Pay-Per-Click (PPC), is a great way to boost your business’s results. Any business that wishes to build a successful online presence must invest time and energy to keep up with the latest PPC trends.
But what are the most important PPC trends that you should focus on for greater success?
Well, 2023 will probably be a wild year in PPC – recession, privacy, and automation, to name a few factors.
We will need to be flexible and forward-thinking like never before.
So here are the top 7 PPC trends you need to know for 2022 – from paid search to paid social, to remarketing, and beyond.
1. Automation
Automation continues to be a hot topic in PPC trends. It has been picking up speed and momentum for a couple of years now, but it feels like it is about to enter hyperdrive.
This move is most evident in Google’s announcement that it will start replacing expanded text ads (ETAs) with responsive search ads (RSAs) in June 2022.
Advertisers that have already had RSAs live will be ahead of the game. They’ll have the processes to create and manage these ads, performance history, and metrics they can build on.
Advertisers that haven’t yet included RSAs in their ad groups need to start today.
RSAs require a different approach than ETAs, backed by solid procedures and strategies to build comprehensive, targeted messaging. The challenge of extrapolating, consolidating, and collating information from multiple sources means that this is not a job you can complete without resorting to automation.
B2B successful marketers have already been laser-focused on getting the right content to the right audience at precisely the right time. Automation is used to help them do this.
Marketers will gain an edge over competitors and businesses by investing in innovative technology. This will allow brands to be more agile and adaptable with their marketing.
It’s time to identify audiences, create various content, develop differentiated ads, and embrace automation for paid search and paid social.
2. First-Party Data
A second trend is an expectation that brands will continue to advocate for privacy and make it a priority to acquire first-party information.
Digital marketers will depend more on integrating first-party information with advertising platforms in 2022.
Since the inception of digital marketing, pixels, tags, and cookies have been essential for marketing attribution. We must plan for the future without these tracking methods, even though companies like Google and Apple are starting to limit their use in the name of privacy.
The reality of a cookieless world is fast approaching. To ensure a successful entry into this world, it will be key in 2022 to heavily strategize, invest, and test into first-party data sources and apply them holistically across your marketing channels.
Digital marketing will only be possible if first-party data is valued and able to be integrated with advertising networks.
So marketers will be focusing on machine learning and other tech as they rebuild their first-party information to regain some of the targetings that they used before.
3. Audience Targeting & Segmentation
Your brand must show up online when users search for them, not only when they search.
The announcement about how Broad and Phrase match keywords will be categorized means that audience characteristics will be more important to target and capture our audience with less reliance upon keywords.
The traditional digital levers advertisers control are becoming less effective as more smart programs are released.
Digital Marketers must focus on the most important things they still have control over, such as audience targeting and segmentation.
4. Responsive Search Ads
Google’s Expanded Text Ads (ETAs) will be gone in 2022. That’s why Google encourages advertisers to use Responsive Search Ads, letting PPC marketers know that RSAs are the ad format of the future.
Do not be afraid to pin or control your ads, even when Google warns you about poor ad strength.
Advertisers who have RSAs in place will be ahead of their competition. They will have the tools and processes to create and manage these ads and performance history and metrics that they can use.
So if you have not yet included RSAs within their ad groups should do so immediately. RSAs are a different approach to ETAs and require solid strategies and procedures to create targeted messaging.
5. Testing
You should continue testing Expanded Text Ads until the end of the expanded text ads insight. Once they are no longer possible to create, consider adding additional variations to your testing. Also, test Responsive Search Ads. You can test different messages, and you can also pin other parts of an ad.
The shift to ad creativity automation is probably the most important trend in paid search. This directly impacts the technical and tactical aspects of paid search campaign management, digital marketing strategy, and paid search.
Instead of testing performance variances with a few words, PPC marketers need to think big and use ads focusing on concepts and phrases aligned with intent and not specific words.
6. Diversification
PPC marketers must help brands look beyond paid advertising to become more successful. Your brand and business will be more stable if you have more channels to grow them.
It is important to ensure that the brand you work with has established other marketing channels such as SEO, PR, email marketing, and affiliate marketing.
This could mean you have to leave the comfort zone of Facebook and Google Ads and look at what other ad platforms, such as TikTok and Snapchat, LinkedIn, Quora, and Pinterest can offer.
Although skilled marketers will continue to find ways to track as much data as possible, those who look at ROI data holistically are likely to have the greatest success.
Multichannel diversification will be more important as many marketers have witnessed one-channel success stories fall overnight following these changes.
7. Conversion Tracking
You should use the Facebook Conversions API and Google’s Offline Conversion Tracking from the platforms and look for ways to maintain tracking quality in a pixel-less environment.
Smart marketers will quickly get on board with offline conversion tracking and integration to help future-proof their efforts in 2022 and beyond.
So embracing offline conversion tracking isn’t just a necessity for survival, though. It’s also the key to improving the performance of campaigns through better optimization.
Conclusion on PPC Trends
As PPC trends constantly change and evolve, it is vital to keep on top of them, and these 7 PPC Trends To Follow In 2022 will help you do so.
Relevant case studies of Todays.Agency
- An eCommerce platform provider achieved the desired result through Google Ads
- We reached CPAs under 1 Eur in Google and Facebook campaigns
- How do you increase sales with Google Ads for integrated playground equipment
2022 is another year for advertisers to be the nimble and take full advantage of all the flexibility search marketing offers. So monitor your data closely for anomalies and have a campaign structure that is flexible enough to support changing the course when business data warrants it, and use your tools and automation to keep things running smoothly.
