Essential PPC trends in 2022 to follow

Despite the challenges of recent years, Pay Per Click (PPC) remains a highly effective form of marketing. Whether as standalone campaigns or complementary strategies for Search Engine Marketing (SEM), social media marketing, and more, PPC surges ahead. It doesn’t remain unchanged, however. Like all such channels, it must cater to an ever-evolving digital marketing landscape. For this reason, let Digital Dot NYC marketers outline the essential PPC trends in 2022 that deserve your attention.

Persistent, personal, holistic; PPC in 2022

As an introductory remark, we may begin by noting that PPC trends have seen few substantive changes since last year. The changed, post-pandemic customer requires specific, now-established qualities to reach and entice. In brief, we may consolidate those into the following.

• Persistent. The average customer journey now spans many touchpoints, and competition is fierce. As with all marketing strategies, PPC can only succeed through persistence; remarketing, consistency, and engagement.
• Personal. There can be no engagement without personalization, however, as SEO attests to. PPC can no longer rely on simple keyword match, and must also offer substantive, contextual value for each customer.
• Holistic. Finally, as customer-centric omnichannel marketing takes hold, PPC must follow suit. It can no longer be confined in solitude; it must integrate and synergize with existing strategies.

And yet, despite these higher standards, PPC still flourishes. Its old glory may be in jeopardy, for a few reasons, but that’s exactly what makes early adaptations necessary. And as a PPC agency New York trusts, we’re here to help you do so.

Essential PPC trends in 2022

In pursuit of these qualities, and in response to digital developments, here are our 7 picks for PPC marketing trends to keep an eye on this year.

#1 First-party data

Starting with one of the most notable challenges facing digital marketers today, third-party data is already fading out. As Apple, Google, and other tech giants restrict cookies and tracking options to protect consumer data privacy, marketers must rely on “traditional” first-party data.

Kimberly Shah, Senior Account Executive at Microsoft Advertising stresses this point in no uncertain terms:

“With the updates in cookie tracking in iOS14, and the deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome looming on the horizon, inevitably, other publishers will quickly start to follow suit[.] The reality of a 3P cookieless world is fast approaching, and in order to ensure a successful entry into this world, it will be key in 2022 to heavily strategize, invest, and test into first-party data sources and start to apply these across your marketing channels holistically.”

#2 AI and automation

Not everything changes, however, and technology often offers solutions to such challenges. A marketing mainstay for years now, AI-driven automation will continue to inform PPC campaigns as it expands. If last years’ trends are not proof enough of this prediction, the industry’s continued expansion should help solidify it:

Between AI and machine learning, PPC marketers can expect increasingly automated processes like:

• CTR and conversion forecasts
• Ad campaign prioritizations
• Contextual keyword optimization
• Ad testing and optimizations
• Ad performance reports

This is all nothing startlingly new either; Amazon, Google, Facebook, and other ad giants are already offering AI-powered options that will only expand and improve over time.

#3 Personalization and remarketing

Similarly, among the most essential PPC trends in 2022 will continue to be personalization and remarketing – as highlighted above.

Starting with the latter, remarketing and retargeting have been PPC staples for years now. They arguably thrived in response to longer customer journeys, and offer the additional touchpoints modern audiences need. For this reason, the majority of PPC marketers use them, as 99Firms finds:

As for personalization, one can hardly question that this marketing quality will never subside. Across all marketing channels, audiences increasingly seek personal value; how are those product recommendations relevant to my habits? Which of my needs does this ad promise to address? How personal is this email? As social media feeds, email inboxes and SERPs become increasingly cluttered, personalization alone will win customers over.

#4 Video ads

In much the same way, PPC will continue to embrace video ads. The sheer power of visual content propelled social media marketing to unprecedented heights, and few content marketers will contest this. From web design New York solutions to landing page optimizations, visual appeal reigns supreme – and rightfully so.

Should you need to quantify video marketing’s efficiency, ample data can attest to it:

Especially for social media paid ads, which offer a native affinity for video content, PPC marketers will embrace video. In addition, they will likely embrace holistic PPC approaches that leverage visual content further. To illustrate, consider such popular examples as:

• Google video ads
• Instagram stories
• YouTube bumper ads

Who can truly afford to overlook such powerful visual channels in 2022? Next to nobody, statistics argue.

#5 Paid search and SEO

On that subject, essential PPC trends in 2022 should undoubtedly include paid search and SEO. The two becoming more closely interwoven won’t just continue an existing trend, but also drive holistic marketing strategies.

Indeed, paid search budgets continue to exceed paid social and display advertising budgets considerably:

Still, as last year’s trends also showed, paid search cannot stand alone. Rather, it must synergize with SEO, starting on the level of keywords. Marketers will need to cover organic traffic with SEO and have it inform their PPC keywords, allowing the two to complement one another. As we’ve covered before, paid search competition will require diligence to overcome.

#6 TikTok

Returning to social media, the rising star that is TikTok absolutely deserves its own section. For many, it will be shaping essential PPC trends in 2022 and beyond – and we can only agree.

First, if you’re not advertising your business on TikTok yet, its staggering growth should convince you to do so:

If you remain unconvinced, Hootsuite also confirms this growth with such impressive stats as TikTok “gain[ing] 8 new users every second”.

For PPC marketers, this impressive growth offers access to vast new audiences – with massive engagement rates to match. And should you delve into eCommerce specifically, Shopify has now introduced TikTok Shopping to spearhead social commerce. How much more holistic can you get?

 

#7 Deep tracking

Finally, to conclude with a challenge like how we started, PPC performance remains relatively hard to track. Unfortunately, as PPC channels expand and marketers embrace diversification, this issue may only persist in 2022.

To address this longstanding issue, marketers will need to establish robust Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to closely monitor campaigns. In addition, they will need to embrace technology more, adopting software solutions that seek to serve this purpose.

To meet this challenge you may consider tools and solutions like:

• Hootsuite’s AdEspresso
• WordStream’s AdWords Performance Grader
• Ahref’s SEO software
• HubSpot’s PPC Management Template
• SEMRush’s PPC ToolKit

Thankfully, options in this regard abound – and extend far beyond this list. As the market continues to see this need, it will continue to offer solutions for every PPC marketer in 2022.

In closing

To conclude, PPC marketing will continue to evolve and still retain its crucial role in digital marketing success. As essential PPC trends in 2022 show, it will continue to become more persistent, more personal, and more holistic. As the modern customer and the digital marketing landscape continue to change, so too will it adapt and evolve. For more detailed information about the inner workings of PPC marketing, make sure to schedule a consultation with our PPC team in NYC.