5 Most Significant PPC Trends You Need to Know in 2019

2018 was another massive year in the global universe of PPC marketing.

We saw massive changes at Google, such as AdWords being rebranded as Google Advertisements; the new Google Advertisements “experience” (i.e., user interface); and the release of several new advertising campaign types, features, improvements, focusing on options, and tools.

In the meantime, at Bing Advertisements, the release was seen by us of a lot of new features, targeting capabilities, reviews and other improvements - however, the most exciting information was that people (finally!) found the appearance of LinkedIn profile worth concentrating on.

We also found the rise of Amazon as a significant challenger to Google potentially, with advertisers shifting budget toward Amazon because more people start their search for products on Amazon than Google now.

Just what exactly does 2019 have waiting for you for Pay-Per-Click entrepreneurs?

I asked 28 of the brightest Pay Per Click people I know!

This past year (see 25 Experts on the best PPC Trends You should know in 2018) a few of the hot trends included artificial intelligence, tone of voice search, audience targeting, and automation.

In 2019, though, obviously, two trends are on nearly everyone’s minds: Audiences and automation.

But that’s just the start.

Listed below are 10 of the largest trends you should know for 2019 - comprising paid search, paid social, and remarketing - according to 30 of the very best PPC marketing experts.

1. Audiences, Not Keywords

Anthony Levy of Incredible SEM believes 2019 would be the year the keyword dies, as advertisers shift focus away from match types and conditions toward context and people.

“It’s been quite a while coming; Search Engine's have given us way too many additional levers to take care of along with keywords,” Levy said. “I really believe next year will be the beginning of the end for keywords as an initial search lever.”

Not all are ready to declare the keyword deceased, including Andrew Lolk of SavvyRevenue. In the event that you aren’t using audiences, you’re doing PPC incorrect, he said.

“Keywords shall be important, but audience-targeting on the search network will in 2019 be of equivalent importance for securing huge results,” Lolk said.

Christian Olson, Mind of Evangelism for Search, Microsoft, isn’t prepared to declare the keyword end, either.

“The main element to success in 2019 and beyond is to create an in depth strategy of the many audience types and audiences lists and ways to coating them (with negative and positive bet types) to form your paid search strategy.”

Purna Virji, Senior Supervisor of Global Engagement, Microsoft, suggests spending additional time concentrating on creating and optimizing your customer sections.

“Drill down in them even more, so your advertisement messaging is often as relevant and feel as customized as is possible,” she said. “This will be greatly important in 2019!”

Brooke Osmundson, Senior Digital Supervisor, NordicClick Interactive, feels audiences and keywords will still work hand-in-hand in 2019, noting that “this will be essential to learn what forms of audiences are actually searching for your products and services.”

“In-Market audiences are actually effective [in 2018], and utilizing remarketing based from top-funnel in-market audiences can help form a thorough funnel strategy,” she said.

2. Automation + Human Intelligence

Automation isn’t approaching. It’s here already.

Actually, the trend we’re viewing from the engines is more automation, said Frederick Vwlleys, CEO, Optwmyzr.

“Google said its search advertisements should be ‘advertisements that work for everyone’ plus they mean it,” he said. “They believe automation allows for more businesses to reach your goals search marketers so we’ll see more ‘brilliant’ features from Google, and Bing will observe in lock-step.”

Ben Solid wood, Digital Director, Hallam, expects Google Advertisements to continue to boost their built-in automation features.

“It’s approaching the stage where it’s better to lean into Google automation tools rather than shun them and use only third-party tools,” he said. “It’s no key that Google desires marketers to use their computerized bidding strategies in promotions, by increasing the amount of data factors used within their bidding strategies.”

But all of this doesn’t mean you will need to be concerned about being replaced with a machine. Yet.

“It won’t be considered a competition to see whether humans or machines are best,” Vallaeys added. “It'll be a competition to see which PPC experts have the best process to leverage the machines to blow away their competition.”

As Ilya Cherepakhin, Professional Press Director, Acronym, places it:

“With Google’s reactive ads starting, the latest change to exact match, and audience targeting gathering popularity, the times of manual campaign management are fading away,” he said. “Especially, when focusing on a large level, machine learning is showing to be quite effective.”

Which means you should release time by making the machines do the heavy lifting, Virji said.

