September, 2024

Video Action Campaigns will upgrade to Demand Gen in 2025

“What’s Happening: Google Ads is planning to upgrade YouTube Video Action Campaigns (VAC) to Demand Gen in Q2 of 2025. Google says the goal is to enhance advertisers ability to drive growth through a multi-format approach. Predicted benefits include: expanded reach across Google’s network with up to 3 billion monthly users, the opportunity of more creative flexibility utilizing both video and image ads in a single campaign, enhanced audience targeting, and consistent performance. Combining video and image assets within Demand Gen could increase conversions by 20% at the same cost per conversion compared to solely relying on video.

How does this affect us (us and our clients)?: This change comes shortly after the complete migration of Discovery campaigns into Demand Gen campaigns. The merge initiated in October of 2023 and officially took place in March of this year. Considering we’ve had clients utilize Demand Gen and VAC on separate occasions, this is something to be aware of to relay and clarify with clients who intend on or are considering taking advantage of the benefits of VAC. Soon they’ll get the added benefit of Demand Gen! With that, if clients are utilizing VAC, consider testing out YouTube within Demand Gen campaigns and see how performance is comparable to standalone VAC.

POV: Video Action campaigns were already integrated in Demand Gen campaigns, but Demand Gen will soon be the official way to create VAC. The hypothesis is that Google is trying to create a Do-It-All super campaign type for consideration and conversion campaign formats. Demand Gen is the only campaign type within Google that can utilize similar or lookalike audiences, which were officially sunset in Google Ads summer of 2023, but quietly reintroduced with the introduction of Demand Gen campaigns end of 2023. This audience type has been a favorite for a decent amount of clients so it was a bummer to share that news with clients and try to come up with a strong alternative. As Google keeps improving on the performance of Demand Gen and integrating more features, there will be more opportunities to use across clients and therefore utilize the similar audience feature again.

Source: https://searchengineland.com/google-ads-to-upgrade-video-action-campaigns-to-demand-gen-in-2025-446250”

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The Challenge of Growing Loyalty, and Growing it Fearlessly

Written By

Rob Schuette

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” – Lao Tzu (from Tao Te Ching)

“The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation” – Augustine of Hippo (from The Confessions)

As 2024 moves closer to its end, businesses everywhere are feverishly devising and revising their 2025 goals, budgets, and marketing plans. It’s also time when a plethora of “Marketing Trends for 2025” articles begin to appear in trade magazines and on agency websites. Several that I’ve recently read predict declines in customer loyalty to brands in the new year. To my delight, a recent article from Harvard Business Review dove deeply into the topic of how “loyalty programs” aimed at growing customer’s allegiance often fall short, titled Why Loyalty Programs Fail

In the article, the authors identify pitfalls that have taken down many loyalty programs, then review keys to building a successful one. It’s a valuable read for any company looking to start, refine or revise their efforts to increase customer loyalty via a reward system. And in a world where tracking digital behavior via cookies will soon disappear, Empower works with our clients to deeply compile and utilize their first-party data, which is greatly enhanced by the addition of customer behavior data drawn from a loyalty system.

Empower views expanding first party data through loyalty programs as fitting perfectly with our mantra of “Grow Fearlessly” — but that does NOT mean grow recklessly or blindly. We believe in a carefully planned approach of testing and learning in steps, to build a loyalty plan that customers understand, that provides actionable data and that increases profits rather than leeches off them. Aligned with the quotes of Lao Tzu and Augustine at the beginning of this post, while the task of creating an effective scheme may be daunting, companies should not let fear keep them from starting, or let excitement make them build too fast before the necessary plan foundations have been laid. Cool-headed courage and careful planning are essential to fearlessly grow a loyalty plan that increases genuine customer affinity to a brand.

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