Inside Digital Marketing: May 2024

Netflix announces significant advancements and growth in its advertising strategy 

Netflix announced a 700% increase in their ad-plan and plans to launch an in-house advertising technology platform by the end of 2025 at their second Upfront presentation.  

Amy Reinhard, Netflix’s President of Advertising, announced that Netflix engagement rate is going from strength to strength with their cheaper ad-supported plan now reporting 40 million global monthly active users, a number that was just five million one year ago. 

Reinhard also announced that Netflix will launch an in-house advertising technology platform by the end of 2025, which will give advertisers new ways to buy media space, leverage insights and measure impact. 

“Bringing our ad tech in-house will allow us to power the ads plan with the same level of excellence that’s made Netflix the leader in streaming technology today,” she said.  

Reinhard’s announcement shows that Netflix has pivoted to increase subscriptions and revenue following their historic decline in 2022. 

Reddit increases its presence in the advertising space  

We wrote in March about Google’s extended partnership with Reddit, so how are they doing now?  

The answer is, pretty well. They hit one billion monthly searches (partly thanks to their content licensing agreement with Google), so it’s no surprise that they are eyeing up the search market.  

They also appointed their first-ever vice president of Ads Product, Jyoti Vaidee, a former Google product and monetisation lead, to spearhead their monetisation effort which underscores their increased focus on growing their advertisement platform globally.  

Reddit isn’t without its limitations: it lacks advanced AI creative optimisation and requires advertisers to follow specific guidelines to ensure ads blend seamlessly with native content on the platform. There are also concerns about bots and click fraud.

However, it remains a platform with huge potential for advertisers who can target both broader interest audiences and niche communities within the platform, allowing for tailored messaging and effective campaigns. 

Google’s Performance Max Update 

Google hosted the 10th Google Marketing Live conference on May 23rd and the key message was clear – AI is being rolled out everywhere! 

One of the key announcements is Google’s approach is adding generative features into their Performance Max (PMax) experience. This update revolves around three new changes: 

1. Setup: this allows advertisers to simply insert their URL and answer AI driven queries such as “what is your brand personality?” to guide the setup process. 
2. Assets: this allows advertisers to describe their desired visuals and AI will generate images based on the advertisers’ website images combined with stock photography elements.  
3. Goals: Google is enhancing PMax campaign goals to improve new customer acquisition through expanded targeting and lifetime value optimisation. Additionally, a new re-engagement goal for retention-focused campaigns is being introduced to enable more effective prospecting and re-engagement. 

These updates are increasing the capability for advertisers to create custom assets and scale them with ease. 

Google announces updates to App store listings 

A major Google Play Store-related standout from Google I/O 2024 was the announcement of custom store listings by keyword search on organic and paid channels.  

Until now, app marketers could only utilise Apple’s Custom Product Pages (CPPs) for paid search campaigns. However, this new change expands the reach of Apple Search Ads (ASA) significantly. The crux of this development is that marketeers will now be able to have specific listings and associated app screen creatives for different characteristics from their Android apps. 

At In Digital, we work with lots of publishers who have expanded their digital offerings in-app, and this could prove a huge App Store Optimisation (ASO) tool in the future. For example, it would be possible to create a listing tailored exactly to ‘Crosswords & Games’ for a user searching in that field, or, with the 4th of July fast approaching, a listing focused on UK Election coverage. 

It’s an exciting idea for all those working in ASO and will offer a number of new opportunities to increase conversion rate in app stores.

Stay tuned for the next instalment of Inside Digital Marketing, as we continue to monitor the digital trends of 2024 and the evolution of Paid Media. Follow us across LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram for more.