Digital Marketing Updates: January 2025

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Welcome to February, digital marketers! Here’s some key news from the past month.

Paid Media

Performance Max Updates Users Might Like

It seems like Google is taking the hint that users still want control of their campaigns. Performance Max has provided strong results in the past couple of years without significant data or control for campaign managers. We’ll finally be getting the opportunity to have more ways to direct AI, deeper search reporting and improved asset group reporting.

Updates will include:

Campaign-level negative keywords rolling out to all advertisers
New customer acquisition goal with high value mode
Brand exclusions for different formats in retailer campaigns with product feeds
“URL contains” rules for campaigns with product feeds
Demographic exclusions
Device targeting
Search themes usefulness indicator
Search terms insights source column
Ability to segment and download asset group performance

Richer, more detailed reporting will make a big difference in understanding campaign performance for a campaign type that we’ve only more recently had more insight to. While we expect there to still be limitations to some of the above changes, we’re excited for Google to be making things a bit smoother for the humans running campaigns.

YouTube Cost-Per-Hour Pricing

Want top ad space on YouTube? It will now cost you by the hour. YouTube is implementing a new payment model for their Masthead placement, emphasizing predictable costs and precise timing control, guaranteeing 100% share of voice across all devices.

The cost-per-hour structure is a good way for advertisers to get top billing during important launches, events and announcements.

This premium placement isn’t one you can purchase in-platform just yet; for now it’s only available through Youtube or Google reps.

Super Bowl Ad Blitz on YouTube

We’re always looking for new inspiration through clever content and relevant advertising. Competitive research and social listening are a couple of good ways to know what the temperature is of an industry, but sometimes it’s fun to think BIGGER. The Super Bowl is often a great time to scratch that itch and see how limitless budgets can reach large-scale audiences.

Each year, YouTube does an annual Ad Blitz to showcase Super Bowl campaigns—it can be hard to view them all live on TV. In fact, 88% of adults in 2023 watched Super Bowl ads on YouTube compared to 68% on linear TV.

Why do we care about the Ad Blitz? Even if you don’t have the budget to craft a big superbowl campaign, it’s a valuable resource for marketers to understand how ads resonate with audiences and get a feel for the latest creative approaches to advertising. Winning at advertising, especially in digital marketing, can happen at many levels; it’s all a matter of knowing how to play the game.

SEO

Reports of Google Blocking SEO Rank-Checking Tools Increase

Google has begun requiring that JavaScript be enabled in order to use Google Search, which seems to be blocking SEO rank tracking tools from accumulating data. Companies such as ZipTie and SimilarWeb have confirmed disruption in their tracking tools. This issue may reduce the amount of data SEO tools are able to provide, in addition to making them more costly to operate.

This is still a developing issue that we’re watching. There may be an increased reliance on Google Search Console and GA4 data until we can confirm accuracies of ranking tools. While ranking data for your own website via Google Search Console remains unaffected, SEOs have appreciated having third-party sites to review competitive data and overall potential search volume.

Google Removes Breadcrumbs From Mobile SERPs

Google is removing URL breadcrumbs from mobile search results. Google stated this is due to wanting mobile SERPs to have a smoother experience for users, probably so they can use the on-screen space differently. While changes to SERPs should be monitored, we do not expect much influence on click through rate.