Paid Media Updates You Need To Know | February 2023

It’s been an exciting beginning to 2023 with lots of updates in the Paid Media world, from the launch of Microsoft video ads, to UGC trends, the rise of ChatGPT and much more.

Let’s take a look at everything you need to know…

The latest Paid Media updates

Microsoft video ads

Video ads are predicted to be one of the biggest trends of 2023 with 90% of people saying videos help them make purchasing decisions.

Just last month, Microsoft launched video ads, designed to be viewed with sound off and lasting between 6 and 120 seconds.

Similar audiences sunsetting

Starting from 1st May 2023, Google will no longer generate lookalike audiences based upon customer lists.

If you are already using a lookalike audience within one of your campaigns before 1st May, the good news is that you have until 1st August before these will be removed by Google.

Apple Search Ads impression share

Just last month, Apple announced that impression share reporting is now available through the Apple Search Ads Campaign Management API.

This new option allows users to run daily or weekly reports to programmatically measure impression share, rank, and search popularity by search term, app, and country or region.

Removing redundant keywords

Google have now extended their auto apply on redundant keywords to include removing redundant keywords across different match types.

This means that where a broad match keyword covers the search query, Google will remove phrase or exact match keywords.

Future gazing: What’s next for Paid Media?

Voice search

With more than 1 in 4 people using voice search on their phone, it has been predicted that by the year 2024, the number of digital voice assistants in use will reach 8.4 billion.

It has also been suggested that by the end of this year, the smart speaker market.

As users increasingly opt for voice search, what does that mean for the future of paid ads? Well at the moment, voice-driven shopping is still in it’s infancy, however, voice searches targeting local businesses is something that is starting to grow.

So, how do we capture this audience?

Voice searches tend to use very conversational language, with long tail keywords playing an important role here. Often voice searches are question based for example ‘where’s a coffee shop near me?’.

With voice search, people don’t intend to look through all of the search results, they want a clear and comprehensive answer that satisfies their question immediately.

With this in mind, it is being recommended that advertisers restructure the headlines within their ads to be more conversational (where this makes sense, of course).

For example, instead of saying ‘the benefits of apples’ advertisers should rephrase this to ‘what are the benefits of apples?’.

User generated content

User-generated content is quickly becoming the leading way for businesses to promote their products and services.

With 92% of consumers turning to people they know for referrals above any other source, it is understandable why businesses are jumping on this new form of social proof as a way of marketing.

A study found that Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns using UGC photos receive a 50% increase in click through rate and a 5x return on ad spend.

So how does it work? People go on social media to stay up to date with friends and family, so content that looks organic tends to blend in and people can relate more to it; using a storytelling approach allows you to engage people through their emotions and connect with them.

User-generated content and paid ads go hand in hand, this means that UGC should be built into paid advertising by default so get testing!

Useful tool of the month

ChatGPT is the latest piece of technology to take the internet by storm.

For those of you that don’t know, ChatGPT is a chatbot that creates AI generated content, that can create a response or answer to almost anything.

At a basic level, you can ask it a question with a fact-based answer, formulate an email response and much more.

From a performance marketing perspective, there are a few ways we can use this tool:

• Form complex excel formulas
• Drafting content or blog articles
• Programming and writing code
• Ad copy & image mockups

Check out our blog to find out more about the potential of ChatGPT.

We hope you enjoyed our latest Paid Media news update! Be sure to check back next month for more news, trends and recommendations.