Like many social media platforms in recent months, LinkedIn is modifying the interface for some of their Group pages as well as changing some features available to Group page managers. Similar to other social platforms, the changes are coming sooner than later. According to LinkedIn, the new Groups platform will begin rolling out to members globally on desktop and mobile at the end of this month. It won’t be matter of choice. Even if you prefer the older design all Groups will be automatically migrated to the new platform.

One of the biggest, and possibly most important, change in the update is bringing Group pages to mobile devices. The new Groups platform integrates Groups content into the main LinkedIn website and mobile apps. This makes Groups more valuable and useful by giving more visibility and accessibility to Group discussions.

Group admin roles will also be able to manage Groups on both the iOS and Android versions of the LinkedIn app. These updates will make it easier for people to engage in Group discussions and make it easier for Group owners to manage their page without having to be on the desktop version of LinkedIn. This is clearly a case of LinkedIn giving Group managers something they had been asking for, and they know it.

“We’ve heard from many of you over the past year that boosting engagement and enabling vibrant discussions in your groups is important, so we’ve prioritized those features that support this,” said LinkedIn in a notification email that went out to current LinkedIn Group managers.

As for making engagement more lively, the new Group platform will give Group owners new options for posting so it’s faster to engage with the Group. In the new version, members and admins can reply to comments, edit posts and comments and post native video to Groups, as well as interact within Group discussions directly in the main LinkedIn feed. LinkedIn also said notifications about Group activities and conversations are also coming, which they noted were extremely useful in increasing Group engagement during trials of the new platform.

Unfortunately, as is often the case with major interface changes, LinkedIn Group Managers will see some features go away after the new update. For example, managing the pages might become a little harder because the role of “Moderator” is being removed, leaving only “owners” and “managers” roles within the system.  

This is a major change for people who have been using moderators to help manage a page. LinkedIn says moderators will be downgraded to regular members once the new platform is in place. Since the new system should be launch in the next few weeks, anyone needing access to manage a Group who is currently listed as a moderator needs to be “promoted” to a manager.

There will also be changes due available features during the migration to the new system. LinkedIn warned users in the email that moderation queues will be temporarily unavailable, as well the admin and auto-generated group emails for things like digests, automated templates and announcements.

According to a report from MarketingLand, “a LinkedIn spokesperson said Group admins will have access to moderation tools for blocking and removing group members, with the new version rolling out in the coming weeks — but the newly built moderation queue won’t be available for the next few months.”

This will be a big change for LinkedIn Group users and it’s coming soon. Be sure to check that your moderators get upgraded to managers and that you let Group members know about any changes that would affect them.

For more information about upcoming changes to popular web platforms, read this article about recent changes to Google ads.

Like most tech companies, Google is constantly updating and refining their services to make them more useful to business owners. Whether it’s updating their algorithm, creating opportunities for local businesses or setting up new ad types, there is always something happening at Google that marketers should be aware of. But sometimes, new features don’t get the attention Google wants. To get more people to try their newest ad format, Google is offering some juicy incentives.

A few months ago, Google launched new “Responsive Ads”. The system allows advertisers to create an ad set several headlines and descriptions, which Google’s algorithm will mix and match to create various incarnations of an ad.  The feature was originally only available to a few advertisers, but it will be available to almost everyone in the near future.

There are many benefits to this kind of setup. Google can dynamically create more ads for auction, which gives the content more of a chance to show up in auctions and appear in more search results. And the automated nature of these ads make them quicker than making an equally large number by hand or through A/B testing.

Google plans to begin rolling out its responsive search ads to more accounts in English, French, German and Spanish starting during September. To get more people on board in the meantime, Google is increasing the lengths of Text Ads which can prepare people for using the responsive ads in the near future.

“While we work on improving responsive search ads across languages, it’s important to extend that same advantage to your existing text ads. That’s why, starting in late August, you’ll be able to add a third headline and second description to your text ads,” Google explained in a blog post last week.

