Google Ads in 2022: A Preview
Google Ads has changed over time – but we’ve adapted to these changes and kept up with best practices to continue offering our clients valuable insights into their accounts. Although Google Ads has been around for 22 years and gone through a handful of name changes, it’s still not uncommon to hear people talking about “AdWords” or “Google AdWords.”
Over the last year, we have seen some big changes to Google Ads. These include products like Performance Max Campaigns, which allows advertisers to use their existing accounts to run campaigns across search engine marketing, display, and YouTube all at once. We’ve also seen the introduction and updates of ad responsiveness, automation, and new audiences reach, allowing you to customize your ads at a much deeper level than before.
Keeping Up With Google Ads
With all these changes happening so quickly within Google Ads accounts, it can be hard for marketers to keep up with everything on the platform. But there’s one thing about marketing that remains constant: You need a strategy for approaching your account if you want results!
To properly set up your Google Ads campaigns, you should pay close attention to these updates.
Automation changes
The simplest way to automate a campaign will be by automatically bidding on keywords. Yet, for automated bidding to work properly, Google has to be able to predict how much each click will cost based on historical data and other factors. This means that if someone searches for “blue widgets,” and every other time someone searches for blue widgets, they are willing to pay $4 per click. Therefore, when you set up automated bidding on this keyword, your ads will only show when people are willing to pay at least $4 per click. Of course, you have no control over what happens outside these parameters. However, this automated bidding system will help you optimize your budget and reach more readers.
Privacy Updates
Advertisers utilize information from third-party cookies to track the behavior of website users after they leave their site and target the right audiences.
You may have heard about the GDPR or General Data Protection Regulation. It’s a new set of rules that have been put in place to protect consumers from data misuse by companies and organizations. For example, the GDPR states that users must consent before companies can collect and use their personal information.
To protect user privacy, Google stated in January 2020 that they would eliminate third-party cookies in Chrome by 2022. Since then, the company has been developing cookie-free tracking and advertising alternatives.
What you should do: continue to look for ways to gather more first-party information on your website. Familiarize yourself with the already-available privacy-safe features (like enhanced conversions) and utilize the strength of third-party data while it is still available.
Responsive Ads
Paid search advertising will allow you to include multiple headlines and descriptions in a single advertisement. Google Ads will test various combinations over time to see which ones perform the best. By being able to adapt to more closely match your clients’ search queries, these ads may increase the effectiveness of your campaign. This increases the likelihood that they will click on your advertisement, helping you gain more potential customers.
These are some of the advantages you’ll get from responsive search ads.
- Adapt your headlines and descriptions to the locations of your clients, regular sites, or interesting areas.
- You can save time by offering numerous headline and description possibilities by letting Google Ads display the most suitable combinations to your clients.
- Adapt your headlines and descriptions to the locations of your clients, regular sites, or interesting areas.
- Reach more potential customers
New Audiences
CTV advertising is all about using digital video and the Internet to reach viewers on television. CTV advertising can be a very effective way to reach large audiences at scale, especially among younger and more active consumers
Advertisers can use connected TV campaigns to target viewers across YouTube and “most” other connected TV apps. With the innovation, demographic, in-market, and affinity audience segments will be accessible on connected TVs.
As time goes on, advertisers will find an ever-increasing demand for tools that allow them to optimize and personalize their online marketing campaigns on a “real-time” basis. CTV advertising is positioned perfectly to fulfill this need. We do not know what the future will bring for Content Marketing. However, we think it’s safe to say that digital video and content on connected TVs are here to stay; meaning we only believe there are better days ahead for CTV advertising technology.
Takeaway
The fundamentals of PPC advertising have not changed, but how we use it has. We still need to understand what keywords are relevant to our business and how you can use them effectively. We still need to ensure our ads are structured to get the best ROI possible, but now we have more tools than ever! As new features of Google Ads continue rolling out, marketers will always face new challenges.
When it comes to successful pay-per-click ads and campaigns, all of them will eventually be measured by how well they integrate with other parts of your business. We call this holistic marketing.
For pay-per-click marketing to work, you must ensure that your other channels are working with the PPC campaign. At Sophisticated Marketing Solutions, every digital marketing tactic should be part of a larger strategy that considers all channels and all touchpoints throughout the customer journey.
Contact Sophisticated Marketing Solutions Today
We understand that keeping up with all of the changes in Google Ads can be challenging. Still, we get how crucial it is for businesses to stay on top of the game. If you want help creating an effective PPC strategy for your business, feel free to reach out, and we’d be happy to provide some pointers.
