If you are a Google Ads marketer, you are most likely already planning your 2023 strategy. To keep you updated with the latest innovations, we’ve made a list of the 5 biggest Google Search trends to expect next year and give you some tips on how to stay ahead of the curve.
Cookieless Tracking
2018 marked a cataclysmic before and after point when the European GDPR came into effect. The move by the EU to regulate the collection of third-party data which required users’ consent meant that for many advertisers, up to 30% of their market reach disappeared. The scenario does not get any better next year. International regulation on data collection and storage will keep increasing and browsers will continue blocking cookies directly, like Firefox or Safari have done. This means that the future of marketing is cookieless, it is consented and it will be modeled.
Consent will play an even larger role in how and which data is collected, and faced with this inevitable loss of data, Google is creating modeling systems to ‘fill-in the gaps’. Therefore, you should be making steps to future-proof your marketing. Important building blocks for privacy-compliant marketing are long-term, privacy-compliant data storage, setting up a privacy-compliant tracking setup, for example via server-side tracking, and in the case of Google Ads, integrating the CRM with Google Ads.
Incrementality Studies
The next Google Search trend to keep an eye out for is incrementality testing. Post-covid marketing budgets are smaller than they were in 2019, so the pressure on conversions is greater than ever before. Incrementality testing can be used to determine how many conversions your campaigns achieve explicitly because a user was exposed to your ad. The test results ignore conversions that occurred independently of the campaign.
You can set up conversion lifts yourself and no longer need to involve your Google account manager. You can run A/B tests for conversions either geographically or based on user signals. With a “test and learn” mentality, you can achieve 30% higher ad performance according to Google. So conversion lift studies are worth investing in, feel free to contact us if you have any questions.
Expanding SERP
In 2023, the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) will change substantially. The future of search is visual and interactive. This means that we expect to see many more image results popping up in the search results. Fueling this trend is Google Multisearch, a feature that allows users to search using images and keywords in order to find new products or inspiration. Google Ads has already changed their ad creation process to encourage advertisers to add images to each search ad. Be sure to take advantage of the simplified setup to get that coveted first position.
The SERP will also have more interactive features like “click to chat” ads, that direct users to your automated chatbots for product information or customer service.
(Learn how to integrate chatbots into your marketing strategy in our guide to automating your marketing).
New shopping behavior
The world of e-commerce and online consumer behavior is also evolving, and fast! First, after 2 years of supply chain issues and price volatility, consumers are shopping earlier. Google saw a 200% increase in searches for “Black Friday deals” in July showing that seasonal shopping is becoming a year-round business. In addition, brand loyalty among consumers is not as strong as it once was. 36% of shoppers surveyed said they would shop at a new brand rather than their preferred brand to save some money.
What this means for advertisers is that users spend more time researching products than actually shopping, which indicates you need to be present early. Due to the increased number of touchpoints (on average a user sees 5 pieces of media before making a purchase), it’s necessary to set up a full-funnel strategy for product marketing. Using your first-party data, you can develop a consistent multi-channel strategy. In terms of brand loyalty, price sensitivity is increasingly more important than brand awareness.
Youtube for Sales
Our final Google Search trend for 2023 is all about YouTube. Due to the exponential growth of ConnectedTV and YouTube shorts, there are more video formats than ever before. Consumers continue to use YouTube for product inspiration and reviews, so consider how you can improve your organic YouTube strategy. When creating a YouTube advertising campaign, first determine your marketing goals and then choose the campaign type that best fits your objectives. Make sure you create content that fits all ad types (6-second bumper ads, longer Trueview ads, vertical videos for short films, etc.), as using all video placements can result in a 48% increase of ROI. Don’t forget that YouTube isn’t just for brand awareness anymore. Shoppable ads are becoming more and more common. So it’s worth linking Merchant Center to YouTube campaigns and get ready to see sales skyrocket.
