10 PPC Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2020

 Google released 18 updates in Google Ads in the last quarter of 2019 alone, while Bing made four changes in Microsoft Advertising in the whole year.

Some of the most exciting announcements from Google Marketing Live 2019 –  an annual conference for marketers to learn about the latest products or new features for the coming year – were smart advertising campaigns, YouTube's lead ads, and the audience expansion tool (similar to Facebook’s Lookalike Audience).

As for Microsoft, they've been testing AI-powered recommendations in their Advertising Editor. This update can provide suggestions like adding new keywords, setting estimated mainline bids, and fixing ad groups without ads or keywords.

Whether you’re an advertiser or an agency, you need to be on top of the newest features and trends to help you take your PPC game to the next level in 2020 and beyond.

10 PPC Trends You Can't Ignore in 2020

Trend #1: PPC Automation

One of the biggest trends in Pay-per-Click (PPC) advertising for 2020 will be automation – the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to automate labor-intensive tasks associated with Google and Bing ads.

By 2021, the global automation industry is predicted to expand quite rapidly and generate somewhere in the neighborhood of $238 billion, with the largest segment being process automation. The market size of process automation will increase from 71.5% to 83.2% by 2021:

Global automation market size

Although automation in PPC is not exactly new, it'll start to play a much more important role, such as with ad testing:

The evidence suggests that automation will be used to optimize PPC campaigns and will be readily adopted by PPC experts to:

Calculate the best bidding strategy for different goals

Set bids to get as many conversions as possible at a set target CPA

Enhance CPC by looking for ad auctions that are more likely to generate conversions

Stop low-performing ads and prioritize the ones generating the best results

Identify performance issues within an account

Dynamically generate ads based on user behavior and website content

Create and optimize ad copy based on data feeds using Google Scripts

Generate ad performance reports automatically

Trend #2: Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is changing the world in general and its economic impact is expected to reach $15.7 trillion by 2030. When it comes to PPC, AI will allow marketers to create more effective ad campaigns and is particularly useful to:

Predict the CTR of future ads

Calculate the impact of ads on quality scores

Identify the likelihood of conversion from a given customer

Analyze the bids that are likely to get maximum traffic

Optimize keywords, ads or campaigns when a certain event happens (e.g., when your CPC falls below a specified amount)

As AI learns more about your audience’s behaviors, it can more accurately create targeted ads to improve the performance of your PPC campaigns. And this won't impact just Google or Bing ads; AI has a significant impact on Amazon Ads, too.

You can power up your Amazon Ads campaign with the help of AI to:

Automate bids (for both short-tail and long-tail keywords)

Make bid changes based on the keywords’ predicted revenue per click

Optimize ad campaigns for long-tail keywords

Provide detailed diagnostic information for active keywords at once

AI is also effective in creating great reports. With tools like Adzooma (a Google Partner), you can create PPC reports in as little as four steps. All you need to do is:

Link your Google Ads account

Click on the “Create Report” button at the reporting tab in the top corner

Add the elements you want in the report along with text, images or your own logo

Select the metrics you want (keyword rank, ACoS, etc.), in the format you need (table, line graph, etc.)

Voila! Your easy-to-digest report will now be generated, like this example:

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Trend #3: Video Ads and PPC

First, let's take a look at some video stats:

By 2022, 82% of all business and consumer Internet traffic will come from videos, up from 75% in 2017.

In 2019, 78% of people watched videos online every week.

People remember up to 95% of a message from a video (as opposed to text).

92% of mobile users say they share videos with friends.

58% of people trust a brand with videos more than a brand without it.

Now, here’s how video will affect PPC in 2020:

Businesses will need to adapt to Google’s vertical video ads.

More and more marketers will start linking to products in video ads.

Marketers will start incorporating virtual reality (VR) to provide “real” experiences for viewers.

Instagram Stories in video marketing will continue to dominate.

One of the most interesting video ad features added by Google is Bumper Machine, which uses machine learning to create 6-second bumper ads from longer videos (90 seconds or less) to display throughout YouTube:

The full-funnel video strategy allows marketers to manage 6-second bumper ads, skippable in-stream ads, and non-skippable in-stream ads.

To further maximize reach, you can choose a mix of TV and online video ads. The Nielsen TV data in Reach Planner shows how different distributions of spending on TV and YouTube can affect your reach:

Trend #4: Bye Bye Pixel, Hello Ads Data Hub

Built for a world of single screens, pixel technology can’t track the effectiveness of ads across mobile devices. And since more than 70% of time on YouTube happens on mobile devices, marketers have had to rely on third-party pixels to measure the effectiveness of their YouTube campaigns.

However, Google announced that they will stop allowing third-party pixel tracking on YouTube starting in early 2020 because of security concerns. This limitation of tracking pixels has been the subject of industry discussion over the last few years and, hence, Google has started investing in Ads Data Hub.

Ads Data Hub will provide marketers with more comprehensive reporting and measurement to understand the effectiveness of their ads across screens:

While there will still be certain limitations in the Ads Data Hub, it will provide more specific insights into evolving consumer behavior and their response to ads.

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Trend #5: Smart Bidding

Smart bidding is a subset of automated bidding strategies that uses machine learning to optimize your ads for conversion based on the goals you set. Basically, it takes the guesswork out of bidding for Google Ads.

Google’s AI system automatically optimizes for conversions in each auction. You tell Google what your advertising goal is and Smart Bidding figures out how to get it done within your budget. Smart Bidding works for a number of PPC goals, including:

Target CPA: Generate new leads and customers for your desired cost per acquisition.

Target ROAS: Get the best return on investment (ROI) on your spend.

Maximize Conversions: Increase your conversion rate.

Earlier this year, Google released a few new smart bidding controls, including:

Campaign-level Conversion Setting: Previously, advertisers could set conversion goals at the account level, but now they can set relevant conversion goals at the campaign level. This will change the way smart bidding happens.

Maximize Conversions: This strategy helps you get the most conversions by spending your entire daily budget:

Seasonality Adjustments: Seasonality adjustments will give advertisers more control for ad-hoc events like one-time promotions. For example, if you know that your conversion rate will spike in the coming days (maybe because of an upcoming promotion), you can schedule an appropriate adjustment for that period.

Additionally, Google is about to introduce value rules in the new year. Value rules will enable advertisers to differentiate conversion values based on characteristics such as location, device and audience.

With more and more consumers researching in unexpected ways, keeping on top of campaign optimizations has become a challenge for marketers. Smart bidding takes away the pain of manually optimizing each ad campaign and helps advertisers improve ad performance.

Contact: Pay per click agency