PPC Trends 2022 – A Checklist by Google PPC Experts!

Wondering what will be the top PPC trends in 2022? Well, that’s exactly what we will answer today.

With the world going all-digital, online ad spending can transform any business. It boosts brand awareness, visibility and thus, conversions, and that’s a fact –

Marketing stats by Truelist prove that PPC advertising brings 50% more conversions than organic advertising.

But to get these conversions, you need to look for the top successful PPC strategies since digital advertising is constantly evolving.

So, let’s see which paid search trends will lead in 2022 and beyond.

Automation in PPC Advertising

Automation in PPC will continue in this and coming year. Automation in processes is leading in all the industries globally. And why not, when it offers promising opportunities and results with less headache of workload.

In 2022, PPC automation will be a beneficial move for businesses like yours. There will be a massive shift in automating data diagnostics, Google Ads testing, and CTA (Call-to-Action) analysis. This will help identify the reason behind underperforming ads and improve to get better results.

Keypoints of PPC Automation Trend

• With automation, tracking leads become more efficient and effortless.
• Offers useful content for each segment, creating a positive user experience for the prospects throughout the funnel.
• Increases sales opportunities as prospects arrive at the sales team ready to make the purchase.
• Automation personalizes communication, making it easier to engage with leads and increasing brand engagement.
• Provides greater efficiency in the sales funnel by automating identification and segmentation of prospects and offering them personalized content.
• Offer higher productivity by saving you time on the tasks that it will automate. You can invest your effort in other important tasks.
• Reduce the cost of acquisition per customer (CAC). With PPC automation, you no longer need to invest in resource investment.

Best Automation Tool For Your PPC Campaigns [Our Pick]

Google Ads Editor – Free for Google Ads, support multiple campaigns.
Optmyzer – Paid, Offer automation of scripts for Google, Yahoo, and Bind Ads.
WordStream PPC Advisor – Ideal for a small budget, offers Bing, Facebook, Twitter and Google integrations.

First-Party Data Will Rule

PPC advertisements will be more respectful of privacy this year, in response to Google’s announcement to block third-party cookies on Chrome by 2023. Because of personal data protection issues, Safari (Apple) and Firefox (Mozilla) have already put this approach in action.

The impacts of cookieless advertising will be the main subject of discussion this year. Its anticipation will be a strong PPC trend in 2022 since most companies will work on it and prepare solutions and alternatives for its advent.

By far, the only solution visible is to rely on first-party data. For those unfamiliar with the term – first-party data is information a company collects directly from its customers and owns. Yes, it is your CRM’s data.

Keypoints of First-party Data Usage in PPC Trend

• Post-third-party cookies era, taking advantage of first-party data will undoubtedly be a major competitive advantage.
• Elimination of third-party cookies is an opportunity for a comeback for contextual advertising.
• First-party data have enormous potential to target consumers with consistent messages that respect the customer’s privacy issues.
• The use of first-party CRM data will be at the heart of the PPC ecosystem in the coming years.
• Lead generation ads to scale first-party data collection will rise.

Our Take on Elimination of Third-Party Cookies

Third-party cookies are the common base of digital advertising. It covers all the scenarios of targeting, optimization and measurement. The major challenge of its imminent end has two solutions:

Google’s Privacy Sandbox

It is an open-source project by Google that create specific standards for websites to access user information without compromising users’ privacy. Its core purpose is to facilitate online advertising by browser APIs without the use of third-party cookies.

Universal ID

A new framework that allows passing information of the user onto approved partners. It makes use of a universal identifier such as an email or mobile number that recognizes the user in the advertising ecosystem.

2022 is, therefore, a field for full-scale experimentation with these alternatives to third-party cookies. Of course, none of these solutions is perfect, and hybridization will undoubtedly be necessary. The number of consumers refusing to receive personalized advertising will inevitably continue to grow despite the precautions taken by publishers or brands.

Google Performance Max

Google now offers a new automation-focused Google Ads campaign – Google Performance Max. It gives advertisers access to all of their Google Ads inventory in a single campaign.

According to Google, Advertisers who use Performance Max campaigns in their account see an average 13% increase in total conversions for a similar cost per action.

