For all the fears of industry collapse, PPC remains in rude health. Arguably it has never been healthier, with a projected $190 billion set to be spent on search advertising in 2024.
After years of same-old, same-old the sector the introduction of AI and other recent technological advancements means it’s more important than ever to keep an eye trained on market movements. Here are some of the most important PPC trends businesses and individuals should keep track of in 2024.
AI and Automation
Top of the list for obvious reasons.
Up until recently, AI was ticking along in the background perfectly fine, but fairly harmlessly. It was helpful, but not game-changing. All that changed with the advent of LLMs like ChatGPT, which signalled the massive advances that had been made in the technology when no-one was watching. Justified or not plenty of industries have experienced existential crises over it and PPC hasn’t been left out.
Due to AI’s constantly improving machine learning algorithms, companies can now create custom-tailored PPC campaigns that are accurately based on consumer behavior and data insights. Businesses can now keep track of the user-based data and leverage AI’s real-time data processing to tweak the target audience, update bids, and update ad placements on the go.
Furthermore, instead of spending hours curating content, creating visuals, and much more, automation can automate ads tailored for your audience at the touch of a button. Lastly with AI’s predictive models, data forecasting, and ease of integration, companies can better allocate their resources to increase ROI while managing their budgets.
How will it affect your job?
While AI and Automation seem to have everything under control when creating PPC campaigns for your audience, the need for manual input is still very much there. There will be a shift in the skills required for such campaigns as more and more tasks are being automated. Instead of manually carrying out these tasks, you’ll need to be well aware of the different AI being used as well as the impact of automation on bidding, budget allocation, PPC strategies, and data insights. In short, you’ll be able to do more, quicker, but that will mean you’ll need to be across more. Attention spans beware.
Voice Search Integration
With the growing use of Voice Assistants in 2024, major search engines are adapting themselves to better integrate voice search commands. This will affect search responses how your PPC ads are displayed on them.
Companies will need to update their keyword strategies, such as using long-tail keywords that target the conversational aspect of voice searches. Voice searches are more personalized and based on question-based queries such as “near me,” which will need to be a consideration. Through natural language processing (NLP) based on such searches, companies and businesses can better enhance their PPC campaign strategies for geo-targeted PPC advertisements
How will it affect your job?
For brands and users that want to keep up to date with the industry trends and stay ahead of the curve, an updated keyword strategy will be required. You will need to target more question-based phrases and tailor your ad copy to match. Better syncing with SEO counterparts will enable companies to analyze the voice search data to optimize their PPC bidding strategies.
Video Ads and Augmented Reality
The emotion behind a product helps it sell more in a competitive market. Big companies and platforms have already been integrating their PPC campaigns with more video content for better engagement and storytelling. New Google Ads formats will bring that facility within reach of even small and medium-sized advertisers.
Augmented Reality providing a more interactive experience with the advertised products, allowing users to visualize and imagine it in the real world.
How will it affect your job?
While advertisers and companies have become more accustomed to the hype of video content in their PPC campaigns as it garners more attention and engagement, the blend of video ads with Augmented Reality will require an extra set of skills as well as a basic understanding of how to implement such technology for better targeted PPC campaigns.
This will also impact the content team since they’ll be responsible for strategy development and content creation centred around visuals and AR content. Since the data insights for video content combined with AR are a bit more complex, the data analytics team would also need to optimize their analytics strategies to create PPC campaigns that are well crafted and easily digestible by their target audience.
Hyper Segmentation
PPC has long allowed advertisers to personalize their audience and segment their customers for better brand engagement, but hyper-segmentation takes that a step further. This trend will enable companies to enhance their target audience by narrowing down their reach instead of keeping it broad.
While broad audience segmentation allows brands to get more eyes on their PPC campaigns, more and more businesses have started focusing on micro-segmentation, also known as hyper-segmentation, which has allowed advertisers to divide their audience based on niche category interests and better personalisation categories to deliver custom-tailored ad campaigns, audience-specific messages and more. This approach for PPC campaigns should deliver more efficient ROI and better audience responsiveness.
How will it affect your job?
With hyper-segmentation’s demand increasing, companies must adopt more advanced audience segmentation practices and train their teams for better data-driven decision-making (DDDM). Brands must also revise their PPC campaigns as marketers focus more on ad relevance, resource allocation, and consumer insights obtained through hyper-segmentation.
Better Reach with Cross-Platform PPC
Instead of focusing on a single advertising platform, businesses are going to be optimizing their reach and brand engagement by including multiple platforms in their PPC campaigns.
Each platform holds different strengths and appeals to a different user base. It means brands should start implementing brand assessment and platform analytics to reach a broader range of potential customers with a more diverse strategy. Since customers can start experiencing ad fatigue by constantly watching the PPC ad campaign on the same platform multiple times, cross-platform PPC campaigns allow for a change of pace and marketing strategies.
How will it affect your job?
With each platform constantly evolving its ad formats, brands must better assess what works for them. That means more testing. Companies must also manage insights from multiple channels while following each platform’s privacy regulations. Evolving your strategies in line with these changes will maintain your relevance as the QC resource, to ensure all the data being produced is up to par with audience engagement.
Local PPC
If you’re a new business with a bricks and mortar presence or that caters to a specific geographic area, local PPC ads is the trend to follow.
Pursuing the local market with local PPC ads allows you to target the relevant audience with improved conversions. Local PPC ads also come with a lower barrier to entry, due to less competition. The metrics are also easy to track, making the local PPC campaigns more resource-friendly and effective.
How will it affect your job?
Integrating local PPC ads in your advertising strategies entails ensuring geo-targeting and on-site best practices are followed. PPC campaign experts will also need to adapt better identify local market trends.
As a PPC expert, your insights and research are valuable to this practice and the more you upskill in that area, the more relevant you will be.
Omnichannel Integration
With many social platforms seamlessly integrated into our daily lives, optimizing your PPC campaigns for these platforms only seems natural. There has been an upward trend in the PPC industry through the integration of omnichannel marketing.
Omnichannel Integration has enabled businesses to use social PPC, which allows brands to capture a large user base and funnel them successfully toward their websites or landing pages. Targeting your ad campaigns through a diverse range of marketing and sales channels is paving the way for brands and businesses to follow industry trends while leading their PPC campaigns and monitoring certain metrics across these platforms, such as Cost Per Impression (CPM), Cost Per Click (CPC), etc.
