Digital Marketing Updates: September 2024

Welcome to September! Here’s some key updates of what’s been happening in the digital marketing world–this month we focus in on Google Ads and Google organic news.

And by the way, our Analytics updates now have their very own blog. Check out August’s Analytics Roundup.

SEO

SEO Updates by Randy McFadden

Google Launched the August 2024 Core Update

Google launched its August 2024 core update on August 15 and concluded the rollout on September 3. Google emphasized that this update was part of an ongoing effort to improve search quality by promoting genuinely useful content, particularly from smaller and independent publishers. There were some reports of ranking recoveries for those negatively impacted by the September helpful content update, but most sites did not experience meaningful ranking movement.

Check if you have noticed any significant changes in your rankings and organic traffic. If you’ve been negatively affected by this algorithm change, review and update your content to ensure it is useful and well-structured for users.

Google’s AI Overview Overlaps More Often With the Organic Search Results

A recent SERP analysis by Mark Traphagen reveals that Google AI Overviews now match one or more of the top 10 organic search results 99.5% of the time. This marks a significant change from earlier in the year when only 4.5% of AI Overview sources matched page 1 organic URLs. The shift suggests Google is now using more traditional search ranking signals in its AI Overviews, likely as part of its custom Gemini model.

Previously, Google faced criticism for showing less authoritative sources in AI Overviews, leading to reduced visibility and promises of improvement. The new data indicates that AI Overviews now cite the top 3 ranking results nearly 80% of the time and the top position 50% of the time. This development means that optimizing for AI Overviews is increasingly aligned with traditional Google optimization.

Paid Media

Paid media updates by Casey Anderson

Google is Phasing Out Video Action Campaigns

In 2025, Google will replace Video Action campaigns with the new Demand Gen campaign type which offer more multi-format ads. This is positioned as an upgrade with Google promising improved performance and format capabilities.

Video Action campaigns replaced YouTube’s TrueView placement three years ago, but with Demand Gen showing more success for higher funnel conversion goals, Google will soon be deprecating the older placement. 

Advertisers running Video Action Campaigns should begin testing Demand Gen campaigns or using upcoming tools to duplicate existing campaign settings. By the end of Q2 2025, all Video Action campaigns will automatically be upgraded.

Creator-Based Audience Targeting

It’s now possible to create Google remarketing audiences based on YouTube creator video viewers. Advertisers can link YouTube creator videos to their Google Ads accounts and create remarketing segments from organic view metrics. This will allow for more precision targeting beyond an advertisers own YouTube channel.