• Max Performance campaigns can run across all of Google’s inventory, such as Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, and Discovery.
• These campaigns include text, images and videos ads.
• Performance Max combines Google’s automation technologies across budget optimization, audiences, bidding, and attribution.
• It makes use of machine learning for better performance.
• As if for now, it delivers an opaque analysis of data and conversion factors. Still, it is one of the most attention-catching PPC trends of 2022.

Lead Tracking Solutions Will Rise

Many businesses rely only on Google Ad software to experience the optimum advertising results. No doubt, Google Ads is a pioneer in online advertising. However, you should also know that integrating lead tracking software in Google Ads can significantly improve your Ads ROI (Return On Investment).

• Lead tracking software offers you individual lead data and passes potential leads to Google.
• Using such solutions with Google ads to collect individual data to create a strategic PPC campaign is a surefire PPC trend in 2022.
• The data it provides helps you show only relevant ads to a target audience.
• It improves your campaigns’ quality score, your PPC performance and brings more sales.
• It resolves the problem of unclear statistics that Google Performance Max delivers.

Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) Taking Over Expanded Text Ads (ETAs)

Starting June 30, 2022, it will no longer be possible to create or edit expanded text ads.

Many businesses run a wide variety of ETA ads simultaneously. But this year, the RSAs will make ETA ads disappear. The sole reason is the use of machine learning. Responsive Search Ads are ads with multiple titles and descriptions. Google uses machine learning to show users ads as efficiently as possible. In comparison, the ETA ads do not have any such concept.

The more relevant titles and descriptions we provide, the more Google Ads can serve ads that better match people’s search queries.

Changes in Social Media Advertising

Instagram Stories go to 60 seconds

The end of the IGTV format and the birth of the “Instagram Video” tab allows content creators to offer videos 15 to 60 seconds long. Video ads perform better on average than other types of ads. So, now you know where to keep your focus when targeting your Instagram audience.

Facebook Begins Its Revolution With Metaverse

The arrival of Metaverse digital virtual worlds, modelled on the physical world, could shake up this coming year. The principle is simple: through an avatar, you can access many services, such as making a cooking recipe, playing with your friends or attending a concert.

It also draws a whole new future for advertising, in which promoting new products may be possible. Companies are even considering creating additional work units in these spaces. Watch out for the possible backlash, though.

Demographic Targeting Bring Higher Conversion in Facebook Advertising

When it comes to more standard advertising, Facebook wants to prioritize demographic audiences over interest audiences that the company considers too narrow. Facebook points out with a study that demographic targeting is 1.6 times more likely to lead to higher conversion volume. However, we suggest you try both audiences to measure which one has the greatest impact on your business.

Tiktok is Diversifying

The social network, which has been the most downloaded in 2021, is still rising. The platform plans to diversify its activity and launches the “TikTok Kitchen” and “TikTok Live Studio” projects.

The social network is launching a new food delivery service in the United States. To differentiate itself, TikTok wants to offer the most popular recipes in its application, asking the most popular content creators to buy licenses for their recipes.

Tiktok live studio to tackle video game streamers. This allows computer players to broadcast their games live. For this, they need to connect with your personal TikTok account and rebroadcast from the TikTok live interface.

The network clearly wants to focus on advertising for its development.

Quality Score

The quality score of your Ads is the most important criterion that will determine the distribution of your advertisements. That’s why optimizing the quality score will be an evergreen PPC trend. The quality level is a score out of 10 determined based on several elements:

Expected Click-Through Rate

The expected click-through rate is a percentage determining the probability of clicks to your ad. In order to measure the click-through rate, the performance of your keyword and the positioning of your ad are taken into account.

The Relevance Of The Keyword

For Google to consider that your keyword is relevant to your ad and your website, it is important to group together similar keywords in the same ad group. For example, you could create the following ad groups:

Group – Sydney florist with the keywords: “Sydney florists”, “Sydney florist” and “Sydney florist search”

Group – Bouquets with the keywords: “purchase bouquets” and “offer a bouquet”

An Adapted Message

Include keywords in your in-text ads with a message. It helps Google Ads (Google AdWords) will understand that your ads are relevant and the message is suitable for users.

Landing Page

After clicking on an ad, it is important that users land on a landing page that matches their expectations. If Internet users arrive on a page that is not working or offer something else than what was said, Google will think that the page is irrelevant to the user’ search. Thus, your Quality Score will be affected, as will the positioning of your ads.

