Online marketing is constantly evolving, and it is important that businesses stay on top of trends so as not to fall behind within the digital landscape. So, what are the major trends to look out for across paid advertising online in 2023? We asked our PPC experts this very question and they’ve provided some insight into what to look out for at the start of this year. From new campaign types on Google Ads to audience targeting on Facebook, we’ll cover some of the most important changes coming to PPC marketing in 2023 so that your business is at the top of its game this coming year.
Google Analytics Is Changing
This summer Google Analytics 4 will replace the old Google Universal Analytics product, bringing several benefits, particularly around improved event tracking and data analysis. Google Analytics is a powerful and highly important tool for understanding data in order to roll out new strategies across online marketing efforts. It provides businesses with insight into where their website traffic and conversions are being directed from, while also providing data about customers so that you can better understand your audience.
Google began rolling out the new GA4 product towards the end of 2020 for businesses to begin collecting data on the new system. While Universal Analytics will stop collecting data in July 2023, users will still be able to access historic data on the account. At teclan, our paid advertising team began the process of setting up GA4 properties for many of our clients throughout 2021 and 2022 so that data was available within the new product by the time Universal Analytics sunsets.
Phasing out Universal Analytics for GA4 is set to bring a number of benefits including;
- Improved tracking for customer journeys
- Improved user engagement analysis
- Ability to create improved, powerful audiences for PPC campaigns to produce better conversions
- More intelligent user privacy and tracking features (crucial for GDPR laws)
- Easier to set up goal and event tracking
- Reporting and visualisation enhanced
Google Analytics 4 will ultimately provide more opportunities to better understand a business’s audience so that online marketing strategies can be improved. This will benefit PPC marketing for businesses as the data provided by GA4 will allow for campaign optimisation and increased conversions.
Increased Focus On Performance Max
PPC marketing can come in a variety of different formats. Google Ads continues to be the leading platform for pay-per-click advertising, enabling a number of different campaign types to reach potential customers at different stages of their consumer journey. At the end of 2021, Google released a new goal-based campaign type, known as Performance Max, to all advertisers. Performance Max campaigns allow businesses to access all their Google Ads inventory from a single campaign. Google has designed this to complement keyword-based Search campaigns to help businesses find more converting customers across all of Google’s channels such as YouTube, Display, Search, Gmail, and Maps.
Created to drive performance based on business goals, Performance Max works by optimising campaign performance in real-time, and across channels, through the use of Smart Bidding. Ultimately, the automation technologies Google incorporates into this campaign type aim to add more value and increase conversions for your business. Combining these technologies across the likes of bidding, creatives, and audiences, Performance Max is driven by a specific advertising objective (such as a target return on ad spend) as well as the creative assets, optional data feeds and audience signals provided by the advertiser.
Throughout 2022, advertisers found Performance Max campaigns to produce mixed results and limited data reporting. However, Google is focused on continuing to improve advertisers’ experience of working with these campaigns which mean Performance Max is likely to become essential in order to maintain success in the online advertising world. Our PPC experts have been navigating these campaigns in recent months and have found varying levels of success — with many clients seeing an increasing return on ad spend through various tests. With Google’s continuing focus on improving Performance Max campaign mechanisms, we believe this to be a PPC trend that won’t be disappearing anytime soon.
Efficiency of Artifical Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence continues to play a major role in the advertising world across most marketing platforms. With Facebook ads removing many interest-targeting options in 2022 and Google continuously introducing new automated techniques, advertisers are finding themselves having to rely more and more on AI systems.
Learning from data, AI has the ability to evaluate previous successful campaigns to predict which factors can be applied to new campaigns in order to drive further success. Implementing AI into PPC campaigns means that you will have the ability to predict future click-through-rates, identify keywords and bids most likely to produce traffic, and analyse potential customer conversion rates.
AI’s invasion of PPC marketing won’t stop with the technicalities of campaign settings, as platforms are beginning to introduce its capabilities within creative assets. We have recently seen this with Meta’s Advantage+ creative feature where AI has the ability to create variations of your brand’s creatives based on what it believes users will be most receptive to. While this can bring some performance improvements, it is vital that your PPC campaigns still have human oversight as suggested enhancements can result in brand guidelines being ignored. For best results, it is recommended that AI is carefully introduced alongside PPC management so that your business gets the best of both worlds: expert knowledge and data driven success.
Custom Audiences Are More Important Than Ever
Social media and paid advertising work hand in hand as it provides the ability for businesses to engage their audiences on their preferred platforms. Brand visibility (both organically and paid) across the likes of Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, helps to provide a more positive customer experience as it highlights that brands are interacting with audiences, which in turn helps to increase conversions.
However, with fewer targeting options being provided by social media giant Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) in more recent times, it is becoming increasingly important for businesses to have expertise in building custom audiences for ReMarketing and Look-A-Like audiences. These types of audiences are statistically more likely to purchase your product or service as they have previously interacted with your business, or relevant pages, and are similar to users who have been in the market for what your business sells.
In 2023, it will be important to continuously optimise custom audiences and adapt to changes to audience settings across PPC platforms so that your business can continue to reach those most likely to convert. At teclan, alongside our full-service PPC packages, we can provide training so that you are able to set up and optimise audiences on social media.
How to Stay on Top of PPC Trends
If our PPC experts have learned anything during their years of experience, it’s that PPC is constantly evolving. To remain successful, strategies need to change in line with technological advancements and new trends. What may work today, might not work tomorrow. It is therefore crucial that you stay updated with the latest marketing news and harness fresh PPC trends to continually drive revenue and leads for your business. At teclan, our paid advertising team has been driving growth in businesses of all sizes. Our specialists stay up to date with changes across the PPC landscape and are always on hand to provide advice and use their expertise to help optimise your campaigns to increase revenue.
Looking to grow your business in 2023? Get in touch and we will be happy to help you reach your business goals through our range of PPC marketing services.
