Happy 2021! Can you believe we made it through 2020? While we’re not out of the woods yet in many ways, there’s a new year to celebrate and, of course, plenty of digital marketing news to dig into from the previous month. Despite it being the holiday season, the industry remained busy during December, and we’ve got the top stories for you right here.
SEO stories
Google implement December 2020 core algorithm update
We’re kicking off with perhaps the biggest news of the month, and it’s the latest core algorithm update from Google. The search giant fully rolled out the update in December, and reports revealed that it had a big impact on the industry. According to Search Engine Land, who have a full breakdown of the story, the impact ranged from 10 percent declines to over 100 percent increases in organic search traffic.
Bing Webmaster Tools receives additional performance reporting
Bing Webmaster Tools just got a bit better at providing the data we all need through the recent addition of new performance reporting metrics. The new metrics are crawl requests, crawl errors, and indexed pages, all of which reveal a bigger picture of site performance. Want to know more about how they work? Check out SEL’s full story.
Paid media stories
Apple iOS 14’s impact on Facebook ads
To keep a long story somewhat short, the release of Apple iOS 14 means that tracking and gathering user data for advertising purposes has become much more challenging. Basically, all apps on the App Store must send users a prompt that asks them to opt in or out of tracking. Iin Facebook’s words, “As more people opt out of tracking on iOS 14 devices, ads personalization and performance reporting will be limited for both app and web conversion events.” There’s a lot more to it than that, and the social media company published a thorough guide of how this change may impact your advertising.
Facebook’s lawsuits in the U.S. could lead to sale of Instagram, WhatsApp
Speaking of Facebook, you may have heard that the social media giant is in hot water in the U.S. Forty-eight states and the Federal Trade Commission filed antitrust suits against the company, and this may all lead to the sale of Instagram and WhatsApp. That’s according to reports from Reuters, who note that the suits used language indicating that Facebook used a “buy or bury” approach to its competition. We’ll certainly keep you updated on how this story progresses over the coming months.
Digital analytics stories
A guide to attribution in digital marketing
To help fellow digital marketers get a better understanding of the ins and outs of attribution, AT Internet’s Fabien Le Thuaut put together a guide that fully unravels any mysteries related to the topic. In addition to defining attribution and how it’s used, Fabien breaks down the different attribution models and strategies. If you’re interested in learning more, you must read the full guide at AT Internet.
How to use a web container with Google Tag Manager server-side tagging
Once again Simo Ahava provides us with another technical guide. This time it is on Google Tag Manager for Server Side tagging. He covers the benefits of server-side tagging and provides in-depth examples of running third-party downloads from the browser by proxying them via the server-side container. Read the full guide at Simo’s website.
