At the turn of every year, predictions are made about what the top trends for the next year will be. I contributed my own predictions to articles for a couple of companies, and we wrote up a synopsis of all of the most common predictions for our own blog.
In this post, I will go a little deeper on some of the top trends for advertisers and tell you how to take action today to keep your AdWords accounts in prime shape this year.
Trend 1: Combine Keyword And Audience Targeting
The trend for 2016 that most experts seem to agree upon is that audience targeting will drastically improve the PPC game for search marketers. AdWords grew into a multi-billion-dollar business because it offered hyper-specific targeting through keywords while figuring out a way to ensure ad relevance with Quality Score.
But it always lacked one key element: the ability to get personal by knowing something about the user looking at your ad.
When social networking took off, this shortcoming became more obvious because with Facebook you could target to an audience based on their interests, demographics and online behaviors — all things that AdWords couldn’t do. While it wasn’t necessarily better, it was different, and it exposed a gap in AdWords.
Google tried to answer by getting more personal with their users by introducing Google+, but it wasn’t particularly compelling for advertisers who were more interested in doing better with their search ads than participating in conversations with prospective clients on social media.
Things started to change when Google added audience-based targeting with remarketing in 2010 (Yes, it’s been around for that long!), then RLSA (remarketing lists for search ads) in 2013 and dynamic remarketing in 2014. Audience data could now be used to achieve better results on search by allowing for different bids, and even different ads.
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