e key trends affecting search marketing today

Over the last decade, marketers have consistently relied on pay-per-click and search organic for consistent results. The changes were gradual, allowing marketers to adjust their strategies.

The pace of change for search engine marketing has accelerated, and more changes are expected in the coming two years than the last eight combined.

The evolution of search has been a gradual march towards automation and consolidation. We must keep up with the latest changes and understand the reasons behind them to stay ahead of the curve.

Here is a list of recent events that will have a major impact on the search industry.

1. Signal loss and privacy legislation

In May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation came into force in Europe. GDPR granted EU citizens many rights regarding their personal data. These included the right to access, correct, delete and port data.

Organisations that violate GDPR may be fined EUR20 million, or 4% of global annual revenue.

The launch of iOS14 on Apple devices in September 2020 is another important date when it comes to internet privacy. This update introduced a new feature, App tracking transparency (ATT). It allows users to opt-out of being tracked by applications.

The change makes it harder for advertisers to track their users across websites and apps, which reduces the effectiveness of targeted ads. This iOS update has changed the landscape of online advertising.

On July 1, 2023, CPRA will be fully implemented. CPRA is applicable to all businesses who collect personal data about Californian consumers, no matter where they are located.

The CPRA can investigate and prosecute any violations of law and impose fines up to $7500 per violation. CPRA is a powerful law that imposes heavy penalties on non-compliance.

Google announced that by the second half 2024, it will phase-out third-party cookies from Chrome. Third-party cookies, which are essential for targeting ads, will be affected by this change. These cookies allow advertisers to track the performance of online advertising and target specific audiences.

Google wants to protect your privacy by eliminating third-party cookies that are often used for advertising and tracking. Google’s phasing out of third-party cookies makes it more difficult for websites to track their users across multiple sites.

The market share in the United States is shown below:

Third-party cookies are set to be retired by the end of 2024. Chrome, Safari, and Firefox account for almost 90% of the web traffic in the United States.

Google’s Privacy Sandbox has developed alternative methods for targeting audiences and tracking ad performance, without the use of third-party cookies. These initiatives include:

Digital marketing has been built on the foundation of audience and performance measurement.

As digital privacy continues to evolve, ad-serving companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook and others have been forced to create new methods of measurement and targeting.

Marketers must modernize their strategies as the ad-serving platforms change to remain competitive.

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2. Machine learning and automation

In recent years, machine learning algorithms have improved significantly. This is in tandem with the signal loss that has been caused by privacy legislation.

Due to these two changes advertising platforms like Google, Facebook and Microsoft are revamping their ad platform and relying on artificial intelligence and automation.

Google always plays the long game. They have always known that marketers need help with cross-campaign measurement.

Google also knew for a very long time that privacy would be a major issue. This foreknowledge has finally come to fruition through automation and consolidation.

Google Ads will introduce data driven attribution by September 2021.

DDA is an automated learning model which uses historical data from your account to predict how users interact with various ads, and ultimately decide whether to become customers.

DDA helps you to improve the performance of your Google Ads campaign by giving a more accurate picture of your ads’ contribution to conversions.

The bid algorithms in paid search advertising are not new. Google launched Smart Bidding with the introduction of Target CPA (tCPA). In 2017, the ability to bid on dynamic values, such as revenue or ROAS, was introduced.

Adoption of these features has been slow, as with most major changes. Many advertisers were unwilling to give up control of the bidding process to platforms.

Digital advertising will continue to be marked by a loss of control, and an increased reliance on machine-learning.

Smart Bidding algorithms are the most popular method for managing bids. Some aspects of campaigns still use manual bidding, but its usage is decreasing.

As data and automation change, so does the core function of keywords. Google Ads changed exact match functionality in 2021. Prior to 2021, ads were only displayed for exact match keywords when the search terms matched exactly.

Now, ads can be displayed for searches that include close variations of keywords. Ads may now appear for searches including misspellings and synonyms as well as other close variations of keywords.

Google and Microsoft are not hiding the fact that they have actively encouraged advertisers to move into , or broad match. Broad matches were perceived negatively by many advertisers including myself. The query matching was far too general and the traffic quality was usually subpar.

In the last two years we have increased our use of broad matches. When combined with carefully-crafted bid algorithms, broad match can increase revenue and search coverage. If you’ve been hesitant to use broad match, consider testing it out again.

Google Ads will retire broad match modification (BMM) in July 2021. Microsoft Ads retired its BMM product in March 2023. The consolidation of keyword matching types is just beginning.

This is a pure speculation but Google/Microsoft may retire another match type in 12-18 months. If I were to predict, phrase matches would eventually be phased out and replaced by exact (for control) or broad (for reach).

These changes are directly a result of machine learning advances within ad serving platforms such as Google Ads or Microsoft Ads.

3. Campaign consolidation

Google Ads’ campaign consolidation relied heavily on data-driven attribution. Google’s ad-serving algorithm has mastered the user intent for their core search product.

The Google Ad ecosystem has the algorithms to help you understand how your ads perform across all channels.

The algorithm was able to understand how to optimize Google properties. This opened up the possibility of further consolidation. Campaign consolidation was first introduced as Smart Shopping by Google and Microsoft.

Google Smart Shopping is a campaign which allowed businesses to show their ads automatically across Google’s Search Network, YouTube, Display Network and Gmail. Smart Shopping campaigns use machine learning to optimize bids, placements and other aspects of the campaign.

Advertisers will have to migrate their Smart Shopping campaigns from to Performance Max . Performance Max (PMax), the latest peak in campaign consolidation, is a result.

PMax gives advertisers access to new inventory, formats and audiences on all Google channels including YouTube, Search Gmail Shopping and Discovery.

Dynamic Ads (DSAs) will also be consolidated into PMax. Google hasn’t given a date for the migration but has stated that it is working to integrate the two features.

Keeping up with the times

It has felt like the roller coaster’s slow ascent over the last five years. It feels like the next 2 years will be a scream of the drop.

Privacy legislation, automation and artificial intelligence will drive the drop. Get ready, people!

The article Search Engine Land : 3 Key Trends Impacting Search Marketing Today first appeared on Search Engine Land .

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