What happened in the world of PPC advertising in 2024?
PPC advertising - one of the areas of digital marketing that is definitely not suitable for the faint of heart.
But instead of getting heart palpitations at the thought of having to adapt your way of working to the constant changes in the field, you'd better read our article. 🔍
In it, we will introduce you to the most important trends and news from the world of Google advertising and not only for 2024, so you can stay two steps ahead of the competition and always get the best price per click. 🐾
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are becoming an increasingly important part of any PPC advertising success
Some may not like it, but they will have to get used to it. The entry of artificial intelligence into advertising has its pros and cons, but it is a fact.
🧐 Among the positives are faster creation of texts, advertising titles and descriptions, optimization of budgets, analyses and forecasts, and among the negatives are possible inaccuracies and mistakes.
Specifically in Google Ads, artificial intelligence and machine learning enable more precise targeting and overall better performance through automated bidding strategies and special campaigns.
Examples of these are the Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns, which are gaining in popularity.
Performance Max campaigns allow advertisers to show and optimize their ads across all Google ad channels simultaneously in real-time, increasing reach and performance goals.
Demand Gen campaigns allow advertisers to create attention-grabbing visual ads that engage consumers in the early stages of their customer journey - even before they're actively searching for your brand.
The places they can be seen are Google Discovery Feed, Gmail, and YouTube, which makes them especially useful because visual content has been favored by audiences lately.
Automations and smart bidding are gaining popularity in PPC advertising
The numerous automation options that almost every advertising platform offers enable the PPC specialist to focus on the more strategic part of the job.
Among the tasks that can be automated are click bidding, audience targeting, and analytics and report generation.
Smart bidding strategies in Google advertising, for example, optimise bids in real time based on user behaviour and contextual data. Algorithms process a huge amount of information to improve campaign performance and achieve a better cost per click.
What's not super about it?
Last cookies remain (for now), but the focus on protecting personal data also
🍪 Loves me, doesn't love me. Remove cookies, don't remove them. Google played nicely with marketers' nerves in recent years, first freaking everyone out with the disappearance of third-party cookies from Google Chrome, then abandoning that decision.
This created serious data tracking challenges and a need to move to first-party tracking - something many websites were not ready for and has certainly caused a disruption in results.
Well, cookies are here to stay for now, but the focus on data protection and the need to develop solutions that take it into account remains just as important.
Among them is...
Google Consent Mode V2
In order to target remarketing audiences in Google Ads from March 2024 it became mandatory to implement Google Consent Mode V2.
This is a tool that obtains information about the user's consent to the use of cookies and their choice of which ones. Google Consent Mode V2 then passes this information to the Google tags installed on your website.
In addition to consenting to the use of user data in analytics and advertising cookies, Google Consent Mode V2 requests permission to use your personal information for personalized advertising and remarketing.
More and more Google ads among organic results
Traditionally, Google ads have been displayed above organic results, but lately the huge competition has created the conditions for certain searches to display as many as 3-4-5 ads.
🪄 You guessed it yourself, so many ads could take up all the part of the magic box that is visible without having to scroll down.
Everybody wants to be there, so SEO specialists work tirelessly to rank their clients' sites at the top positions - 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and above the so-called "Fold" and the need to scroll.
However, if it's full of ads, what do we do? And with today's fierce competition, the ads are getting more and more. So Google have started a new practice where they will sometimes mix ads with organic results.
Yes, if you don't want to click on an ad, you'll have to watch carefully, but at least this way the organic results will also have a chance and SEOs still won't be out of a job.
Our attention spans shrink even further with the growth of Youtube Shorts Ads
And all video ads in general, as video content takes a noticeable lead over static content. Video ads boast a higher CTR and more shares. 📱
Through them, engaging approaches such as storytelling can be used to make it possible to build an emotional connection with the audience and lead to higher conversion rates.
YouTube ads, as much as they are hated by consumers, allow advertisers to reach a precisely targeted audience that has nowhere to run. And YouTube Shorts ads offer new opportunities to connect with younger audiences who like engaging and concise content.
TikTok ads and their impact on digital marketing and business
However, the real king of short video ads is undoubtedly TikTok - the platform that has been rapidly gaining popularity in recent years. 📈
Some ads in TikTok are between 3 and 5 seconds long, others are up to 60 seconds long depending on where they are shown. In any case, it's a unique chance to grab your audience's attention, especially if they're younger.
60% of TikTok users are Gen Z and over 38% of the Bulgarian population uses the platform.
We remind you of these facts because the big news this year was that advertising on TikTok is now available in Bulgaria through the platform's partners, like us at ADvantage digital agency.
Learn more about the specifics of TikTok advertising and what are the best practices to achieve success in TikTok.
Temu's aggressive competition and the thousands of affected businesses globally
Competition is a good thing, but it has to be fair. Soon a new player appeared on the field - the Chinese site Temu, which sells low-quality goods at insanely low prices and manages to attract a large number of new customers.
🛍️ Temu has proven to be an extremely aggressive competitor, spending millions in advertising. Users on Reddit cite a budget of $1.7 million per month for Google Ads alone.
The result: thousands of smaller businesses are affected on a global scale. Cost-per-click prices are rising furiously and for many PPC advertising is becoming an overly expensive indulgence.
Realistically, Temu is not doing anything illegal, which perhaps points to the need for more regulation in the PPC ad market.
Voice search is becoming a bigger deal
Correspondingly, the need to optimize ads (and not only ads) for voice search.
We are getting busier and busier, and the devices that want to make our lives easier are becoming more numerous. Hence the rise in the use of voice search. 👀
It is more conversational and uses more natural language. This means that PPC professionals do well to focus on more long-tail keywords that answer users' questions and correlate to their intent.
SEO professionals can also incorporate this strategy into the optimization of the content they create. Instead of writing "Benefits of Demand Gen Ads on Google," think about what a voice search would look like. Perhaps a user would rather ask Google "What are the benefits of Demand Gen campaigns?"
This enables marketers to attract consumers who are ready to take action (purchase, book, enquire) and/or are nearby if we are talking about a local business. Which brings us to the final...
Local PPC advertising is becoming increasingly important
Searches (voice or text) that include the phrase "near me/near me" are increasing. This shows the importance of paying attention to local PPC advertising strategy. 🏬
It can be used to target specific geographic areas so that nearby users visit your physical location.
Google prioritizes local results for many searches, so PPC ads that target a specific location are proving increasingly important for driving traffic to your site, whether it's a store, restaurant or otherwise.
PPC advertising keeps changing day after day, and it is up to us as professionals to take advantage of its positive development. Keep up to date, keep experimenting and keep adapting your strategies to what's happening in digital marketing. This is the only way to achieve true success.
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