Marketers have relied on organic and paid search to deliver consistent results time and time again for the past decade. The changes came gradually, giving marketers time to adapt their strategies.
But today, the pace of change in search marketing is accelerating, with more change expected in the next two years than in the last eight combined.
The evolution of research has been a slow march towards automation and consolidation. To stay ahead of the curve, we need to keep up with what’s changing and know the reason behind it.
Here’s a rundown of events that are having a significant ripple effect on the search marketing industry.
1. Privacy legislation and signal loss
In May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) it was enforced throughout Europe. The GDPR gave EU citizens many rights over personal data, including access to correct, delete and carry data.
Organizations in breach of the GDPR can be fined up to €20 million or 4% of their global annual turnover, whichever is greater.
Another important date for internet privacy is September 2020, when iOS14 was released to Apple devices. The update included a new feature called Application Tracking Transparency (ATT)which allows users to opt out of being tracked by apps.
This change has made it more difficult for advertisers to track users across apps and websites, reducing the effectiveness of targeted advertising. This iOS update changed the digital advertising landscape.
Another basin event, although close, is July 1, 2023, when CPRA (California Privacy Rights Act) is fully enacted. The CPRA applies to companies that collect personal information about California consumers, regardless of the company’s location.
The CPRA has the authority to investigate and prosecute breaches of the Act and can impose fines of up to $7,500 per breach. The CPRA has some legislative teeth with strong penalties for non-compliance.
Google has announced that it will phase out third-party cookies in Chrome by the second half of 2024. This change will significantly affect online advertising, as third-party cookies are crucial for ad targeting. They allow advertisers to target specific audiences and track online advertising performance.
Google aims to improve privacy by phasing out third-party cookies, which are often used for tracking and advertising. By removing third-party cookies, Google makes it more difficult for websites to track users across sites.
The browser market share in the United States it looks like this:
Chrome: 49% Safari: 35% Edge: 8.5% Firefox: 3.5%
By the end of 2024, third-party cookies will be effectively phased out, as Chrome, Safari, and Firefox account for nearly 90% of the market share of web traffic in the United States.
Google Privacy Sandbox is developing alternative methods to target audiences and track ad performance without third-party cookies. These Privacy Sandbox initiatives include:
FLoC (Federated Cohort Learning): FLoC proposes to replace third-party cookies with a more privacy-friendly way to group users based on their interests. FLoC would allow advertisers to target ads to groups of users with similar 53 GB interests without being able to track individual users across different websites.
Themes API: The Topics API is a proposal to allow websites to request a list of topics that interest a user. Advertisers can use this information to show you more relevant ads.
Trust Token API: The Trust Token API is a proposal to allow websites to verify the identity of users without the need for third-party cookies. Trusted tokens can be used to prevent fraud and improve the security of online transactions.
Performance measurement and audience targeting have been the cornerstone of digital marketing.
The evolution of digital privacy has forced ad serving platforms like Google, Microsoft, Facebook and others to develop new modes of targeting and measurement.
As ad serving platforms change, marketers must also modernize their strategies to stay competitive.
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2. Machine learning and automation
Machine learning algorithms have advanced significantly in recent years alongside the signal loss caused by advancing privacy legislation.
As a result of these two changes, ad platforms like Google, Facebook and Microsoft are overhauling their ad platforms to rely on automation and artificial intelligence.
Google is always playing the long game. Historically, they’ve known marketers needed support with cross-campaign attribution.
Also, Google has known for some time that data will be restricted due to the advancement of privacy. Finally, this prior knowledge becomes a reality with automation and consolidation.
Google Ads has been introduced data-driven attribution (DDA) in September 2021.
DDA is a machine learning model that uses historical data from your account to determine how people interact with your ads and decide to become customers.
DDA can help you improve the performance of your Google Ads campaigns by giving you a more accurate view of how your ads are contributing to conversions.
Algorithms of offer are not exactly new to paid search advertising. Google introduced Smart Bidding in 2013 with the launch of Target CPA bidding (tCPA). In 2017, the ability to bid on dynamic values such as revenue and ROAS was introduced.
As with most changes, adoption of these features was slow. Many advertisers did not want to cede control of their bids to the platforms.
The loss of control and increased reliance on machine learning will be a continuing theme for digital advertising.
Over time, Smart Bidding algorithms have improved significantly and are now the preferred method of bid management. Manual bidding still occurs for some aspects of campaigns, but usage continues to decline.
As data and automation evolve, the basic keyword functionality is also changing. Google Ads changed the exact match functionality in 2021. Previously, exact match keywords only triggered ads for searches that exactly match the keyword.
However, exact match keywords can now also trigger ads for searches that are similar variants of the keyword. This change means that ads can be shown for searches that include misspellings, synonyms, and other similar variations of keywords.
It’s no secret that Google and Microsoft have aggressively encouraged advertisers to expand the broad party. However, many advertisers, myself included, had a negative perception of broad matches. Query matching was too general and traffic quality was often lower.
Over the past two years, we’ve expanded our extensive use of matches. Broad match can provide additional search coverage and revenue growth when combined with well-designed bidding algorithms. Consider trying again if you avoided broad match.
In July 2021, Google Ads retired broad match modification (BMM). Microsoft Ads followed suit by retiring its BMM offering in March 2023. This is the start of consolidation of the keyword match type.
(This is pure speculation, but Google/Microsoft will retire another type of match in 12-18 months.) If I had to make a prediction, phrase matching would be phased out in favor of exact match (for the control) and broad (for scope). .
These changes are a direct result of the advancement of machine learning within ad serving platforms like Google Ads and Microsoft Ads.
3. Consolidation of the campaign
Data-driven attribution was an essential element of campaign consolidation in Google Ads. Google’s ad serving algorithm dominated user intent in its core search product.
Algorithms needed to understand ad performance across channels in the Google advertising ecosystem.
Once the algorithm understood how to optimize all Google properties, this opened the door for further consolidation. Campaign consolidation came first Smart shopping at Google and Microsoft.
Google Smart Shopping was a campaign that allowed businesses to automatically display their product ads on the Google Search Network, YouTube, the Display Network, and Gmail. Smart Shopping campaigns used machine learning to optimize bids and placements.
Throughout 2022, advertisers had to migrate Smart Shopping campaigns to Max performance. As a result, the maximum performance (PMax) is the current maximum consolidation of the campaign.
PMax gives advertisers access to new inventory, ad formats and audiences across all Google channels, including YouTube, Search, Gmail, Shopping and Discovery.
Another point of consolidation will include Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) in PMax. Google hasn’t provided a specific date for that migration, but the company has said it’s working to integrate the two features and hopes to make the switch soon.
Stay ahead of the curve
The past five years have felt like the slow incline of a roller coaster. And it looks like the next two years will be a drop in the bucket.
The decline will be driven by privacy legislation, machine learning, automation and artificial intelligence. Get a grip, people!
The views expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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