Digital Marketing: latest News from the World – May Part 1
Welcome to our blog, where innovation meets strategy in the dynamic realm of digital marketing! In this post, we’ll examine the latest developments and emerging trends that are transforming the digital landscape. From recent updates in social media algorithms to AI-powered marketing techniques, these changes offer exciting possibilities for brands and marketers.
Get ready to learn how these advancements can revolutionize your campaigns, broaden your reach, and boost your ROI. We’ll analyze the key developments shaping the future of digital marketing, offering detailed insights to help you stay ahead in this rapidly evolving field. Don’t miss this comprehensive look at the current trends and news that are at the forefront of digital marketing!
Meta
Bombshell for the future of digital advertising
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has announced a radical transformation in the advertising model: a platform where companies simply indicate their business objectives and budget, and artificial intelligence takes care of the rest. This approach, dubbed “infinite creative,” seeks to fully automate ad creation, targeting and optimization, eliminating the need for agencies and human creatives.
This model not only redefines the way advertising is conceived, but also poses significant challenges in terms of cybersecurity and brand control. By relying fully on AI to manage advertising campaigns, companies must ensure that their data and brand integrity are protected.
Thanks to AI, Meta will allow you to create ad campaigns without the need to write copy, design creative or define audiences. You just indicate your business objective and Meta AI will take care of the rest.
This is a total redefinition of digital marketing. Meta wants to turn advertising into something automatic, where you pay only if there are results (said by the CEO), thus eliminating barriers to entry for thousands of businesses.
Implications for small and medium-sized businesses
The advertising automation proposed by Meta could be a boon for small and medium-sized businesses that lack the resources for traditional campaigns. By cutting out middlemen and reducing costs, these companies would be able to access advanced digital marketing tools without the need for complex infrastructure.
However, this reliance on AI also requires companies to assess their level of digital maturity. Adopting these solutions involves understanding and managing advanced technologies, which can be a challenge for those still in the process of digital transformation.
The infrastructure behind automation
To support this vision, Meta plans to invest up to $65 billion in artificial intelligence projects, including the construction of a 2+ gigawatt data center. This massive infrastructure is essential to process and analyze the data needed for ad automation.
This investment also highlights the importance of having robust cloud & datacenter solutions. Companies wishing to compete in this new environment will need scalable and secure infrastructures to handle large volumes of data and ensure business continuity.
The importance of a comprehensive IT strategyIn the face of these changes, it is crucial that enterprises develop a comprehensive IT services strategy that encompasses everything from the implementation of AI solutions to security and infrastructure management. This includes the proper selection of hardware and software that aligns with the organization’s business and technology objectives.
A well-defined strategy will enable companies to quickly adapt to market innovations, optimize their operations and deliver personalized experiences to their customers.
Google Ads will allow displaying ads both above and below search results
Google Ads has implemented a number of changes that affect the visibility of ads on search results pages. The most recent is the ability for ads that previously only appeared at the top of the results to also participate in the auction for ad placement at the bottom of the page.
This is in response to a detailed analysis of user behavior and the effectiveness of ads in different positions. As Google explains on its official website, “We tested this for several months and found that allowing advertisers appearing among the top ads to also compete in the bottom auction increased rates of highly relevant ads by about 10% and increased conversions from lower ads by about 14%, which improved both the user experience and the value of the advertiser further down the page.”
This change comes in the midst of the court fight that the technology giant maintains with the United States, who accuses it of being the main culprit of monopoly in digital advertising.
This is how the
system used to work. Until now, the Google Ads system clearly differentiated between ads that appeared at the top and those that appeared at the bottom of the search results page. Ads competing to appear at the top of the page (the so-called “top position”) did so in a separate auction from those competing for the bottom of the page. Thus, the same advertiser could only compete in one of these positions. This division was maintained in order to provide an organized experience for both users and advertisers.
Ads placed at the top of the page generally received more attention from users, due to their visibility and prominent position on the screen. On the other hand, ads at the bottom, while still visible, tended to underperform in terms of clicks and conversions, as users tended to overlook results further down the page.
How auctions change
The main new feature of this change is that now ads competing to appear at the top of the page also have the ability to participate in the auction to appear at the bottom, without this being considered “double serving”. This means that relevant ads, regardless of their original position at the top, can be displayed both at the top and bottom of the page, increasing visibility and click-through opportunities for advertisers.
This change does not involve a modification to the auction process itself, but to the way ads compete for positions. This ensures that relevant ads can be shown more times without violating regulations. However, Google cautions that “our query matching systems and controls remain in place, as do our guidelines for the number of top ads we show on the page. This change focuses only on the bottom of the page.”
Benefits for advertisers and user experience
The implementation of this change has multiple benefits for both users and advertisers. For the former, the relevance of ads increases, as they can now find content that better matches what they are looking for, even if they scroll to the bottom of the page. This reduces friction in the search process, since, although users often overlook ads at the bottom of the page, this modification allows ads displayed there to be as relevant as those at the top.
For advertisers, the ability to appear at both the top and bottom of the page increases the chances of getting clicks and conversions, especially when the ad is highly relevant.
How the change affects campaign metrics and performance
This adjustment may impact overall Google Ads campaign metrics. Advertisers should be mindful of how this change impacts the performance of their ads, especially at the bottom of the page. Google recommends segmenting metrics by “Top vs. Other” in order to better understand the impact on different ad placements.
In any case, Google assures that neither query matching systems nor ad load restrictions are changed: “the search terms report will continue to show clicks at the query level, regardless of whether your ads are clicked at the top or bottom of the page,” the text clarifies.
Artificial intelligence
Will ChatGPT become the new social network?
