As specialists in the PPC space we keep our finger on the pulse when it comes to the latest trends across search, whether organic or paid. Today, we’ll explore some of these trends:

• Automation

Coming in at number one is automation. Naturally we want to take advantage of any technology that can help save time and make the optimisation processes more efficient. And as any experienced PPC manager can tell you, it can be an extremely manual task. Enter 2020 and PPC automation. With PPC automation we can leave much of that manual work behind, relying on algorithms to manage keyword optimisation and collect the necessary data to focus a campaigns KPI’s . With more time on our hands we can look the bigger picture and focus on overall digital marketing strategies and how we can more effectively reach our target audience.

• Responsive Search Ads

We’ll start to see more responsive search ads in 2020. In short, responsive search ads allow Google to dynamically adapt to messages which will resonate better with your audience and show more text. By entering multiple variations of both headlines and descriptions, Google will, over time learn which of these combinations will yield the best result and adapt the ad copy accordingly for future searches that is closer to what customers are looking for.

• Fewer organic results

If you look at the number of organic results between 2018 and 2019 you’ll note there are fewer according to this report by Merkle. In fact this is true of across both Yahoo and Bing, however DuckDuckGo organic searches are up. We believe that this trend will continue to widen in 2020 with social media channels influence becoming stronger than ever.

• Video advertising

Ok, not quite PPC but worth a mention. Across programmatic, video advertising is clearly up, with the trend not showing signs of flattening growth. Why is this? Perhaps consumers don’t want to read text content or perhaps it’s because video is such an excellent format to tell great stories. Technological advances in 5g technology will also help fuel this, with lower advertising buffer times and higher quality video ads being served.

• Voice searches

If you look back to 2018 or 2019, these were both apparently the year of the voice search, but, the numbers aren’t as big as some analysts expected. For more detail on the numbers check out this report by PWC.

Voice is without doubt the future, intuitively, it’s just easier and clearly consumer behaviour will adapt to this medium.

• GDPR

Achieving 100% multi-channel attribution can be a challenge if advertisers aren’t careful in how they’re using customers data. Therefore, take caution when setting up and executing PPC campaigns.

• Alternative platforms?

Google is an absolute powerhouse in the advertising world but what’s beyond the behemoth? With social platforms like TikTok taking off, the time maybe ticking before TikTok roles out its own PPC products that will compete with the likes of Google. Whatever the case, platforms like this and Reddit can produce some serious scale and excellent results. Sure the platforms are nowhere near as sophisticated but with less competition there is clearly an excellent opportunity and from our tests so far we’re seeing strong positive ROIs