🔍 Google's display ad business under scrutiny

Feb 06, 2020

Good morning search marketers, will Google sell off its DoubleClick tech?

The Justice Department is focusing on Google Ad Manager in its probe into whether Google has too much control "over the monetization of digital content," according to a WSJ report. Ad Manager encompasses the ad server and ad exchange that were formerly under the DoubleClick brand. The article said Google executives have discussed selling the technology, though a company spokesperson said it's not a consideration.

Google's ability to dominate the display ad market with its acquisition of DoubleClick in 2007 has rankled many media buyers and sellers alike. Google counters that having a server and ad exchange under one roof makes things more efficient for everyone. Still, Google's focus on its Network business has waned in recent years. Ad revenue for that segment grew by just 8% year-over-year in 2019, compared to 17% growth for its own properties.

Local reviews management is becoming a critical, and often cumbersome, aspect of customer service and digital marketing. To help streamline management and responding to reviews, TripAdvisor has launched a new tool that allows restaurateurs to manage reviews across multiple vendors from one dashboard.

Ginny Marvin,
Editor-in-Chief

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Search Shorts

URLs, affiliate links and Googlebot.

URL length. John Mueller from Google said URL length is not a ranking factor.

rel=sponsored. Definitely use rel=sponsored for affiliate links, if you can, Google's John Mueller said.

Googlebot new name live. Martin Splitt from Google said the new user agent name is 100% live, but maybe it isn't?

Windows search outage. Windows' Bing-powered search went down for more than three hours yesterday morning. Search results appeared blank, The Verge first reported, before an apparent network disruption was fixed at 11:35AM ET.

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