Combine SEO (Search Engine Optimization) with SEA (Search Engine Advertising)

SEO optimization offers long-term results and the trust of Google. It is free and reliable but also time-consuming. It requires you to make both semantic and technical optimizations. In comparison, the SEA is a fast and surely effective approach but expensive.

It is all the more effective on geolocated markets or on products with Google Shopping. It allows you to appear in the top search results instantly. You can earn 10-15% of clicks from a query without much effort.

Combining both of them will be a PPC trend of 2022. Their combination will be very fruitful since they are complementary. But make your choice after defining several factors such as:

• Size of your market.
• The budget you want to devote to your marketing strategy.
• The speed at which you want to see results.

Use Google Ads Advertising Extensions To Increase Relevance

With increasingly specific requests from Internet users, Google has gradually developed ad extensions to enrich its advertisements on its search network. By responding more accurately to requests, extensions increase ad click-through rates. They make it possible to gain visibility and add value to your ads campaign.

Extensions are now active on more than a third of search queries. They can be found in several forms:

• A call to action button
• A phone number
• Additional opinions or information
• Additional links
• An address
• Prices
• Messages etc

Ad extensions allow you to take up more space in search results, but they are not always active. They can be added manually or automatically to your ad. Automatic extensions will be activated on an ad only if they are appropriate and improve your performance. Using ad extensions will be a 2022 PPC trend as it improves your PPC campaign’s relevance and quality.

Manage Your PPC Budget Wisely in 2022

Managing your PPC budget is one of the crucial components of your web advertising strategy. Whether you are a newcomer or an experienced professional, you should regularly ensure that your expenses are well-optimized. Here’s how you can do that:

Define Your Lead

The most important factor in your budget planning is your need for leads. You must therefore determine:

• The quality of the lead
• The price per lead you are willing to pay (CPL)
• The purchasing cycle of your visitors/consumers
• The frequency of their visits
• The geographic territory targeted

If you are not sure how to determine the expected quality of your leads, you can ask yourself the following questions:

How much am I willing to spend?
What value can I get from a lead?
What is my current conversion rate (how many leads per conversion)?
What’s my PPC/Lead ratio: PPC spend to get a lead?

What Minimum Budget Should I Spend To Start A PPC Campaign?

If you want to acquire 150 new customers per month and your conversion rate is 15%, you will need to acquire 1000 leads at 10$ each to reach your goal. Your PPC budget will therefore be 10,000 $ per month. If each client brings you an average of 250 $ per month, your profit (if your PPC budget is your only expense) is therefore equal to (250×150) – 10,000$.

How Is Your Cost Per Lead Determined?

Several factors determine the value of your lead:

• Geographic area: Are your leads more valuable based on a specific geographic area? For example, does your market cover a province or an entire country?
• The purchase cycle of your customers: Do they need several visits to your site before deciding to buy?
• Bounce rate / average time per visit: How do your visitors behave once they arrive on your site?
• Your history: What were your previous performances?

You can improve your PPC campaign’s performance and better control the quality of your leads by performing strategic segmentation. For example, you can list the keywords that bring you little or no traffic and exclude them from your campaign.

You can also exclude locations where you don’t want your ad to appear. By carefully selecting your keywords and locations, you will be able to allocate more budget to a particular keyword.

Also, don’t forget to analyze the hours or days when you get more traffic. For example, if you find that most of your traffic occurs on weekends between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., it is better to increase your budget for this period and reduce it during slower periods.

Explore PPC Affiliate Marketing

There are countless advantages and developments of PPC affiliate marketing, making it a popular PPC trend in 2022. The approach of PPC affiliate marketing is to think outside the box and seek the support of less popular advertising platforms and target new potential audiences to make a profitable revenue. It requires transparent campaigns that meet the affiliate’s approval and more organic landing page content.

To Conclude – Be Ready For Anything

The emergence of Omicron and the possibility of new containments will not put off marketers. PPC spending is expected to increase further this year than in 2021. Among which 64.4% of ad spend will be on digital ads. However, the above trends are definitely fruitful to work on. Still, it would be wise to be ready for anything. Keep a sharp eye on upcoming PPC trends like SaaS marketing and tune your strategy accordingly.