Besides the extra space for ads with longer headlines, there are a lot of benefits for using the new ad format. For example, you can more effectively target three keywords with one ad because the Google Ads algorithm can switch the order of the headlines to place the most relevant one first.

It’s pretty easy to start taking advantage of the new space. Google recommends adding a third headline and a second description to your existing text ads. “For example, if you’re a retailer using two headlines that show your brand name and official site, you can add a third headline showing shipping details or special offers.”

Though there is something to be said over the loss of control of the exact way your ad looks, if using responsive ads produces better click through rates and a higher return on investment for ads, there’s no reason not to use it. However, you may want to explain to clients how responsive ads work, otherwise, they might think the ads got jumbled somehow.

Responsive ads are another step in Google’s increased use of machine learning and algorithms to produce better ad results for marketers. The product may need some more refining, but responsive ads should become a part of a Google Ads marketing strategy. And in the meantime, there’s no reason not to use the extended content for Text Ads.

For more information about recent updates to Google, read this article about the algorithm update that has affected rankings across the web.

If you’ve noticed a change in your website’s organic traffic over the past week you’re not crazy and you’re not alone. Google recently confirmed that a broad core algorithm update is rolling out and the effects of the changes are still just starting to hit some websites.

As anyone who works with website SEO should know, Google sometimes like to make updates to their algorithm without making an announcements, while at other times, they scream it from the rooftops months in advance. This is one of the quieter algorithm updates, which only came to light once enough people started asking Google why their rankings had changed.

If the phrase “broad algorithm update” seems unhelpfully generic, that is mostly by design. This update is designed to balance results in a way that Google thinks is more fair or that leads to better-quality results. If they told people what changed, then sites would change to adapt to the new algorithm.

Unfortunately, this means there is no easy way to “fix” things if your site has dropped in rank after the update. The only way to raise your ranking will be to use a consistent digital marketing strategy that builds your site’s SEO over the long term. When the algorithm was first being noticed, Google’s response to people was that nothing had changed in their guidelines.

In a Twitter post, the company stated, “This week we released a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. Our guidance about such updates remains the same as in March.”

Google updates take time to spread through the entire system, so some sites may not see the effects of the algorithm update yet, but may notice it in the next week or so. When asked on Aug. 3rd how long the rollout should take, a Google liason suggested they will be finishing up sometime soon.

In a response to a Twitter request from SearchEngineLand, Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan said, “Say by middle of next week, should be fully rolled out.”

While the lack of specific details about what has changed are lacking, this is consistent with Google’s behavior with updates. When Google wants to influence the way websites are built or the way content is constructed, they loudly announce in advance what will change. This was the case for the switch to the mobile-friendly, HTTPS, and anti-spam updates to the algorithm. Google wanted people to make mobile friendly sites, switch to HTTPS and stop using keyword or link spam in websites, so they made those updates very public.

These smaller updates are more about fine tuning the system to remove any holes that spammers can use to influence search results. Despite their best efforts, people can still manipulate Google to giving incorrect or less than useful links for certain low-ranking phrases. It makes sense for Google to try and patch out any issues before the upcoming mid-term elections, when search engine results and social media posts will be under scrutiny for signs of manipulation.   

The latest update to the Google algorithm is reminder than any “get rank quick” scheme will eventually become a losing strategy when Google changes the algorithm to account for the trick and SEO manager that try to scheme their way to top of rankings will eventually fall back down.

For more information about recent updates to major web services, read this article about a recent change to the Facebook API that will prevent posting to personal Facebook pages.

In a way, social media marketing can be a little bit like surfacing. The rules and best practices for social media platforms are a constantly changing wave and it’s up to the savvy marketer to ride the wave to the best of their ability. Over the past year, the wave has become a lot more unpredictable as social media platforms have changed rules and guidelines to address some issues with the way people have used their platforms. Marketers should be prepared for some rough seas in August as a several new changes to the Facebook API will eliminate long-used features.

