Digital Marketing News: Google Phases Out Search Console & Adds Bidding Options, Marketing Business to Gen Z, Instagram Post Study & More

The rise of Spotify as an advertising channel
Spotify has over 217 million users, and the music and podcasts they increasingly listen to have brought greater attention from marketers. ClickZ takes a look at how marketers are embracing Spotify for advertising. ClickZ

Ad Revenue Holds Steady Despite Recession Worries
Digital advertising spending was up nearly 20 percent in the second quarter of 2019, according to newly-released study data that also highlights the comparatively greater number of small-to-medium size firms using digital versus traditional formats. Broadcasting & Cable

Google has moved to implement a full launch of its previously-announced unified first-price ad auctions, a move that will take place in the coming weeks, bringing new options for digital marketers who use Google Ad Manager. AdExchanger

Forrester: How Amazon’s ad growth will threaten Google, Facebook, agencies and ad-tech
Forrester Research has released a new report looking at the strong growth of Amazon ads and how the company’s rise is affecting an array of rivals from Facebook to agencies and ad-tech firms. Marketing Dive takes a look at the report and how Amazon’s ad growth may also affect marketers and vendors. Marketing Dive

Mozilla flips the default switch on Firefox tracker cookie blocking
Firefox web browser creator Mozilla has released a new version that enables anti-tracking settings by default, a change from its previous optional default setting, and TechCrunch looks at how the switch may affect digital marketers. TechCrunch

Gen Z Marketing: How to Market Your Business to the Next Generation [Infographic]
Only 14.4 percent of Gen Z survey respondents between the ages of 14 and 26 use email for work, with 68 percent opening emails that include sales or special offers, while 85 percent use YouTube — several of the recently-released statistics from Campaign Monitor of interest to online marketers. Social Media Today

How Consumers Really Feel About Ads
74 percent of survey respondents implemented strategies to avoid ads, up from 64 percent in 2018, and a newly-released eMarketer podcast looks at consumer sentiment and how it relates to ads, especially what drives attempts to block them. eMarketer

Older Consumers Embrace New Media, Tech In Big Way
84 percent of millennials and 74 percent of Gen Xers use Facebook, while their older demographic counterparts the Baby Boomers and those in the Silent Generation have seen the biggest rise in usage of the platform over the past four years, some of the data from a Pew Research Center study examining technology usage. MediaPost

Saying goodbye to the old Search Console
Google has bid adieu to longstanding portions of its Search Console, as the search giant continues work on the newest incarnation, and this week it completely shut down its old Google Search Console. Google Webmaster Central

New Study Looks at How Emojis, Videos and Caption Lengths Impact Instagram Post Performance
Business Instagram usage was the focus of newly-released study data examining over 5.4 million posts from some 34,000 firms. The report from Quintly revealed that over 68 percent of posts consist of single images, among other findings of interest to digital marketers. Social Media Today

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE:

A lighthearted look at big data promises by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist

Apple Reveals New iPhones At Yearly September Event — The Onion

TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

• Lee Odden — Content Marketing World 2019: Social Roundup, Day 3 — SocialAnimal
• Lee Odden — Content Marketing World 2019: Social Roundup, Day 2 — SocialAnimal

Have you found your own top B2B content marketing or digital advertising stories from the past week?

Thanks for joining us, and we hope you’ll come back again next week for more top digital marketing industry news, and in the meantime you can follow us at @toprank on Twitter for even more timely daily news. Also, don’t miss the full video summary on our TopRank Marketing TV YouTube Channel.