With the enforcement of GDPR in the EU and the global rollout of Google Analytics 4 and iOS14, the past 5 years have seen companies like Google and Meta take steps to put privacy first on the web. Part of the platform’s response has been to encourage reliance on machine learning and automation, with campaign types such as Google’s Performance Max gaining ground. This presents a new challenge for paid media marketers, who typically maintain detailed oversight and control.
With data limitations such as third-party cookies, it will be difficult to track where the conversion is coming from. Using this information in campaigns will be an even greater challenge. Google will have to significantly reduce targeting options and expand audience segments much more to improve user privacy, and this will be a real challenge for marketers who have very specific audiences. Despite the greater constraints around data that hinder how PPC professionals will operate on a day-to-day basis. Professionals now have to focus and work with the tools at our disposal, which can be an exciting prospect. Reach out to us for white label PPC outsourcing.
Brands will need to invest in their own first-party data more than ever before. This includes how they store and derive statistics from first-party data. On the other hand, predictive analytics will be a tool we all get used to. Google Analytics 4 already has ‘likelihood to buy’, ‘likelihood to leave’ and ‘predicted revenue’ out of the box.
Google is moving away from detailed keyword targeting and instead focusing on audience and data signals through the introduction of asset groups. This shift will only increase over the next 5 years, with audience signals becoming the most important targeting tool paid media marketers can use.
Essentially, Google will move to a targeting model more similar to Meta Ads (Facebook) – ie the beginning of the end of the keyword. Over the past year or so, we’ve already seen the proliferation of Like-to-Buy and Interest-based audiences in Google Ads, allowing us to get very detailed audience insights. This, along with Google’s continued advancements in automation and AI, will begin to turn the marketing funnel as we know it on its head.
Using Top Performance campaigns, Google finds customers who convert and then gives us insight into the audience they came from. It then uses these insights to move up the marketing funnel to find more converting audiences at each stage. We can then use these audience insights to build more detailed asset groups within our top performing campaigns, which again start with the highest converting users but then move down the marketing funnel to find more converting audiences – essentially ongoing marketing bottom up. a funnel using conversion data as its direction. Reach out to us for the PPC reseller program.
Automation is a double-edged sword for advertisers – the algorithms are getting more and more efficient and it is expected to continue as Google collects more data and can further improve its machine learning. But with the increase in automation, there has been a reduction in the number of problem-solving and strategy-making tools.
