Well, here we are, less than a week away from Thanksgiving. While 2020 is a year that we will remember for many reasons, not all of which are rejoiceful, digital marketing hasn’t been one of those areas. The veritable cornucopia of news continues, and there’s still much to be thankful for, including what’s new this week. 

Learning to Crawl

Gooogle’s Googlebot, the generic name for their web crawler that looks at websites and web pages, has begun crawling with HTTP/2 Protocol. In essence. the new protocol allows the crawler to gather information faster and provide a more efficient data transfer method between the bot and the server.

While it won’t directly affect indexing results, it does allow crawling by utilizing fewer resources that might make for sluggish surfing by users. 

Webmasters can learn more here on the Google Developer page.

LinkedIn Calls Out LinkedIn’s Reporting Error

LinkedIn has reported that they’ve had a metrics error that has affected more than 400,000 advertisers. In August, their engineers discovered that users on iPhones who turned their phones to the side to watch video ads resulted in reporting those views as double views, one view vertically, then again after they turned their phone horizontally.

Advertisers will receive ad credits to make up for the error. While the issue’s scope is not significant, the number of free credits is likely substantial. LinkedIn will need to kick back to advertisers who received under-promised video deliveries over the past two years. 

They have also reported that they are working with the Media Rating Council (MRC) to audit their metrics.

LinkedIn has been over-charging a lot of advertisers for video view campaigns and impressions.

Overcharging occurred on iOS devices when LinkedIn users rotated their phones to watch videos, it counted them as additional views.— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) November 12, 2020

Facebook Busts a Move

Fact: Things in motion are more interesting to look at. So Facebook is testing new options to give still images a little movement in the feed.

It’s all an effort to keep people posting and engaging with content on Facebook, and it’s likely to work. Not only can slight zooms and pans be added, but you can adjust the layouts to make static images more appealing. And Brands are likely to be on-board as well.

While the motions are basic and not by any means ground-breaking, they offer some additional options not available as part of other social platforms, and it’s an opportunity to drive some further interaction with your photos.