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The Great Ad Headline Heist
Political campaigns are manipulating news headlines for votes. Here's how you can do the same for your own ad campaigns for fun and profit.
by Tod Maffin (email • LinkedIn • social media)
Today's News
Google's Ad Loophole: Can Marketers Exploit It Too?
Every other week, our Google ads correspondent Jyll Saskin Gales walks us through the latest platform changes. Jyll spent six years at Google in a senior ad role, and today runs the Inside Google Ads training program.¹
You won't be surprised to hear that the US presidential campaigns are spending millions of dollars on Google Ads right now.
But you might be surprised to learn that they are running ads to article written by major news organizations, like NPR, Time and The Guardian — and they are changing the headlines of those articles, without permission from the news organizations.
It turns out, this is allowed, even by Google's strict political advertising policies.
TOD: So Jyll, this is the Kamala Harris campaign that's doing this. First of all, how can they be running ads to a website that's not their own.
JYLL: Actually, anybody can do this. The final URL in your own ad does not need to be your domain.
Since advertiser verification came into Google Ads, we're able to go in and see who actually paid for an ad. And of course, this has much more use to a political campaign trying to borrow the legitimacy of news organizations than, say, an e-commerce store trying to drive traffic, I don't know, to a different e-commerce store. But anyone can do this. It's always been allowed.
What came to light is that the Harris campaign is doing this. I'm sure the Trump campaign is doing this as well, where just like any ad, you put in the final URL of where you want people to go. In this case, sometimes it's Kamala's website, and in this case, sometimes it's news organizations. And then you write your headlines and descriptions for your ad as normal.
TOD: It reminds me of the good old days when you could do that on Facebook organic posts. You could take any news story and change the headline to whatever you wanted. Meta cracked down on that pretty quick; you had to prove that you owned that domain. You'd think Google would be doing that too.
JYLL: Yeah, because in this case, it's not like it's the metadata that you're seeing in your feed and article with a different headline. It's an ad. And when we write ads, we get to write headlines.
Like if I'm advertising a shirt that's called Tod's Fabulous Fitted Blue Shirt on my website, maybe I don't want my headline to say that because people won't know what that means. It might just say, "Best Price Blue Shirt" on my headline. And then you click on it and land on a page with something else. That's what we're doing here.
But news organizations were taken by surprise.
Like just one example, here it's pointed to an article by The Independent, which is a newspaper in the UK. And the headline that the Harris campaign is advertising is, "VP Harris Protects Democracy, Trump Defends Jan 6th Comments." So we don't know, because we didn't see this ad, what actual article it led to, but it's unlikely that that's what the journalist who wrote that article called it. Or similarly, there's one from AP News. The headline that the ad manager wrote is, "VP Harris's Economic Vision, Lower Costs and Higher Wages." Now, if it clicks that ad and goes to that news article, it can say whatever.
And honestly, I think it's pretty creative of the ad managers. You can see it from a branding point of view.
TOD: Sure, if you've got an e-commerce site, maybe it's a cheap e-commerce site and it renders titles on the page stupidly, you want to be able to fix that title.
Does it not surprise you, though, that there's not that Google hasn't carved out a policy just for political ads to prevent this kind of stuff? Because let's face it, by any standard, this is misleading.
JYLL: I will say that when the Harris campaign, for example, is paying for this, in addition to saying "sponsored," like all ads do, it does say "paid for by Harris for President." So it will say that on the search engine results page before someone clicks. Is it misleading? Maybe.
But Google takes this stuff really seriously. And so the fact that they're allowing it and allowing any political campaign to do this means that it's not misleading enough to cause concern. And so as users, you know, we can go into the Google Ads library, and with political ads, you can actually see how many times the ad was shown and how much was spent on it.
So the Google Ads library, you can look up any ads that anybody's running and see their text, image, and video ads, but you can't see data about them. For political ads, though, you can. And that transparency is supposed to help preserve a sense of, I don't know, honesty, sticking more to the facts, because anyone can go look up and see this stuff just as we are right now.
So for one AP headline, Harris for President spent $20,000 to $25,000 on that one ad in the month of August, and it was shown about 40,000 times, for example.
TOD: I feel that people forget about the incredible databases that are these ads libraries. Google, of course, has one, which we're talking about. Meta has one. TikTok has one. All the major platforms do.
Can you walk us through Google's? If someone wanted to look up their competitor, then what data can we see? Can we see how much money they're spending? Can we see what the demographics are?
JYLL: You can't see what [your competitor is] spending or what the demographics are, but you can see all of their ads, even ones that aren't actually running right now.
