Missed the important digital marketing news and updates from last week? We’ve got you covered with the WDA Digital Marketing Round-Up.

Google

Google My Business Call History: Google My Business is testing a new Call History feature, It’s basically a 45 day missed call log that will display missed calls from Search and Maps. This is only available in the US for now.

Web Stories Are Being Expanded: Google is bringing its Web Stories feature to Google Discover.

Here’s what they had to say…

“Today we are bringing visual and immersive Web Stories to Discover which is part of the Google app on Android and iOS. The Stories carousel, now available in the United States, India and Brazil at the top of Discover, helps you find some of the best visual content from around the web. In the future, we intend to expand Web Stories to more countries and Google surfaces.”

Google Ads Gets More Automation Features: Google continues to expand on its machine learning functionality by introducing more automation features and campaign types. The first of these features in a new insights page. This is going to roll out over the coming months, starting with the UK and US and will show trending searches, auction insights and interest predictions based on their account. The second is a new automated campaign type – Performance Max. This new campaign type will show ads across all Google inventory. Third and finally, is that YouTube’s video action campaigns will be available to all advertisers in the next month or so.

Facebook/Instagram

More Reels Updates: Instagram has launched another set of updates for Reels, including an option to save sounds for your clips, the ability to share collections of Reels and the addition of an Audio Browser.

Twitter

Twitter Quote Tweets: Social media reverse engineering expert, Jane Wong, has said that Twitter is working on making the Retweet option open the composer directly, making “quote tweets” the default option. She went onto say that with the prototype they’re working on, retweets without quoting were still possible.

Suggested Follows: Announced by the Twitter Support Account, users may see a suggestion on Android to follow a group of relevant accounts on the profile of someone they’ve followed. Pressing the new ‘follow all’ button will automatically follow all suggested accounts instantly.

Other Updates

Microsoft Digital Marketing Center Beta Now Available: The free platform, announced earlier this year, enables SMBs to manage automated search and social campaigns. They have now moved it to Beta, but it’s only available in the U.S. at this time. They have also launched a handful of additional features alongside the Beta, including search term control, ad reviews and on-site analytics.

Snapchat ‘First Commercial’ Ad Option Launched: Snapchat started testing the ‘First Commercial’ ad option earlier this year, and they have now made it available to all UK and US advertisers. Advertisers can utilise the option to ensure their ad is first shown when a user watches any Snap Original’s. If your business has a younger audience, then this is a great new paid advertising option to test.

Amazon Sponsored Display Ads Now Customisable: Amazon has rolled out the functionality for eligible advertisers globally. The update allows the advertiser to customise Sponsored Display ads by adding their brand logo or changing the headline. Their Customised Display ads can show on product pages, customer reviews, shopping results pages and under the Featured Offer.

WDA’s Highlight of the Week

Our highlight for this week is the introduction of more automation features to Google Ads. We’re excited with the progress Google continues to make with automation and machine learning, and the new updates are further signs of their goals for the future.