What PPC will look like in 2024
Like with important keyword research that can help you boost your SEO, it’s important to pay attention to the latest trends in PPC advertising to ensure that you’re optimising your opportunities for customer engagement and boosting your CTR (click through rates). By tracking trends in PPC, you can help your business achieve the highest ROI (return on investment) on your products and services in 2024.
1. The rise of AI
As we see the continued growth in the use of AI systems for everything from advertising to academic writing, you can expect to see the impact of AI in PPC automation. Already Google Ads are making use of automated budgets and software generated headlines to regulate and optimise AI campaigns. It’s important to understand Google Ads’ use of these tools in order to stay up to date.
You can use automated algorithms to your advantage by setting up and monitoring effective conversion tracking and ensuring that your use of keywords are accurate and relevant. It’s also important that you maintain content of a high standard on your site that is tailored towards your target audiences.
Along with using AI to analyse data and predict trends that help you shape your marketing strategy and business decisions, it can also be used in automated bid strategies and Smart Bidding to optimise your ads for conversion rates or conversion value.
One version of automated bidding is known as a Portfolio Bid Strategy. This is where multiple campaigns, ad groups or keywords that share mutual goals are grouped together in order to appeal to the most profitable customer demographic.
Hear what Head of PPC Cal thinks about integration of AI:
I believe we will see the end of match types, with exact, phrase and broad moulding into one ‘smart matching’ AI solution, Google has been pushing broad match for a while and they can force adoption by removing the freedom of match types, im not sure this will be a positive change, as it helps Google increase their bottom line, but Broad matches algorithm does learn, so it could force fearful clients into future innovation
2. Collaborative filters
By checking your IP address when you search, Google can also guide its users to the content that they will find most appealing, no matter where they are in the world. This is what’s known as collaborative filtering and means that you can appeal to groups with mutual interests or similar backgrounds which helps you to tailor your content more accurately to their buying habits. This filter helps websites remain interesting and relevant to individual users based on the activity of other, similar users.
3. Target Audience
People always have been, and always will be, what makes or breaks your business – even more so than keywords, as we’ve seen from recent shifts to more audience specific targeted ads. What’s more, profitable customer engagement begins before leads even click through to your website’s landing page.
By setting exclusions on your ad campaigns so that you’re only being shown to users who are likely to be interested in your product or service, you can be smarter with your budget in order to get the highest ROI. This is especially important given the predicted increase in CPC as more and more companies are turning to PPC platforms to advertise their products and services.
Google Ads also recently introduced a feature that allows you to target audiences by specifying factors such as age group or household income for those who are most likely to see your ads. By combining keyword targeting and demographic targeting you can create your ads with a more specific customer in mind.
4. Social media
With more than half of the world now using social media, according to Smart Insights Digital Marketing, social platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook are often used in SEO strategies to generate organic traffic to your website through user-generated content. However, as more and more people, and businesses, use social media every day, with more than 250 million new users having joined the online community in the last year alone, it’s also an extremely useful platform where you can launch or expand your PPC ad campaign.
This means adapting your advertising to appeal to users across these platforms, and making sure that your ads appear in the most advantageous format in line with the growing multi-platform trend in current advertising.
5. Amazon’s Advertising Acceleration
As if more than 100 subsidiaries wasn’t enough property for the largest online retailer and technology provider, Amazon aren’t far behind Google and Facebook in terms of paid advertising domination as the third largest and fasting growing advertiser to date.
Part of their success is due to their ad expansion to platforms beyond Amazon’s website. However, it’s the emphasis on Buyer Intent, through product detail and page consistency, and visible product star-ratings, which has allowed Amazon to create a compelling and easy shopping experience for Amazon Shoppers that keeps them coming back for more.
6. Video Ads
Like that little screen on silent that transfixes everyone in the waiting room, even those who have no idea what’s going on, video ads are great for generating higher CTR (click-through rates). According to psychological studies, it has been proven that people are more likely to retain moving images than static ones or text.
By incorporating videos in your ad campaigns, you’re more likely to have a wider reach with a higher aesthetic appeal. In particular, Google’s latest video marketing tool, Bumper Ads, allows you to turn videos that are less than a minute and a half into clickable ads and has proven to be highly successful so far.
7. SEO and PPC: friends not rivals
One way of staying on top of the latest trends is to integrate your SEO and PPC strategies together in order to boost your website rankings which will, in turn, lead to increased engagement with your PPC ads and higher conversion rates and conversion values. SEO allows you to take into consideration things like customer research, keyword research, linking strategies, and the consistency and quality of your content both on your website and in your ads. By combining these marketing strategies, you can also analyse your top performing ad content and use this to inform marketing decisions and campaigns in the future.
Stay on trend, stay on target
By keeping track of PPC trends in 2024, you can ensure that you’re making use of the best and most up-to-date tools available to enhance your ad campaigns and see the highest ROI to help your business grow.
FAQs
Answered by Chelsea Powell
Is automated bidding different to smart bidding?
Yes, smart bidding and automated bidding are different.
What is an automated budget?
An automated budget uses software and data to improve the accuracy of budgeting.
How are increased privacy features changing the landscape of PPC?
Increased privacy can impact PPC both negatively & positively. It can limit ads but also it means you can learn from the data and behaviour of users.
How does Google collect data on its users?
Google uses cookies and unique identifiers to collect data.
Will social media advertising become more popular than search engine advertising?
Social media advertising is continuing to grow, however PPC and paid social work are completely different. PPC can target more bottom of funnel, whereas paid social heavily focuses on the top of the funnel.