When you go there, my advice is to look up companies, not by the company name, but by the domain being advertised. It's much easier to ensure you're finding the right advertiser out of the millions of verified advertisers. And then when you click on that advertiser, you can view all their text, image, or video ads. You can sort by date range, and then you can see if there's different variations in what the ads look like. So through that, through the language you're seeing or the image you're seeing, you can kind of infer what's going on behind the scenes in terms of keywords or targeting or budget.
Google Preps Marketers for Holiday Shopping
Google is getting ready for the holiday shopping season with new updates for businesses using Merchant Center.
Trend Insights
First, there are new product trend insights in Merchant Center. These will highlight some major shopping search and purchase trends in the app.
This could help you can plan your ad campaigns around what's popular at any given time. For example, a denim retailer can see if a specific type of shorts is trending and adjust their inventory accordingly.
AI Analytics
Google is also bringing more AI elements to its Merchant Center analytics.
New summaries give insight into the products that are gaining the most traction at any given time. And conversational queries will let you ask for custom data sets, like the performance of your best-selling dresses.
Other Updates
The company is also improving its product availability notes on listings and launching new customer acquisition goals in Performance Max and Search campaigns.
TikTok's Holiday Marketing Guide is Out
TikTok just dropped a new guide [PDF] to help businesses plan their holiday marketing. The 18-page guide is packed with data and tips on how to reach users specifically in the European market [European e-commerce report].
They’re Thinking Earlier
TikTok says its users start thinking about holiday shopping early. Last year, users began searching for Christmas-related content in August. (Other platforms notice this too.) The guide breaks down when people are most active and what they're searching for.
What’s Trending
The guide also reveals what gifts are trending this season. TikTok says its users are looking for experiences, like travel and concerts, as well as tech gadgets and sustainable products.
Time’s Getting Short
TikTok's guide covers the "Q5" season, the period after Christmas when shoppers hunt for bargains. This is a key time for businesses to offer discounts and promotions.
With only 118 days until Christmas, many brands are already finalizing their holiday marketing plans.
What percentage of holiday shopping in the U.S. is done online?(as of 2023) |
🎁 Everyone who guesses will be entered in our monthly draw for a full year of our Premium Newsletter free!
Instagram Adds New Fonts and Sticker Options
Instagram just updated its app with new features to help you get a little more creative with your brand’s organic posts.
Fonts and Text Options
First, Instagram added several new fonts that can be used in Reels and Stories. The app also made it easier to add text to posts and mix-and-match font styles.
Carousel Post Upgrades
You can now also add stickers to photos and carousel posts, which was recently updated to include up to 20 frames. Until now, those were limited to Stories.
The updates also include more music features, which could attract users who might be leaving TikTok.
Keeping Up with the Joneses
Indeed, the new features are likely a response to TikTok's popularity. With TikTok's future in the US uncertain, Instagram is racing to position itself as a alternative platform for creators.
Meta Shuts Down Spark AR Studio
Meta is closing its Spark AR Studio platform, which allowed creators to build Augmented Reality effects for Facebook and Instagram. The platform will shut down on January 14 next year.
What This Means for Creators
The move will impact hundreds of thousands of creators who have used Spark AR to develop effects. Worse, any AR campaigns built using Spark will be disabled after the shutdown date.
Why Is Meta Doing This?
Meta says it's shifting resources to new experiences, including its AR glasses. But the decision seems counterintuitive, as competing platforms like Snapchat have seen success with their own AR creation platforms.
What's Next?
Meta may be developing new AR creation tools that use generative AI (here’s how Snapchat is doing that now). However, the company hasn't revealed details of a potential replacement platform, leaving many creators uncertain about their future. More information may be announced at Meta's "Connect" conference next month.
Gemini AI Can Make Humans Again (Mostly)
Google faced a lot of criticism in February. Its AI chatbot Gemini couldn't create images of white people in historical contexts.
To stop the backlash, Google opted for the nuclear option and just disabled the ability to render humans at all.
Now, Google is turning the feature back on — but only for users who pay for Gemini Advanced.
A Challenging Backstory
Google has struggled with its AI products. The company's chatbot Bard got a major fact wrong in its first public outing. Critics called Google's AI "racist & sexist."
Still a Work in Progress
The company says, like all AI, its technology will still make errors.
And, at least for the time being, it still won’t respond to requests for photorealistic images of public figures, minors, or violent imagery.
Oops! Google Puts Internal Tools Out Publicly
And finally today, many media buyers and marketers today noticed a new option in Google Ads — but they might have been scared to click it.
Down the main menu column appeared a button reading Internal Tools.
The brave ones who did click it found it opened up a submenu with the option Audience Builder in it.
Audience Builder isn’t new, but the whole Internal Tools was.
At deadline, Google had not addressed the issue, but it is believed to just be a glitch.
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