Digital Digest #108
Reddit is eyeing up Search Ads
With over 50 million active daily users globally, Reddit appears poised to launch a search ads business soon, based on several key developments. The platform recently hired Jyoti Vaidee, a former Google executive with extensive experience in ad products, signalling its commitment to expanding its ad offerings. Reddit is known for its high intent areas, with users searching for specific information, signally a highly intent audience. This intent presents an opportunity for advertisers to appear in front of this audience with contextual keyword targeting, which aligns well with the potential for search ads by ensuring that ads match user intent.
The shifting behaviour of consumers, particularly Gen Z, towards seeking personalized and trustworthy product recommendations online, creates an opening for Reddit to become a preferred platform for product searches. Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman has also hinted at upcoming AI-powered search result pages, further indicating that search ads are on the horizon.
With Global Web Index indicating that over 856K users in Ireland currently use Reddit on a daily basis, the introduction of search ads on Reddit could offer Irish advertisers a powerful tool to reach these users at moments of high intent, especially within niche communities. This new ad format could be a valuable addition to digital marketing strategies for Irish businesses looking to connect with younger, highly engaged audiences seeking trustworthy content.
While this is all hypothetical at the moment, if reddit does launch a search ads business, not only will this be beneficial for advertisers here in Ireland but underscores the importance of staying attuned to emerging digital advertising trends and preparing to capitalise on new opportunities as they arise.
Google’s ‘AI Overview’ Launches In UK, Among Other Markets
Google launch their new AI Overview tool in the UK, India, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico - months after the US launch. This tool summarises answers for Search queries, generating tips, links and references for your questions. They have also integrated their local languages, such as Hindi, Japanese and Portuguese.
The feature was unveiled at Google I/O in May, Google said at the time it had ambitious plans of bringing it to more than 1bn people by the end of the year.
What does this mean for advertising?
This feature is a part of Google’s Search Generative Experience, which can potentially change how people search and the amount of organic traffic your site gets from Google. It’s still unknown how often searchers click on the citations in Google’s AI-generated answers.
Google is considering making AI-powered search features available only to subscribers, according to a Financial Times report. It’s unclear if this is specific to SGE or other AI search features. Perhaps these “premium” features would be part of the Google One paid bundle that includes Gemini.
Essentially, the report indicated “classic” Google Search would remain free. Ads would continue to appear alongside search results even for subscribers.
Liz Reid, head of Google Search, said at the time of launch “While AI Overviews are powered by a customised language model, the model is integrated with our core web ranking systems and designed to carry out traditional ‘search’ tasks, like identifying relevant, high-quality results from our index. That’s why AI Overviews don’t just provide text output but include relevant links so people can explore further. Because accuracy is paramount in Search, AI Overviews are built to only show information that is backed up by top web results.”
Our take on the matter.
While we continue to see AI experiences flood paid and organic search, we do not expect to see an impact on serving of paid search ads in the immediate future. A strong SEO strategy however is key to take advantage of the generative AI search results with studies showing over 70% of webpages cited in generative AI results listing within the first page of Google search results.
In the medium term, we're also likely to see a new trend in user search behaviour develop as they grow accustomed to interacting with search engines in a new way.
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/google-io-2024-ai-overview-search-gemini-era
https://searchengineland.com/google-ai-overviews-uk-439080
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/google-ai-overview-hallucinations-glue-pizza https://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/google-ai-overview-search-summary-uk-india-brazil
Netflix Expands Advertiser Capabilities
Last Tuesday, Netflix said it netted a 150% increase in ad sales during upfront negotiations this year compared to last year. Investment came from brands across multiple verticals including travel, auto and retail. This positive growth in ad sales is a good sign for Netflix’s programmatic ambitions. This month, Netlflix started selling one-to-one private marketplace deals through several demand-side platforms, including DV360. Previously, Microsoft had been Netflix’s exclusive partner for its ad-supported tier.
The timing of the announcement was not a coincidence, as programmatic upgrades will encourage more buyers to spend bigger budgets throughout the year. They have started running private marketplace (PMP) deals in the US, Canada, Brazil and Mexico and will expand to new markets over the coming months. In November, Netflix will start selling programmatic guaranteed deals as well. These should attract more buyers, as it guarantees inventory in a way that you can’t with PMPs. Netflix have also reduced their CPMs to about $30, about half the price when they first launched their ads service in 2022.
Netflix have also announced a number of partnerships to improvement the measurement and reporting of their campaigns. Later this year, advertisers will be able to access measurement reporting from Neilson ONE, Kantar, DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science. This will be all available through Google Campaign Manager.
While not available in Ireland yet, these are welcome developments in the online video space. Netflix’s commitment to programmatic and measurement aligns with Core’s values when buying online media. Keep an eye on your weekly Digital Digest for any further updates on Netflix’s plans to launch in Ireland!
Source: Netflix Closes Successful Upfront and Expands Advertiser Capabilities - About Netflix
