The Trends and Transformations of Google Ads in the past 5 years
It’s been 20 years for Google ads. We recorded the evolution of the AdWords into a $60 billion business at its 15 years of a milestone. Enhancing the campaigns ushered in the mobile as a marketing must-do just two years earlier on and Ads-only Google Shopping that was 3 years old as we are still speaking about Yahoo as the leading player in search.
Ad revenue has more than doubled, Yahoo surrendered to the search ads to Microsoft, mobile is ubiquitous, free listings are back on Google Shopping and AI along with machine learning have transformed the manner in which Google Ads work and the way the advertisers work with it when you fast forward five years and a rebrand later on.
Over the past five years that points to what lies ahead in the next five years, here they look at some of the massive changes.
Rise in audiences
Google launched customer matches in the fall of 2015, several years after Facebook and Twitter had launched their first-party targeting products. Beyond standard website retargeting, this marked Google’s leap into audiences.
In market and interest audience targeting is what the familiar concept that is introduced here. It also introduced predictive audiences based on purchase or churn probability powered by the new Google Analytics 4 this year.
Decline of keyword & match types
It has been quite significant in how Google defines the closer variants of the search queries over the past several years. The advertisers are forced to rethink everything ranging from the campaign and ad group structures to ad copy to keyword management as Google is evolving with the use of machine learning.
The keyword management is getting more complicated through the effects of the regulations and the privacy changes. The search terms that it is reporting to its advertisers, Google has started limiting it in the last month. The queries that are searched on the basis of a significant number of users are reported here.
Automated campaigns and ads
2018 ushered in the era of completely-automated ads and campaign types in Google Ads based on the results it saw from the University App campaigns.
Certain aspects of campaign management including bidding or dynamic headlines, no longer will be automation be limited here. Based on some of the advertisers' inputs, every facet of the campaigns such as bidding, creative, and targeting can be automated.
Surfaces across Google
An option that is specific to Google Shopping is Surfaces across Google. This is the way in which the retailers are allowed to showcase their products for free on Google shopping, Google images, Google search, and Google Lens as it captures a broader theme here.
It now shows the ads with the expansion of the surfaces on Google. Nearly every other campaign type will now automatically be running the ads across multiple channels as mentioned earlier and Google continues to mark its expansion where the ads will be able to appear on its properties while there are still pure Search campaigns in Google Ads.
Online-to-offline
Due to the pandemic, Ecommerce has surged this year and positioned well to dominate the online to the offline economy. This is the outcome of more than a decade of groundwork.
Local inventory ads have become a lot more popular vehicles for the retailers to promote their products to their nearby searchers and increasingly measuring the impact of those ads on stores visits and store purchases despite some of their early challenges. Google also announced the automated bidding optimization for the store sales this year.
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