Normally, social media platforms announce their plans for major long in advance, so app developers and marketers have time to change their systems accordingly. This is true for the Facebook changes that will go into effect on August 1. When they were first announced in April, August seemed like forever away, but the time is near and marketers need to be ready because some of the changes may require major changes to the way agencies handle Facebook marketing.

The most notable change involves the way marketer post to personal profiles. Starting August 1, it will be impossible to use a third-party post scheduler (e.g. Hootsuite, Buffer, Sprout, etc.) to post to Personal Pages on Facebook. This may seem like a small thing, since most clients don’t want you to post on their personal Facebook page, but there will be situation when this does become an issue.

Too illustrate, if a lawyer wants to post things on their Facebook Business page and their personal Facebook page, they can only schedule the post in a third-party software for the business page. A marketing firm that was charged with posting to the personal page would have to log into the personal account of the lawyer and make the post within Facebook. What makes the situation all the worse is that posts can’t be scheduled in advance on Facebook’s personal pages so this change will make Facebook marketing to personal pages much harder.

Keep in mind, anyone who’s scheduled post in an auto-posting system that were scheduled to post to a personal page after Aug. 1 will fail to publish. As was mentioned before, this may not affect a large number of marketers, but for those that will be affected, they will need to be ready to post every day from Facebook for the personal pages they manage.

Another change that will go into effect on Aug 1 involves organic post targeting. In the past, it was possible for Facebook page owners to target subsets of their audience when creating organic posts. This was useful for pages with a diverse audience and the page owner wanted certain posts to be seen by certain demographics in their audience. While this feature isn’t being completely removed, it will new limitations.

As Hootsuite explained in a post warning users of the upcoming changes, “It will no longer be possible to target organic posts by gender or language when publishing to Facebook Pages. Age targeting will also be limited to specifying a minimum age of 13, 17, 18, 19 or 21. Targeting by location, interested in, relationship, and education will still be supported.”

While this is certainly frustrating to people who were using the organic post audience segmentation tools, the good news is that it won’t affect ads, which are reliant on targeted audiences. According to Facebook, these updates to targeting do not apply to boosted posts.

For more information about recent changes that can help online marketers, read this article about recent changes to Google that will make the search giant event more useful for online marketers.

Though other options exists, Google remains the premier tool for local businesses that are trying to succeed with online marketing. Whether this is by directing traffic to their site from search engines, serving as an analytics tool for website owners or giving directions to local customers, there are a lot of ways to use Google to help local businesses. To make the platform even more useful for business owners, Google recently announced some small changes to Image Search and Google My Business that could have a big impact for marketers.

The first change, while small, will definitely help SEO marketers make better sense of the traffic data they receive. Every day, hundreds of millions of people use Google Images to visually discover and explore content on the web. Google’s new plan will make it easier to see how Google Images affects their traffic.

“For webmasters, it hasn’t always been easy to understand the role Google Images plays in driving site traffic,” the company explained in a post about the upcoming change. “To address this, we will roll out a new referrer URL specific to Google Images over the next few months. The referrer URL is part of the HTTP header, and indicates the last page the user was on and clicked to visit the destination webpage.”

For app developers and those that use third-party software to analyze web traffic all they need to do is make sure that they are ingesting the new referer URL, and attribute the traffic to Google Images. The new referer URL is: https://images.google.com.  For the most part, the traffic will come from image.google.com, however some users may still choose to go directly to a country specific service, such as google.co.uk for the UK. In these cases, the referer uses that country TLD (for example, images.google.co.uk).

Knowing when people come to a site as a result of an image search is a valuable tool for SEO marketers. It lets them know what kinds of visual content works best and what sort of image searches bring people to their website. This information can be used to create better ALT tags and SEO friendly image names for website content.