At the latest edition of the Marketing Livestream, the virtual event where Google shares its latest innovations in digital marketing, Performance Max updates for 2025 were presented. Among the most notable new features is the new Utility Indicator, a tool designed to optimize the performance of advertising campaigns.
This new functionality promises to provide advertisers with clearer insight into the impact of their keywords, allowing them to make more strategic decisions and improve the efficiency of their campaigns. But how exactly does it work and what are the benefits?
What does the new Performance Max Utility Indicator offer?
Performance Max is a goal-based campaign type that gives advertisers access to the entire Google Ads inventory from a single campaign. Its purpose is to complement keyword-based search strategies and facilitate the acquisition of new customers that generate conversions across Google’s various channels.
To further optimize this approach, Google has incorporated the Performance Max Utility Indicator into its ad platform. This advanced tool makes it possible to assess the real impact of keywords on campaigns and to identify whether the added terms are generating additional traffic or whether, on the contrary, they are just overlapping the traffic already obtained. Thanks to this indicator, advertisers can adjust their search topics and improve the effectiveness of their advertising strategy.
In this way, we can state that this indicator provides greater clarity on the impact of keywords on campaign performance, which allows fine-tuning strategies and making more precise decisions on budget allocation.
It is important not to rely solely on visual cues from the Google Ads console, such as the green indicator with an upward arrow, as this only reflects an increase in detected traffic. This does not guarantee that the search term is performing well or is actually effective, but simply extends the reach of Performance Max beyond what you were already achieving with the campaign.
Still, this indicator can be useful for those looking to improve their site’s categorization in Google, as it allows you to better guide search topics and optimize the relevance of your content. However, for those who are already achieving good results with Performance Max, its impact may be more limited. In any case, it is still an interesting metric to consider within the advertising strategy.
Why is this new functionality interesting?
1. Greater efficiency in traffic acquisition
By analyzing whether the incorporated keywords are bringing new traffic or if they are simply capturing users who were already arriving through other terms, it is easier to adjust the strategy to expand the reach of the campaigns more effectively.
2. Better use of the advertising budget
By providing detailed information on the impact of each keyword, companies can redistribute their investment more intelligently, allocating resources to terms that really bring value and avoiding spending on those that do not contribute to real traffic growth.
3. Optimization of the targeting strategy
With a clearer view of keyword performance, advertisers can adjust their search topics more precisely, ensuring they reach the right audience and increasing the effectiveness of their campaigns.
Latest Tech and Digital Marketing Updates
📌Local SEO on ChatGPT. According to N. Turrado, SEO consultant, 65% of the businesses shown in the top positions of ChatGPT come from Foursquare. Take advantage of this by having a complete listing on Foursquare, including hours, photos and structured data.
📌Google against misleading content. They have updated their guidelines and put the focus on detecting fake content related to EEAT, from made-up profiles to businesses pretending to have physical stores.
📌Advertising investment in Spain is growing. Although TV continues to be the leading medium in terms of investment, it has fallen by 3.3%. The real growth has been digital advertising thanks to social networks and other websites.
📌Historic fine for TikTok. Ireland fines TikTok €530 million for illegally sending European user data to China.
📌Pinterest increasingly used. According to an Adobe survey, 36% of consumers now prefer to start their searches on Pinterest rather than Google because it is a visual search. Especially on ideas and recommendations.
📌Formula 1 race with LEGO cars! The toy brand has made history by creating ten life-size replicas of F1 team cars, and drivers such as Fernando Alonso, Hamilton and Verstappen have made a race.
📌Google fixes Googlebot-News documentation to clarify a bug about how crawler preferences affect the Google News tab in the results. It all stemmed from stating that publisher preferences influenced this tab, when in fact they only affect Google News, such as news.google.com and the Google News app.
📌Facebook improves security with new measures to combat spam and fake accounts. Now, accounts that post misleading content, such as irrelevant captions or posts with excessive hashtags, will have their reach reduced and be blocked from monetization.
📌Adobe launches Firefly 2.0: the all-in-one platform. With new advanced AI models, including Google Cloud and OpenAI, they promise to revolutionize digital content creation, facilitating end-to-end production.
📌Google debunks the myth. Google’s John Mueller has clarified that updating dates in XML sitemaps has no SEO benefit and can even make it difficult to identify updated content. The key is to update the date only when the page content actually changes.
📌Ads in Threads worldwide. Meta has expanded them worldwide, allowing Facebook and Instagram advertisers to bring their campaigns to Threads. The ads will appear in the feed with a “Sponsored” tag.
📌Campaign of the week. Estrella Galicia has revolutionized the market with Huebox, an innovative beer dispenser that delivers a premium experience at home. Huebox chills beer in just three hours.
📌Google guilty of monopoly in digital advertising. A U.S. court has ruled against Google for abuse of dominance in its advertising system, anticompetitively integrating its DFP and AdX platforms.
📌New ChatGPT models. It’s easy to lose track. However, OpenAI brings o3 and o4-mini, models with advanced capabilities such as visual reasoning, autonomous tool usage and enhanced contextual understanding.
📌Instagram debuts Blend. The new Reels Feed shared with friends, where content is tailored to the interests of all members. Integrated into DMs, it works with invitations and is updated daily thanks to AI.
📌TikTok a la X. TikTok begins testing Footnotes in the U.S., the new feature that allows users to add contextual information to videos. With a voting and community validation system, it seeks to improve the trustworthiness of content.
📌Google Ads change. Google will allow ads that previously only competed for top positions to also appear at the bottom of the page. This increases conversions in that area by 14%.
📌 Netflix works with OpenAI. Netflix is developing AI-based interactive search to improve content discovery. This allows searching based on specific emotions or preferences.
