As we welcome the warmth of spring, the world of online advertising has been experiencing its own transformations. Let’s dive into the latest developments that are shaping the industry.

Facebook Tightens Ad Targeting Restrictions

Back in 2018, Facebook faced legal action from several organizations, including the National Fair Housing Alliance and the American Civil Liberties Union. filed suit Their concerns revolved around the platform’s advertising tools potentially enabling discriminatory practices by targeting users based on sensitive attributes like race, gender, and age.

Fast forward to last summer, Facebook took a significant step by removing over 5,000 targeting options from its advertising platform. This change affected advertisers across all sectors. Building upon this, Facebook has recently announced a new set of policies specifically aimed at advertisers in housing, employment, and credit:

• Targeting users by gender, age, or ZIP code is no longer permitted for these industries.
• Facebook will actively disable targeting practices that appear to exclude users based on factors like race, gender, age, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, or religion.
• A new tool is being developed to provide users with transparency by displaying all active housing-related ads within the US.

Here at nexus-security, we wholeheartedly endorse these actions and Facebook’s ongoing commitment to combating discriminatory advertising practices.

LinkedIn Introduces Lookalike Audiences

LinkedIn, now a powerful network of over 600 million users, has announced announced a valuable addition for advertisers: the ability to create and target lookalike audiences.

This feature, long embraced by savvy Facebook marketers, lets you connect with users who share similarities with your existing engaged audience. Whether they’ve visited your website, downloaded resources, or even converted into paying customers, lookalike audiences mirror their characteristics.

In essence, you can expand your LinkedIn ad campaigns’ reach while maintaining confidence in targeting relevant, high-quality users who are more likely to convert. LinkedIn highlights that early adopters of lookalike audiences experienced a tenfold increase in reach without compromising quality.

Ready to explore LinkedIn lookalike audiences? Navigate to the Campaign Manager and create a Matched Audience. Initial audiences can be built using contact lists from your CRM or by targeting website visitors.

In addition to lookalike audiences, LinkedIn is expanding its interest targeting capabilities, initially introduced in January. Now, you can refine your targeting by combining professional interests for even greater precision. To simplify the process, LinkedIn offers pre-defined audience templates based on various interest combinations.

Facebook Unveils a Search Engine for Ads

Competitive analysis on Facebook just became more accessible. Recently, Facebook announced the expansion of its Ad Library. Now, it encompasses every business page running ads, a significant change from its previous focus on political and social issue ads.

The Ad Library, initially launched in the US as the Ad Archive, aimed to provide transparency by allowing Facebook users to gather more information about the political ads they encountered. It served as a tool to verify the legitimacy of potentially biased or misleading political content.

In a move towards greater openness, Facebook now extends the Ad Library’s capabilities, granting users access to information about ads from all businesses. If your business runs ads on Facebook, anyone can leverage the Ad Library to see your active campaigns.

While this information was technically accessible before by visiting a business’s Facebook page and clicking on the “Info and Ads” tab, the Ad Library streamlines the process.

However, the primary concern isn’t your average user. It’s your competitors who now have a powerful tool at their disposal. The Ad Library essentially functions as a search engine for Facebook ads. Your rivals can easily access all your active creative assets by simply searching for your business name.

The silver lining? Your competitors still lack visibility into your detailed targeting parameters, such as demographics, lookalike audience settings, and other crucial elements. While compelling ad copy and visuals are important, these audience-based factors are what truly drive campaign success.

Nevertheless, it’s wise to keep a watchful eye on your competitors’ activities and ensure their ads don’t encroach too closely on your creative territory.

Gmail Gets a Dynamic and Interactive Makeover

Google’s email powerhouse, Gmail, with over a billion monthly active users, is about to become significantly more practical and engaging. Google recently announced a major update, transforming Gmail into a more dynamic and interactive platform.

Via Google.

Aakash Sahney, Gmail’s product manager, highlighted in the announcement blog post that “email has largely stayed the same—with static messages that eventually go out of date or merely serve as springboards to accomplish more complex tasks,” compared to the advancements seen in other web-based experiences.

We’ve all encountered the limitations of static emails. Receiving an event invitation requiring you to navigate to an external website to RSVP is a common pain point. With the new Gmail, those days are gone. The dynamic interface empowers you to RSVP to events, complete forms, browse products, reply to Google Docs comments, book hotels, and more — all within your inbox.

This update is exciting news for businesses and digital marketers. Previously, achieving high engagement rates in email campaigns was challenging due to static messages and the friction users faced when attempting to complete simple actions.

Imagine you manage a local gym. In the past, sending out an email asking contacts to sign up for a new exercise class by clicking through to your website might have resulted in lost interest due to the extra steps involved. Now, you can seamlessly integrate those sign-up forms directly into your emails, thanks to dynamic, interactive Gmail templates. a G Suite customer

Instagram Brings Interactivity to Stories Ads

Instagram has exciting news for social media marketers who prioritize user engagement: polls are making their way to Stories ads. announced

Instagram Stories are immensely popular, with businesses leveraging interactive elements like polls, hashtags, and mentions in their organic Stories content. This strategy is effective for several reasons.

Via Later.

Directly engaging your audience through Stories polls is a powerful way to gather valuable feedback and shape your product roadmap. Ultimately, understanding and addressing your customers’ needs should be at the core of your business. Stories polls provide a fun and informal channel for collecting these crucial customer-centric insights.

Furthermore, using Stories polls demonstrates that you value your audience’s opinions and are actively seeking their input. Giving them a voice in your product’s development fosters a sense of appreciation and loyalty.

Returning to the latest development, extending polls to Stories ads allows you to gather feedback not just from your existing followers but from a much broader Instagram audience.

Via Instagram.

For instance, let’s say you’re managing social media for a Boston-based coffee shop. You’ve been using organic Stories polls to gather your followers’ preferences on new espresso drink ideas. Now, with polls integrated into paid Stories, you can expand your reach and engage with new audiences who might be interested in your offerings. By utilizing custom audiences based on website visitors or creating lookalike audiences from your newsletter subscribers, you can ensure that your interactive Stories ads reach the most relevant potential customers.

Amazon Implements Advertising Restrictions for Select Vendors

CNBC recently reported that Amazon is taking measures to optimize its profitability. The e-commerce giant will no longer allow vendors to promote products that result in financial losses for Amazon.

It’s important to distinguish between Amazon sellers and vendors. Sellers are third-party businesses using Amazon as a platform to sell directly to consumers, while vendors sell their products wholesale to Amazon, which then resells them to consumers.

Ideally, Amazon aims to resell vendor products at a profit. However, due to factors like packaging and shipping costs, Amazon sometimes incurs losses when buying from vendors and reselling to consumers.

Aw. Poor Jeff!

The rationale behind this decision seems to be that restricting certain vendors from promoting unprofitable products will incentivize them to lower their selling prices to Amazon.

This move, revealed through emails sent to specific vendors and reported by CNBC, underscores Amazon’s commitment to maximizing its bottom line. The company’s calculations suggest that the potential revenue loss from restricting vendor promotions will be outweighed by the gains achieved through lower wholesale prices.