Another beneficial change is being made to Google Map listings. Online listing platforms have to take multiple steps to ensure that the people making listings are doing so legitimately. If Google took everyone at their word for listing information, you can easily imagine how many trolls or jokesters would list their business address as 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Whether by mistake of malice, if the wrong location information is displayed by Google, it can be a nightmare for consumers and the business itself. This is why it often takes a considerable amount of time for verifications to be finalized. However, this leaves business owners and marketers in a state of limbo while these checks happen.

Last week, Google announced a plan to use a new system to notify business owners when their Google My Business or Google Map listings go live.

“We’re in the process launching a new notification that informs you when your business goes live on Google services, like Search and Maps,” wrote a community manager on the Google Advertise Forum. “You’ll only receive live listing notifications if your business accounts are fewer than 100 listings and your user-language preference is set to “en-US.” Bulk verification accounts currently don’t receive this messaging.”

This may sound like a little thing, but it is a Godsend for business owners or marketers who have to manage a large number of locations. To illustrate, if a chain of local restaurants wants to list all their location, it’s now easier to know when each location’s listing goes live. It will make it easier to keep track of where things are in the process and to point out potential issues with a particular location.

As the post explained, “To confirm your listing’s real-time status, click the direct links on your Your business is on Google card. On the card, you can see your listing’s views in the past 28 days. Visit your Insights tab for more information regarding your listings.”

Some users may already be receiving these messages, as Google says their plan is to roll the feature out broadly in the near future.

For more recent changes from Google, read this article on Google’s new offline conversion tracking tools.

One of the challenges of advertising, both traditional and digital, is showing a return on investment for in-store sales. Without directly asking, it can be tricky to know if a customer came to a local store as a result of the ad or for some other factor. In the past, Google has tried to remedy this situation by offering some offline conversion data. Recently, Google has increased the functionality of the store visitation and local conversion reporting to help local marketers.

According to a recent report, Google has begun an expanded rollout of store visits reporting for Google Ads. Now, customers of all sizes can get reports that provides performance breakouts by individual store locations.

As Google explained in a help article on the subject, “The per-store report shows you an estimate of how many in-person visits you’re getting for each of your physical locations, and conversions from other shop-specific actions – like phone calls, website visits, getting driving directions and more. Using this information, you can move your budget around to increase the performance of shops that are already successful, or to shops that require more support.”

Originally, these location-specific reports were only available to large, enterprise customers who had thousands of ad clicks and impressions. Along with the new reporting changes, Google plans to make the reporting feature available to all customers using location extensions.

Here are the new offline actions or engagements that will be included by default in the reports, in addition to physical store visits:

• Calls — clicks on call buttons.
• Directions — clicks on “get directions” buttons.
• Website visits — clicks on website links associated with location-based ads.
• Orders — clicks on “order” buttons.
• Menu actions — clicks on menu links.
• Other actions — “Clicks on other tracked user actions (for example: share location, save, etc.) on any Google location-based ad or service after an ad interaction.”

Answers given to SearchEngineLand by Google indicate that “in order to access the data (in the new interface only), advertisers select the desired campaigns and then Locations in the left navigation, then click the “Geographic report drop-down” and “per-store report.” For more details, see the Help Center page.”

While this change doesn’t affect the nature of the ads, there are still many benefits for business owners and marketers. Offline conversions are the hardest metric to track for digital marketers, so anything that makes it easier to see which ads are working and which are not can only help create more effective campaigns.

Furthermore, have the information broken down by individual stores is extremely beneficial for businesses with multiple locations. Even within the same geographic area, the things that make an effective ad in one area may not work for another. Being able to see how each location is affected by an ad set makes it possible to see what changes to need to be made.

For more information about recent changes to ads on Google, read this article about the recent rebranding and consolidation of the various Google advertising products into Google Ads.

In recent years, online services like Facebook, Twitter and Google have greatly affected the way people access information and learn about new things. Due to a series of events, people and governments around the world are looking more closely at the activities of brands on social media and taking efforts to mitigate any negative effects. To that end, Facebook recently announced several new features to improve the consumer experience on Facebook, that could affect the work of online marketers.