“In the event that you spend lots of time on repetitive jobs such as bid monitoring, or reporting, you can begin to automate it even further, and that means you can spend additional time on where it certainly counts: your visitors,” she said.

Navah Hopkins, Services Development Strategist, WordStream, agreed.

“Consider delegating grunt work (bet management, keyword factors, etc.) to machine and automation learning, while retaining tasks requiring creativeness and brand/business knowledge (ad copy, marketing campaign strategy, etc.).”

Evaluating the machine’s suggestions will be tremendously significant in 2019 and after.

“Some are positive, some are negativea,” said Brad Geddes, Co-Founder, AdAlysis. “Smart marketers need to comprehend when to leverage so when to disregard the machine.”

3. Amazon & Advertising Alternatives

It’ll are more important than ever before for marketers to diversify their PPC spend over another 12 months, according to Wesley MacLaggan, SVP of Marketing, Marin Software.

“We expect Amazon to keep its hot streak in 2019, with Sponsored Product Advertisements and other formats being truly a key aspect to an effective PPC strategy, specifically for CPG and retail brands,” he said.

Lisa Raehsler, Founder, Big Click Co., said that 2019 will be an incredible time for ecommerce brands because they have more opportunities to attain buyers with higher personalization and precision:

Bing: Presently in pilot, Bing Advertisements is screening local inventory advertisements that screen product stock availability close by to operate a vehicle in-store visits.

Facebook: Improved advertisements to include a fresh instant storefront template format that can automatically generate a video with products customized to users.

Pinterest: New features allow users to buy straight from something pin with price and inventory availability. Not just that, they will also be able to make individualized product suggestions to users.

Google: Placing mobile first, Google’s local catalog advertisements feature local in-store availability and pricing in a simple scrollable mobile layout.

4. Accounts Management & The Role of PPC Marketers

AI is continuing to revolutionize PPC promotions, according to Marc Poirier, CEO, Acquisio, but marketing campaign managers aren't out of employment.

"In fact, advertising campaign managers can now carry out their own machine learning fights to choose which system is certain to get their client's or company's promotions the best results," he said. "As people are convenient with these developments and are implementing them more often, the device fights for best performance will escalate this season."

Daniel Gilbert, CEO, Brainlabs, believes that PPC managers need to begin thinking about how exactly to adapt their expertise in age machine learning.

"We're nearly at the point where AI can outperform humans, but we're getting closer," he said. "Focusing on how to leverage automation and developing skills like new-market evaluation, cross-channel strategy, and complicated competitor strategies is crucial for anybody in this space."

Vallaeys said PPC experts would have a great deal of strategizing to do in 2019 to find their place within an ever-more automated industry.

"I think that layering advanced management together with the motors' automations will produce the best results so you will see plenty of chance for practitioners to sparkle," he said.

So what's the near future for PPC marketers?

"The PPCer into the future will utilize smart automation for bidding, ad testing, and serving, and query mining to make better accounts and leave the PPCer to the weapon with which she can still soundly beat any machine: everything client (or boss!) -facing," said Kirk Williams, Owner, ZATO. "We start to see the future of paid search relaxing in effective accounts that permit the PPCers (who still want their careers) to get their amount of time in troubleshooting, evaluation, reporting, CRO assistance, projections, and… probably conferences."

As Susan Wenograd, Accounts Group Director, Aimclear, highlights, while managing those numbers and everything that mathematics, remember: you are a marketer!

"Keep sharpening that skill," she said. "You will remain prior to the game, because you won't treatment what algorithms change or what features vanish because you aren't so beholden to them."

More New Advertisement Types, Extensions & Features

Certainly, 2019 will feature several known unknowns for PPC marketers.

That is, we realize you will see several new advertisement types, reviews, and tools - but precisely what kind, we don’t yet know.

What do we realize?

“Local Services Advertisements will roll away countrywide as well as for additional industries. We can be prepared to see a change in query quantity from the typical keyword to text message ad to squeeze page process, and begin to think about localization and conversion based opportunities,” Levy said.

“I expect that advertisements will begin to permeate other areas of Google and Bing like maps, knowledge panels, answer containers et. al. as Google begins to monetize ‘position zero’ and incentivize marketers to keep their users directly on the SERP.”

In the final end, though, that’s why is PPC marketing so challenging - therefore rewarding.