Five most important search marketing news stories of the week

Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the latest news and research from around the world of search marketing and beyond.

This week we have news from the depths of the irony-well, a few Google product updates and the social network everyone forgot about adds some pretty good ecommerce functions.

Adblock Plus launches its own ad service

Oh the irony of ironies. Well maybe it’s not ironic, maybe it’s just hilariously predictable. Adblock Plus is getting into the ad business with launch of its own RTB platform.

Yes apparently there are ads that should be allowed, you know, the ‘good kind’ – and they’re the ones provided by Adblock Plus itself

As Al Roberts reported this week, the launch of this new marketplace will allow publishers and advertisers to buy and sell ads that are not subject to ad blocking.

That initiative gives publishers and advertisers the ability to, for a fee, work with Adblock Plus to whitelist ads that meet certain criteria.

Insert Gif of Shia Labeouf furiously clapping.

Google announces Universal App Campaigns and YouTube ‘TrueView for Action’

At DMEXCO this week, Google announced two new mobile-first product innovations.

The first is a new update giving advertisers around the globe the ability to do event-based optimization in Universal App Campaigns.

This works by evaluating signals in real time to continuously refine ads so a brand can reach its most valuable users at the right price. As people start to engage with ads, Google learns where you can find the highest value users and serve ads to them in the most relevant channels.

The second announcement is a new TrueView campaign that allows brand advertisers to make their video ads more actionable with tailored to calls-to-action during and after the video, like “Get a quote,” “Book now” or “Sign up.”

Ello enters the ecommerce world

As Rebecca Sentence reported in ClickZ this week, the new kid on the social block Ello has launched ‘Buy’ and ‘Hire Me’ buttons.

“We’ve always intended to move into native ecommerce and offer unique Creator buying and selling experiences,” says Todd Berger, who is Ello’s co-founder and CEO. “The effort to move into native ecomm is a big one, so we’re taking our time and evolving Ello in accordance with where we think the most value is for our Creator members and their audiences.”

As Rebecca goes on to state, “Ello might be smart in going about this in a way that larger social networks have so far eschewed: by mobilising its creative user base and playing to their unique talents; by marketing with them, rather than to them.”

Google extends deadlines for expanded text ads

In July this year, Google introduced expanded text ads (which are 50% larger than standard ads) to all advertisers.

However not everyone has quite grasped this new feature.

According to Matt Southern at SEJ, there was an initial deadline of October 26 where standard text ads could no longer be used.

However in an effort to get everyone up to speed, Google is extending the deadline to January 31, 2017.

After this date you will no longer be able to create or edit standard text ads. Sorry.

I felt like I should apologise on behalf of Google there. Gosh, I’m so British.

Google AdWords now allows one email for multiple accounts

Save yourself a load of time having to log out of one account and log back in with another, thanks to Google now allowing you to use one email address to log into multiple AdWords accounts.

You can now connect up to five AdWords accounts to one email. Google has even binned the need for email verification when you add a new user to the account, so they can start accessing it straight away.

What are you going to do with all your free minutes? Invent an adblocker to block out Adblock Plus ads? Alright, good luck to you!