To start with one of the more innocuous changes, Facebook is testing Keyword Snooze features for consumers. As the name suggests, Facebook users will be able to prevent being shown all posts related to a certain keyword. Facebook is touting the new feature as a way to prevent spoilers from content like movies or TV show.

As the company explained in a blog post, “Located in a post’s upper right-hand menu in News Feed, the feature gives people the option to temporarily hide posts by keywords, which are pulled directly from text in that post. If you choose to “snooze” a keyword, you won’t see posts in your News Feed containing that exact word or phrase from any person, Page or Group for 30 days. In other words, fewer spoilers.”

This Keyword Snooze feature can be helpful and problematic for marketers. In general, it’s a waste of resources to show content to people who don’t want to see it. A snooze feature means less Facebook ads will be spent on people who have already noted they don’t want to see content related to a certain keyword. However, if a marketer is specifically trying to engage with someone who may shy away from a certain topic, the keyword snooze feature is problematic because a user can avoid content, so long as they use the snooze every 30 days.

The Keyword Snooze feature is likely to get a lot of use over the coming months as political ads begin to pick up for the mid-term election. So this may be a challenge for Facebook marketers in the future if commonly used keywords get “snoozed” often. The Keyword Snooze feature may lead to a significant changes to the way social media content is worded.

The other changes Facebook recently announced also relate to providing a better, and more transparent, ad experience for Facebook users. While it hasn’t led to dramatic changes in engagement or social media usage, the recent scandals involving the use of Facebook ads and data has damaged the trust people place in the content they find on social media. In an attempt to restore trust in online advertising, Facebook has introduced a couple of features that will show more information to consumers about the source of online ads.

So in addition to the new restrictions and rules related to political ads, Facebook is introducing two more features to help consumers, a View Active Ads feature and a Page Information feature that will show along ads.

With the View Active Ads feature, users can now see the ads a Page is running across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and our partner network, even if those ads aren’t shown to a a particular user. Just log into Facebook, visit any Page and select “Info and Ads.” Users will be able to see ad creative and copy, and they can flag anything suspicious by clicking on “Report Ad.” This feature will address an issue that was seen during the 2016 election where bad actors would send ads to opposing sides of an issue to rile people up. The new feature would make it easier to see when that is happening.

Facebook hasn’t commented on how they will prevent abuse of the system. Though there is likely more to the program than they’ve described so far, it seems like it would be easy for someone to spam an account by flagging all their active ads. For example, any one who hates “Organization X” can simply search for the company’s Facebook page, view all of their active ads, then flag them for some reason or another.

The other new feature to improve transparency is a More Page Information feature where users can learn more about Pages, even if they don’t advertise. For example, you can see any recent name changes and the date the Page was created. Again, this is to counter the effects of bad actors who constantly change the names of pages to mask their true purpose.

Again, this feature could be problematic for legitimate business owners. For example, a business that went through rebranding effort may not want to have the old business name visible. Facebook is planning to add more Page information in the coming weeks. So the true extent of the impact on marketers won’t be known for a while.

For more information about online marketing, read this article about recent changes for Google.

If you were one of the many people who used the phrase Google Ads as a catch all term for several Google ad products, you were actually ahead of the times. In an attempt to consolidate their branding and services, products like Google AdWords or DoubleClick will be rebranded. To go along with the new name, Google Ads is also introducing new ad formats specifically designed to help local businesses.

Though much of the fundamentals of the services won’t change, Google is renaming and consolidating some of their ad services. Google AdWords is now Google Ads. All of the DoubleClick advertiser products and Google Analytics 360 Suite services are now under the brand Google Marketing Platform. Similarly, the DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange are integrated into a new unified platform called Google Ad Manager.

