Google AdWords Paid Search (PPC) Trends in 2015

Posted December 29th, 2015 by Kirti & filed under Google Ads Tips.

A range of changes announced throughout this year has impacted the paid search landscape. On one hand it offers customers with easy access to information that they are searching for and on the other hand, advertisers are given ample opportunities to showcase relevant content. Such actions brings about meeting customer expectations and helping advertisers have an upper hand in getting desired leads for their business.

Let’s look at some of the trends that evolved this year and will gain more momentum in the coming year.

1. Emphasis on structured feeds rather than keyword bidding.

Hotel ads and flight search de-emphasizes the importance on keywords. The advertisers will get qualified customers who have already done their research on Google using specialized flight or hotel search. With hotel ads already witnessing a revamped look, advertisers can display all details of their hotel for a traveler to make the decision to book or not. Further with structured data you can determine the targeting of your ads and reach audiences who have already searched for your services. This is a really impressive way of targeting the right message when it comes to people-on-the-move.

2. Video consumption is big. So will the advertising opportunity.

Online video viewing is massive and more than a billion users are spending hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube. Though the reach is immense, compared to other media, video is relatively underutilized. This year we saw Google come up with TrueView to offer information along with ‘click to buy’ option to invoke immediate call-to-action from customers. To leverage this and offer more opportunities to advertisers willing to tap the viewers on YouTube, more ad formats will come up to saturate as much of existing video inventory as possible.

3. Many businesses are still not completely mobile ready, new ad formats will help them break the barrier.

Even though, overwhelming users of most businesses are online using mobile, the businesses themselves are still stuck in the desktop era, vying for audiences that are desktop users. This year Call Only ads overcame the need to have a website completely in order to connect a customer directly to the business. For a customer searching on mobile, the call icon induces an action of directly making a call to the business service they are interested in. Such possibilities are sure to be explored more by Google to drive more businesses to mobile and drive immediate call-to-action from users. This could happen with new mobile ad formats that could convince businesses to have a mobile-friendly or responsive website.