🔍 Walmart adds sponsored search ads API partners

Jan 06, 2020

Good morning search marketers, Walmart just made search ads onboarding easier.

Walmart Media Group is steadily building up robust advertising capabilities to rival that of, well, its rival Amazon. On Friday, the company announced the Walmart Advertising Partners program, naming Flywheel Digital, Kenshoo, Pacvue and Teikametrics as its initial API partners. That means customers already running Google Shopping, Amazon-sponsored search or other feed-based campaigns with any of those vendors can turn on Walmart sponsored search ads with relative ease.

We'll be talking Walmart, Amazon, Google Shopping and more during the two-day digital commerce track at SMX West next month. You can check out the full agenda here.

Our incredible contributor community shared great insights for what's ahead in 2020. For PPCer's, this is the year we need to get onboard with automation layering, but that also means having reliable data flow to our automation tools. For e-commerce, now is the time to assess our mobile experiences from our customers' perspective. Focusing on E-A-T to avoid performance problems this year is key for SEOs. And Joy Hawkins shares her wishlist for GMB in 2020 (hint: that dashboard needs an update, Google). This is just a sampling of our community's expert advice for the new year. Check out the full list of predictions for 2020 here.

Keep reading for a Soapbox from Bing's Frédéric Dubut on the implications of BERT in 2020 and more.

Ginny Marvin
Editor-In-Chief

Soapbox

SEOs must focus on intent research practices in 2020

Google announced recently they integrated their BERT language model in search results. And what that means for everyone is search engines are shifting from keywords to intent at an accelerating pace.

So if you imagine a few years ago, we were mostly based on keywords, then we were a QR based search engine with a little bit of intent sprinkled on. And what we're looking forward to in 2020 is that search engines are going to be primarily intent-based so we'll understand the core intent better. We'll understand what the documents mean and be able to do better matches.

Some of the current practices around curated research are probably going to become slowly obsolete and you'll need to switch to intent research as a practice. So this is super important.

2020 is the year where search engines are shifting to intent primarily.

– Frédéric Dubut is the senior program manager lead, Bing Relevance at Microsoft

2020 Outlook for AI in B2B Marketing

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Discover the top trends in AI use cases for marketing. Join us on Thursday, January 9th, for this live webinar. You'll hear about the practical applications of AI in marketing functions, as well as the real results companies are getting by using AI in their marketing programs.

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Search Shorts

Is voice search optimization a fad?

Voice SEO a fad. Gary Illyes from Google said on Twitter, It's a new year, maybe we can put the voice search optimization fad to sleep finally…

AMP ranking factor. Even now in 2020, AMP is still not a Google ranking factor, said Google's John Mueller.

Fewer = better. Mueller said, Fewer page types makes it easier for Google and you, so you can remove your mobile alternative pages if you are responsive.

Dive deep with an SMX workshop!

Tack an extra day of training onto your SMX West itinerary and attend one of six exclusive workshops on Friday, February 21 from 9:00am – 5:00pm. These expert-led workshops are the perfect way to drill down into a specific search marketing topic and round out an amazing few days of learning. You'll walk away with actionable tactics you can implement immediately to drive results. Topics include Amazon Advertising, Paid Social Commerce, Advanced Local & Multi-Location SEO Strategies, Advanced SEO Training, Advanced Google Ads Training, and Hardcore Technical SEO Tactics & Techniques. Which will you choose?

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