“Over the years, Google ads have evolved from helping marketers connect with people on Google Search, to helping them connect at every step of the consumer journey through text, video, display and more”, the company explained in a blog post announcing the change. “That’s why today we are introducing simpler brands and solutions for our advertising products: Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform, and Google Ad Manager. These new brands will help advertisers and publishers of all sizes choose the right solutions for their businesses, making it even easier for them to deliver valuable, trustworthy ads and the right experiences for consumers across devices and channels.”

As was mentioned before, the rebranding won’t substantially change the advertising platform, though there will be some user interface and transparency changes. Rather the rebranding will hopefully make it easier to business owners and marketers to know which Google products is right for them.

Business owners and marketers who want to learn more about these changes, they should Register now to watch the Google Marketing Live event on July 10, 9:00 a.m. PT / 12:00 p.m. ET. It will feature information about the rebranding and many other new Ads, Analytics and Platforms solutions designed to help you grow a business.

To go along with the simplified name, Google is introducing a new ad format, Smart Campaigns, which make it a lot easier for small businesses to run campaigns by making everything simpler. Smart Campaigns are designed for small and local businesses that don’t have dedicated marketing staff and even those businesses that don’t have websites setup yet.

According to SearchEngineLand, “Smart Campaigns will be the default campaign type for new advertisers in Google Ads. The campaigns are almost entirely automated, from ad creatives to delivery optimization, based on the product or service being advertised and the goal the advertiser sets. Campaign goals include phone calls, website visits and requests for directions.”

As is usually the case, Google offered an example of the power of the new ad format in the form of a testimonial from an early adopter. They mentioned Suzie Mills, the owner of Honest Soul Yoga in Alexandria, VA, started using Google Ads to get more people to sign up for her yoga classes. Google’s new smart campaigns helped her promote special offers, get calls from her ads, and keep her classes full. “Our phone is ringing off the hook,” Google quoted Suzie as saying, “and the number of intro offers we’re selling has doubled in 60 days.”

The new ad format will have more visual elements than Google’s previous PPC campaigns. Google hope these Images will help a company’s products or services stand out. It will even get better as time progresses. Later this year, Google will launch Image Picker, making it easier  to showcase what makes a business unique. Advertisers can pick the top three images from Google’s suggestions or upload their own images, and then the ads will be ready to go.

Google plans to improve targeting so a company’s ads are shown to customers who are interested in what a business offers, and are likely to call, visit the store, or make a purchase on the website (similar to the objectives found in Facebook Ads). Google states that Smart campaigns are three times better at getting your ad in front of the right audience.

So goodbye AdWords, hello Google Ads. Though it may only seem like a name change, it’s the start of a lot of big things from Google. For more news related to Google products, read this recent article on our site.

One of Google’s most used features, much to the annoyance of many website owners who are denied clicks, are the Knowledge Panels. The cards appear as the “answer” when people type in a particular question or search term. For example, typing in “Smithsonian Museums” into search will give basic information about the various locations in the national museum with information provided by Wikipedia. Google is now making it easier for businesses and other users to update the panels created about them or their organization after passing a verification process.

Google’s Knowledge Panels have often been the source of controversy because they rely on AI and the internet to provide answers, which has led to incorrect information being displayed. To combat this, Google is making it easier for people with verified Google profiles to make edits to the Knowledge Panels about themselves in certain situations.

“When you search for well-known people, organizations and things on Google, you’ll often come across a Knowledge Panel on the results page—a box with an overview of key information and links to resources to help you go deeper,” explained Product Manager Lauren Clark in a Google blog post. “Individuals and organizations with Knowledge Panels can use our verification process to claim their panels and provide authoritative feedback on the information and images presented. Now we’re updating that process as well as extending verification eligibility to more entities.”

This is important to business owners for a variety of reasons. Depending on the size of a business, they may already have a Knowledge Panel created for them by Google, especially if the brand is searched for often. Google likes to fill this information with data from Wikipedia when possible, but sometimes, they rely on less accurate sources. Now, marketers can directly update inaccurate information that comes up on Knowledge Cards related to their business.

