7 PPC Strategies You Cannot Ignore in 2022
2022 is shaping up to be an exciting year for paid search, with a number of new trends emerging that marketers need to be aware of. In this blog post, we'll take a look at some of the most important PPC trends for this year and how advertisers can make sure their campaigns are ahead of the curve.
7 PPC strategies you must try in 2022.
1. With Inflation Soaring, Promote “Deal Badges”
With inflation soaring in the US and Europe, food, gas, and many other products around the world are increasing and consumers are going to be looking more aggressively for deals.
As a result, advertisers can now apply a "promotion," "sale," or "price drop" tag to their product listing if it fits certain criteria while executing Google shopping campaigns.
Google announced this improved feature a few months ago, noting that these “deal badges” results would be more automated and apparent than in the past.
Consumers can find their “deals” in a dedicated section in their Shopping tab.
This new section will display bargains that are recommended for that user based on their search and browsing history, as well as the attractiveness of the offer and discount.
Furthermore, Google has improved the Merchant Center to highlight which of your items are eligible for a deals badge, as well as separate performance statistics for deal badged products.
Now is a great time for marketers to try out this new feature and reporting data so they can be successful during the increasing consumer prices in the months ahead.
2. Create “Voice-Optimized” Search Ads
Over 40% of the total US population uses their voice to conduct an online search and this is growing very quickly into 2022 due to the saturation of mobile phones, Alexa-like home devices, car voice integrations, and more.
That translates into 135 million people in the US that are exposed to search ads from a voice-based query. An increasing number of people in the United States are using voice to conduct searches.
Studies show that these consumers are mostly asking for local services. Target local businesses.
To capitalize on this trend, advertisers will need to produce a few PPC ads using conversational language and keywords like "open now" or “near me.” Because marketers will need to utilize more conversational language in ad copies, long-tail keywords will become more significant. When optimizing ad text for voice search, question-oriented keywords are also commonly used.
3. Reduce Bots and Ad Fraud
Elon Musk is attempting to buy Twitter for about $44 Billion, however, he believes usage by bots is at least 20% which is significantly higher than Twitter’s claim of no more than 5%. For anyone who has used Twitter, the amount of bots certainly appears to be much higher. Facebook and other social media channels also battle with significant amounts of bots and fake accounts.
This hurts advertisers who expect their ads to be seen and clicked on by real humans, not bots. Juniper research projects that advertisers are expected to lose $100 million by 2023 due to click fraud and bots.
Although Google Ads has some protections to prevent fraud, eliminating it completely can be a conflict of interest since ad bots can create a meaningful amount of revenue for them.
Advertisers must consider adding independent ad fraud protection services to combat a variety of fraud and improve their ad campaign performance. There are several of these services available with a simple Google search.
4. Try New Conversion Goals
Google announced the launch of conversion objectives on November 1st, 2021.
There are three conversion goals:
Standard goals: These are the ones that Google generates automatically from one’s conversion events and for which they may choose to optimize bids in any campaign.
Account-default goals: Any of the standard goals advertisers tell Google to include and optimize for automatically in every new campaign.
Custom Goals: Goals made of primary and secondary conversion actions are known as custom goals. The primary action is the one advertisers will use to place bids.
With this new feature, Google will automatically organize comparable conversion activities into categories that are most relevant to a particular business. Then, by specifying which conversion actions inside that goal should be used for bidding, advertisers may optimize for conversion goals.
Once the conversion actions are set up, advertisers should perform an audit to determine which conversion actions they want to prioritize in their bids and which conversion goals they should define as account defaults.
5. Be Prepared for Removal of all Third-Party Cookies
In January, Google announced they will be stopping the use of third-party cookies in Chrome by the end of 2023. This is in response to increased demand for enhanced digital privacy and security.
Apple has already upgraded iOS privacy protection, and Meta is also experimenting with a new privacy control center that spans all applications. In 2022, this has pushed first-party data to the forefront.
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To be more specific, companies and marketers should devise methods to aid in the collection, organization, and utilization of first-party data. Data from marketing activities such as email subscriptions, resource downloads, events, sales, and so on, for example, might be sought as an alternative to 3rd party data.
Since this has a massive impact on advertisers, Google is coming up with new features and technologies to help advertisers accurately report on and effectively target their ads.
Advertisers should start reviewing these impacts on their campaigns today to be best prepared for the imminent changes that are coming soon.
6. Try Performance Max Campaigns
Performance Max campaigns, which were first made accessible in beta in October 2020, are now available to all marketers globally.
Advertisers give Google photos, videos, logos, and headlines for this automated campaign type, and Google will mix and match those assets into advertisements that can appear across Search, Display, Discover, Maps, Gmail, and YouTube.
Automation optimizes your budget and bids across channels with this campaign type, and one can view performance on the Insights page and Combinations report.
In addition, Google said that in 2022, both Smart Shopping and Local campaigns would be upgraded to Performance Max. So, ecommerce and local businesses must know about performance max campaign type now to get the benefits of cutting-edge automation it provides.
7. Experiment with Metaverse Advertising
While VR growth is still slow, discussion around “Metaverse” and virtual worlds has increased dramatically in 2022. Facebook even changed their corporate name to “Meta” as a signal that this technology will become the future of social experiences and connections.
There are ads available in games today that use wearable headsets, such as Meta’s Quest device, or marketers can buy ad spots in metaverse games that only require a mobile phone or desktop PC.
To get started, advertisers should contact an ad network that specializes in this technology such as Adinmo.com, NexTechAR.com and several others. They can help build your creative units and figure out a PPC or PPV pricing model that works best for you.
Advertisers looking to reach younger audiences should consider being an early mover and create these ad units now to garner a little extra press. It’s also helpful to experiment in this space before it becomes a much larger industry.
These are the latest Google ads or PPC strategies that advertisers must consider in 2022. It’s mandatory to keep up with new features and trends to enhance and maintain the ad campaigns’ performance.