The future of brand bidding is full of opportunities. Most people are looking at automation and audiences as the significant brand bidding trends of the near future, but that is just the start. There are more future brand bidding trends that we will look at in the article below. 

Let’s begin.

Amazon and Alternative Advertising

It is vital for marketers to know the importance of diversifying their budget on PPC over the coming years. For instance, we expect to see Amazon continue with formats such as Sponsored Product Ads because it is an element used in a successful PPC strategy, especially for brands in retail.

According to the founder of Big Click Co., Lisa Raehsler, e-commerce brands would have precise ways of targeting their audiences because of improved personalization:

Facebook: ads are going to have an instant storefront template that generates a video with products that are custom made for the users. 

Bing: Bing Ads which are also known as local inventory ads show the stock availability of a product that is nearby. These efforts promote visitors to walk into a store. 

Google: since the future is mobile, the Local Catalogue Ads (LCA) of Google feature the ability to simplify in-store purchases using scrollable layouts on the mobile phone. The LCA are visual ads which are easy to browse on the phone. They help to drive traffic to the store because they highlight specific products, store information, and prices.  

Pinterest: the company released new features that make it possible for customers to use a product pin with inventory and price availability to make a purchase. Additionally, the new feature will make personalized recommendations of products to users.

Audiences Are a Bigger Priority Than Keywords

Advertisers are now shifting from focusing on keywords as the primary search lever to audiences. This shift will take a while because not everyone is ready to give up on keywords. The addition of search-levers is a significant improvement which needs to be adopted across the board. If you are not utilizing audiences, you are not doing PPC the right way. One of the best examples of using audiences is the use of paid social ads. Since social media prioritizes posts based on audience groups, paid social ads help to target only the relevant audiences

Keywords are going to be crucial, but to get results, you need to focus on audience-targeting. The Head of Evangelism for Search at Microsoft, Christi Olson, is one of the individuals who has described the importance of audience targeting. Christi’s primary view focused more on the significance of the different audience lists, audience types, and the implementation plan to shape your PPC. 

Companies have to focus more on the creation and optimization of customer segments. Creating distinctive separation guidelines will help your ad messaging to be personalized to each customer segment.

Automation and Human Intelligence

Automation is a critical ingredient in search engines. It is one of the major factors that makes it possible for businesses to become successful in search marketing. Bing and Google are continuously adding smart features on their search engines. Google plans on enabling advertisers to use many more data points in Google’s automated bidding strategies.

The days of manually managing your ad campaigns are gone. Responsive ads, and the popularity of audience targeting are changing brand bidding. If you spend time on bid optimization, automation can help you to spend time on your customers.

In the future, people will delegate keyword variables and bid management to machine learning and automation. At the same time, creative tasks and business knowledge will be preserved for the manual processes.

Attribution and Cross-Channel Advertising Experiences

Cross-platform advertising has brought about the need for companies to leverage cross-device and cross-channel attribution. Although well-coordinated multi-channel campaigns are now easier to build, reporting silos are challenging to many businesses. In the future, we hope to see increased investments in reporting and attribution. Since attribution is different in all enterprises, find what works for your business model and tweak it continuously.

Advertisers need to understand that engaging with customers on each purchase funnel dictates that you have to ensure that you deliver positive experiences continuously. Search is one of the primary ways of providing an excellent experience for a customer. It is the backbone of ad campaigns in the future.

Ads

Messages seen by the user are always critical. Do you need to use text ads? Several versions of descriptions and headlines are predicted to become more intentional in considering whether the headlines and description lines will be used. 

Video

In social media, video is crucial in your strategies because they are becoming essential on SERPs. You might be against spending on video ads, but you can leverage your efforts using YouTube to target your search campaigns. Video is the most popular content for mobile; platforms are now encouraging advertisers to strategize on how they will use video.

Brand Building

Users of PPC should know that creating brand loyalty and creating products that customers desire is the core of their businesses. Instead of focusing on ROI, focus your efforts on social platforms like YouTube while executing customer-centric goals. Tactics and platforms will evolve across time, but a concentrated push to prioritize brand loyalty and affinity will have a longer lasting impact.

New Extensions, Ad Types, and Features

It is hard to predict the type of elements that will spring up. What we know is that local service ads will be spread nationally. We also hope to see a shift in query volume from standard keywords, to localization and conversions. 

Expect to see ads getting to other aspects of Google, knowledge panels, Bing type maps, answer boxes e.t.c. 

Role of PPC Marketing and Account Management

PPC campaigns are continuously changing because of AI. The advancement of tech allows campaign managers to use machine learning to identify the right system, that will deliver the best results in an ad campaign. People are now comfortable with machine learning battles, and they are using this technology to increase their ad performance. We expect to see more use of ML in PPC marketing in the coming year.

AI is not yet developed to the point where it can outperform humans, but we might get to that stage soon. With that in mind, everyone in this space needs to leverage developing skills like cross-channel advertising, new-market analysis, and sophisticated strategies to play at the top level. Companies now need to find their place in the competitive and increasingly automated industry by coming up with better strategies.

One of the trends that companies can use is placing complex management above the automation of the engine, to produce exceptional results. This strategy will create more opportunities for marketers. In the future, smart automation will be implemented by PPC users to test ads, serve, and query-mine to ensure that they create actively efficient accounts. PPC users will then focus their efforts on their clients. 

The future trends of PPC will ensure professionals invest in troubleshooting, analysis, CRO assistance, reporting, meetings, and projections. More time will also be spent on sharpening marketing skills to make sure that they are always a step ahead of the game. They will also be in a position to know the changes taking place in algorithms and the features that are coming up. 

The Adoption of MAP Compliance by Manufacturers

Search has received lots of queries from manufacturers who want to track their retailers for MAP (minimum advertised price) violations. Some retailers offer low prices, below MAP, to ensure that they are competitive. When price parity among retailers occurs, it causes a domino effect very quickly because you will easily find premium brands selling below MAP.

Some companies are now providing MAP compliance services each year. Harvard Business School have tested various approaches on how to increase MAP compliance. In the future, MAP compliance will become a protective tool and a revenue driver for brands to boost sales by maintaining reseller prices at the right level while preventing any price parity.

URL Hijacking

Direct linking or URL hijacking, is a type of brand bidding where an advertiser uses your URL without your consent. Some affiliates do this to get easy commissions without using their brand or website. When you are a victim of URL hijacking, your competition will remove your ads and market their ads.  This process will impact your ads optimization efforts and metrics.

Although search engines can implement URL ownership verification, it is something that has not yet been done. In the meantime, you need to monitor your website, measure the impact, and execute some enforcement techniques like filing lawsuits & search engine complaints and creating pacts or agreements.