Any person, organization, sports team, event and media property with a Knowledge Panel is eligible to get verified and suggest edits to the information shown. Simply search for the name or organization on Search and click or tap the prompt below the Knowledge Panel to begin the verification process.

Once verified, the new representative will be able to make changes to factual information. For example, some stats in the knowledge panel are specific to the type of entity (e.g. a movie’s run time or a person’s birthday) can also have changes suggested.

Most importantly, as the topic’s representative, if a suggested image is accepted, it takes priority over other images. The suggested image must be appropriate, represent the topic well, and cannot be an ad.

Some parts of the knowledge panel cannot be changed, such as:

• Subtitle
• Wikipedia snippet
• Images other than the main image
• People also search for section

Business owners should Google their business to see what information comes up. If they have a Knowledge Panel already, they should consider getting verified so they can make sure the information shown is as accurate and up-to-date as possible.

For more recent news about updates and changes to Google, read this article on Google’s plan to let people opt-out of more ad formats.

While most consumers have experienced positive online ads, where the ads targeted to them are relevant and helpful, many consumers are growing frustrated with ads that targeted to them for reasons they don’t like. For example, if an advertiser is trying to persuade the public to accept a certain point of view, they could target people with the opposing viewpoint for ads. This is a logical thing to do, but it can be annoying for someone online to be bombarded with ads for things they don’t want to see.

In an attempt to make the ad experience better for consumers and for greater transparency about who is paying for certain ads, Google is expanding it’s tools for Ad Settings to limit personalization. The company will also make it easier for users to opt out of certain targeting groups.

“Today, we’re launching the new Ad Settings, which makes it easier for you to understand and control how your ads are tailored to you,” explained Philippe de Lurand Pierre-Paul, a Product Manager at Google. “Over the years, you’ve told us that transparency and control over your data and ad. We’re also providing more transparency around why you see certain ads by expanding Why this ad? to all of our services that show Google ads (like Search and YouTube) and almost all websites and apps that partner with us to show ads.”

In practical terms, this means that consumers can see why they were chosen for a certain ad campaign (i.e. which targeting demographics they matched) and the source of the ad. This feature has been available on Google for years, but it will now expand to all of their services and partner websites.

By going to the “Personal info and privacy” section of their ad settings, users can opt out of allowing Google to personalize ads per data it collects on users, such as the information based on a user’s actions, information a user has added to their Google account or data Google’s partner-advertisers have shared with Google about the user (for example, if a user has visited an advertiser’s website or signed up for a newsletter).

According to Google, turning off a factor means consumers will no longer receive tailored ads related to it across all Google services, websites and apps that partner with Google to show ads, as long as the user is signed in to their Google Account. However, this doesn’t mean an ad-free experience. The ads can still be based on general factors, like the subject of what they’re looking at or the time of day, or any other factor that is still turned on.

This is probably great news for consumers and a necessary step for Google in the long run. Many consumers have begun using ad blocking technology for the sake of privacy and for a better online experience (no one likes being shown ads they dislike or find offensive). Making it easier to tailor the kind of ads that are targeted to them can help keep people from blocking ads and can help position Google in a better light when it comes to targeted ads.

For marketers, the change is bittersweet. If people who are likely to ignore an ad turn off their targeting for certain factors, that’s less ad budget wasted on impressions with little likelihood to covert. On the other hand, anything that reduces the number of potential audience members increases the cost per click. Also, there’s are legitimate times when a business would want to target people with differing viewpoints. If a person turns off those ad factors, it can makes it harder to change minds on important topics. Just imagine how many people will turn off ad factors related to politics. Online campaigning for the mid-term elections just got a little harder for everyone.

Advertisers should also be a little more wary about the kinds of ads and campaigns they run. While it may have been an effective strategy to use provocative content in ads in the past, when people can easily see the source of ads or block things they don’t want to see, stoking controversy is a way to get people to turn off ad targeting or to block the targeting factors the campaign was using.

To learn more about recent Google updates, read this article about new Google My Business features that can help local business owners.