PPC Trends in 2024

This year is facing some of the most transformational changes yet to be seen in digital marketing. AI is here to stay. Google are already all-hands-on-deck with the avalanche of AI-generated SEO content, and instead of fighting it, are opting for a user experience centred approach. If the user likes it, then Google are fine with it. At least so it seems right now.

Let’s look at how all this impacts our other PPC avenues, as Google Search is not the only player in town. There’s its little sibling Bing Search (who have adopted AI into their search model – the brat!). In the other corner we have social media PPC, represented by Google’s own representative YouTube, then we have the Chinese fireball TikTok, and some of the more senior players like Pinterest, Twitter/X, Quora, and Reddit.

Marketers are sat at an all your budget can eat buffet, having to pick and mix their marketing strategy for this year. What are you going to put on your plate? Maybe your boss has already made the order and you just must do as you’re told. Either way, let’s dive in and look at what the chefs are cooking for 2024.

This Google Analytics 4 (GA4) business

They finally did it. Universal Analytics has been put in a (pretty big) box and archived for good. I especially enjoyed the mini-movie Umault did in collaboration with Mamoto, called Googleheimer. Check it out here if you want a giggle. https://vimeo.com/839921418

But overall, I’m sort of glad that the entire Google Analytics debacle is over. We got what we got, now it’s time to make the most of it. To be fair, GA4 has seen a lot of improvements and is not all too bad now. This year will likely see a lot of data tracking systems and businesses updating the way they track their happenings on websites and apps.

If you haven’t already installed Google Analytics on your website (and aren’t using an alternative analytics platform), then read more about how to install GA4 on your website here. It’s also great if you want to learn more about the differences between GA4 and the now sunsetted UA.

What happened to Voice Search?

This one was a very hot topic from 2019-2022, but then sort of fizzled out a little. It sort of feels like the promised spike is user adoption never really happened. Adoption was fast on specific platforms like smart home products, but I guess people still feel a bit weird yelling at their devices on the street or on the subway. What? You don’t do that either? Weirdo.

I’m not saying you should forget voice search existed. It’s still very relevant and you should certainly consider optimising your campaigns for it. That is if your products and services are something that people could be looking for on their smart home devices.

What is visual searching?

I don’t mean the type of searching you do at home when you’re trying to find your car keys. Visual searching is when you use images and videos to search for something. Imagine you find a photo of your old mate and want to see what they’re up to today. You use their profile photo in the search bar, and voila! In the results you see everything that uses a photo similar to the one you used. If it’s a specific person, you’ll likely discover other pages where they are featured. Unless your friend was 30 on that picture and they just moved into the retirement home. Then it’s unlikely you get very accurate results.

With the emergence of AI, visual searching has become more advanced than before. It’s often better to use images to find what you’re looking for, especially if it’s a technical item that you don’t know the name of. Imagine you find the taillight of an unknown car. Take a picture of it and use image searching to find out what model its for.

Or when you want to find out what brand shoes a lady was wearing on the picture you took 2 years ago in Venice. Zoom in on that photo, cut out the legs, but keep the shoes on – use that image on Google image search, and you’ll be able to order your pair in minutes. You get the gist.

Using video in search ads

Did you know that 90% of people say watching your product or service-related videos helps them make the purchase decision? 88% of people report spending significantly more time on a website that has video content on it. Looking at metrics, analysts reported that:

• Pages with videos on them have an 86% higher conversion rate.
• Brand association improves by 140% after watching a good quality video.
• 80% people bounce between search and video when deciding whether to complete a purchase.

Those are some remarkably strong stats. Are you using video to convert prospects into customers? No? Send us an email right now. We’ll refer you to a good local video agency and get you sorted.

But how does it all tie into PPC and search? Well, I’m glad you asked. Google have introduced new features to YouTube match search intent and video content more accurately. One of those is cards on YouTube videos. They allow a creator to add headlines and descriptions to specific sections of the video.

It's also discussed that Google are making it easier for their we crawlers to decipher YouTube videos that are embedded on your website. That would essentially tie all the content from that embedded video into your website to boost SEO ranking. Though, I don’t see Google assigning higher score to video than written content, as it’s not in Google’s best interest to help the creation of other video libraries like YouTube. Traditional blog sites are much more valuable to them, through Google Ad Sense.

AI in PPC ad creation

New AI ad campaign tools are popping up like mushrooms after rain, but the vast majority of them disappear just as quickly. It’s like the wild west of data processing right now. We’re sure to see the best ones coming up on top, and this year could be when we start adopting these tools with more gusto.

AI will also likely become the titleholder of most PPC ads created in a year. People are lazy and don’t generally want to spend the time needed to craft personalised, value-delivering ads. Most people will launch AI-generated adverts, but I see customer-centric ad copy and creative being the overall winners at the end of the year. Nothing beats talking to your clients and finding out what gets them moving. Especially if you’re Peloton. Hey, you, Peloton executive reading this. Let’s work together!

Social media PPC ads

I’ve found that social media PPC ads (such as Reddit, Quora, Twitter/X, etc.) tend to let you define your audience in further detail. While Google and Bing do have some demographic targeting options, and affinity/behavioural targeting, then social media tends to offer additional options. Or at least more accurate ones. People tell those platforms more about themselves, while +60% of Google and Bing users are not logged in – Google assumes their interests purely based on their search behaviour.

The younger generation are looking more towards short video content, when wanting to get answers to their questions or find out more about certain events. They get their news on social media live feeds and short form videos that are roughly 10 seconds long. TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and other similar platforms are soaring in popularity. 2024 will not be any different and we could even see a brand-new business taking centre stage. Don’t forget, it took TikTok just a few hours to reach its first 1 million active users. We’re talking hours, not days. Imagine that.

Conclusion

My prediction is that AI-generated content and creative will be the mainstream way of communicating with your audience. Most businesses will use these tools, and there will be good quality AI-generated content, but also bad quality content. The ones who don’t use AI at all will fall to the waysides and eventually disappear.

But the ones who come out on top are going to be the ones who use humans and invest in customer research. They go wild on customer research. Like wild-wild. They’re obsessed with it. It will pay off immensely, as their content will stand out and speak to their audience like nothing else around.

Now is the time to learn how to integrate AI into your business. Do it fast and do it right. Then focus all your attention on customer research, user experience testing, customer profiling, just call your customers from time to time and talk about their cat or their mother-in-law, whichever you prefer. You want to spend time to get to know them.