyond
Ed’s summaries of our conferences are legendary. The first SearchStar Analytics and Conversion Conference all the way back in June was no exception. This fantastic day saw 80-something analytics and conversion aficionados join us for a half-day of future-facing content at Bath’s Apex Hotel.
Big news for our industry this year was that Google had been fined €2.4 billion for unfairly favouring its own comparison shopping service: Google Shopping. It had to find a quick solution to this and create competition in its own marketplace - enter Google CSS. Here we explain what it’s all about and the savings advertisers can make by taking advantage of the scheme.
4. Conference Summary: Data in Advertising, 2019 & Beyond
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ed’s summary of our annual advertising conference for 200+ delegates also performed rather well, despite only being published in mid October. This was a hugely successful event, with presentations from SearchStar, Sky Media, Google, mporium and an ex Amazon director.
Do you remember GDPR? Not much has been written about it recently, but back at the start of 2018 everyone was running around like headless chickens in preparation for the new regulations that came into force on 25th May.
Cookies, rather naturally, fell under the purview of that change and you we’re extremely keen to read more about what would be expected of you come June.
Dan had the pleasure of jetting off to Google HQ in San Jose for Google’s annual event, Google Marketing Live. There he learnt all about what’s in the future of the world’s largest media owner. While what he could share was protected somewhat by a NDA, he still managed to share his broad thoughts of the day.
This list wouldn’t be complete without a mention of DANcast, SearchStar’s wonderfully popular and well executed Digital Advertising News Podcast. The first, put live way back in January, proved the most intriguing, but we’ve since covered the entirety of 2018 across 7 episodes - and there’s another coming before the end of the month!
By 2020 it is predicted that there will be 7 billion digital assistants in connected devices globally. In this blog post, Nick puts forward his case for why voice search is the future. Alexa ads aren’t quite there yet, but we’re sure they’re coming at some point…
9. 12 Key Questions to Help Judge Your GDPR Readiness
Clearly you couldn’t get enough of GDPR in 2018, as Ryan’s list of questions to help you decide whether you were ready for the regulations performed rather well. We doubt, however, that you remain particularly interested in the topic (surely you’ve got it all sorted by now!).
10. Ad Customizers: How to Automate Month and Year in Ad Copy
Sticking with the automation theme broadly, Nick’s explainer of how to automate the month and year copy displayed in your ad text proved indispensable. Understandable really - we’ve seen some truly incredible results for a few of our clients after implementing these innovations.
And finally, it’s without surprise that we report on the popularity of this particular blog post. While we see many fantastic websites on a daily basis, we also witness a great number of conversion mistakes that cost businesses, even those with good websites, money.
In an effort to help uncover the obstacles between your customers and conversion, Jamie penned this entirely comprehensive guide to why you might not be seeing the results you hope for.
