The Future of PPC: 4 Clues From Google That Tell Us Everything

As a child, my favorite mysteries were Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels.

They all had great quotes, but one of my favorites was from Baskerville dog When Holmes said to Watson:

“The world is full of obvious things that no one ever notices.”

I want to think that if Sir Doyle were alive today as a digital marketer in paid search, he might paraphrase this quote to say something more like: “Google always leaves a trail of navigation crumbs, straight to the future of PPC, if you take the time to search.”

I recently decided to look, and the results I’ve found are amazing.

I’ve come across more bread crumbs than I can count, and many of them have led to different places.

However, a core group revealed a clear picture of what’s to come for the PPC industry.

Idea 1: Try the new Google ad scripts

Google Ads scripts have been around almost as long as the platform itself.

However, ask around, and you might be hard-pressed to find someone who has used scripts consistently in their PPC campaigns or someone who has used any at all.

Google wants that to change.

Google Ads Scripts Experience Version 2 has officially launched, and it’s a huge step forward by Google to bring this feature to the fore and support its use with robust information and a training portal.

What it tells us: With Google’s push toward automation, it’s imperative we understand that continuing to ride is not an option.

It has become a necessity.

When launching, improving, and maintaining campaign performance while scaling budgets, it becomes increasingly difficult to stay on top of everything without some help.

With this new offering, Google is making a clear statement for the future of PPC, near and far.

There will be a growing interest in automating your PPC campaign business, and Google Scripts is here for you.

Idea 2: Spectator acquisition

viewer It is a business intelligence (BI) tool used to graph, graph, and display data so you can recognize and act on both problems and opportunities.

This app falls into the same category as Tableau and Power BI from Microsoft.

Three years ago, Google acquired Looker for $2.6 billion.

This acquisition completed the flow marketing channel UI for data display that Google desperately needed.

Google had already built Big Query years earlier, which allowed them to own the data warehouse part of the data pipeline, but they were still missing the BI part.

The acquisition of Looker enabled Google to offer a full suite of data tools, end to end, to its users.

Users no longer need to venture outside the Google ecosystem to get the necessary platforms and applications to run a marketing service with end-to-end management.

What he tells us: Dealing with structured data and larger data sets that live outside the marketing channel user interface will be the norm for digital marketers.

As a PPC Manager, you may not have to become a Certified Data & Analytics Expert, but you should be comfortable with updating datasets, managing your campaign and processing data within your chosen BI application.

Proof 3: Broad match and responsive ad expansion

Is it just me, or is Google trying to push their “broad match” bid strategy and “responsive” ad setup option every chance they get?

When you add keywords to a new campaign, you’ll get a strict disclaimer if you don’t specify your keywords as broad match.

Or how about a red text status warning when displaying campaign keywords?

You think something is wrong, but it’s just a “warning” that you can get more conversions if you choose “broad match” keywords for your ad group.

Then you have to deal with advertising campaigns!

When setting up a new display campaign, Google hides the standard display ad option and forces you to create a responsive display ad.

What he tells us: Google-recommended “suggestions” (with which Google always gives up more control) have been around for over a decade.

All I have to do is point to expanded text ads to show you how it all ends.

Google will have more control over our campaigns to the extent that Google will do almost everything from campaign setup to ad writing and choosing your bid strategy.

Idea 4: Google Glasses announcement at I/O 2022

The long-awaited return of Google Glass (officially known as Proto 29) was announced at the annual Google I/O event with an impressive video presentation.

While the video was relatively light on detail, it definitely got people talking about one potential use case, namely the glasses’ ability to translate foreign languages.

What it tells us: Things change, and always will.

If you were hoping to become an expert in all kinds of advertising software and marketing tactics and then put those skills to work for the rest of your career, you will be sorely disappointed.

Once Google Glass is released and widely adopted, we’ll need to learn and create campaigns for an entirely new ad platform.

Not only that, but if you thought Google just released this video to brag about a niche product that won’t go viral, you’ve got something else coming.

This was the digital equivalent of Google planting the flag and saying, “This market share is ours, and it’s going to be big!”

So you have two options.

You can bury your head in the sand and hope in a shooting star that you never have to use this groundbreaking technology in your PPC business.

Or you can see this as an opportunity, set a Google alert for any Google Glasses-related news, and then start learning everything you can to become a leader in this new field.

Idea 5: Auto-generated assets beta feature

Nestled seamlessly between the Bidding and Start and End Dates tabs in the campaign menu, you’ll see the biggest guide to the future of pay-per-click.

The Google It states that the Auto-Generated Assets feature:

“…it will allow Google to help you create titles, descriptions, and other assets using your content from your landing page, domain, and ads. Google will provide you with automated tools to customize your assets based on the relevance of your keywords. This may improve ad relevance and performance.”

What he tells us: If you read the statement closely, you will realize that this one feature changes everything.

With just one feature, Google could, in theory, find relevant keywords to bid on your business, create headlines and descriptions for search ads, and target ads to a relevant landing page.

If you haven’t noticed, these actions make up the lion’s share of what a PPC manager creates on a daily basis and will dramatically change what he or she essentially does as a marketing professional.

future ppc

So, what does all this mean, and how will it affect the daily job duties of PPC Marketers?

Track and analyze data

If you haven’t already noticed in your day to day work, making sure the data is highlighted, tracked, sorted and plotted is a huge part of the job.

This will become a more important part of your day as these items become more complex and clean data becomes king.

You may not need to become a fully-fledged data scientist, but you will definitely need to learn how to collect and process data in the future.

Managing systems that run campaigns

The days of direct PPC “pulling the levers” have been numbered.

We may set up and operate systems and machines that “pull” levers for us.

From writing JavaScript code that runs on thousands of input data points to designing a custom app on Google Glasses, indirect campaign management seems like a possibility.

Work automation will become work

There is no doubt that automating more of the tasks we perform now will be vital to the future of PPC.

The new Google Script experience is all about automation, but you know it can be serious work to drive automation if you’ve already written script.

With the Auto-Generated Assets feature, it seems strikingly clear that playing a greater role in preparing the main website to contain optimal components used by Google in an automated manner will be essential.

This may not be the role you set out to play, but it may just be the role you need to play in the future of PPC.

The end (and the beginning)

I may be right on all of these predictions, some or none at all.

But if nothing else, and if history is any guide, the role of PPC Director in 10 years will look different than the role we all play now.

Just keep your eyes open for all the clues Google has to offer and you’ll stay ahead.

More resources:

• Try a PPC strategy to protect and build your brand
• Google phrase matching: everything you need to know
• Top 10 Pay Per Click Trends To Know In 2022

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Featured image: New Africa / Shutterstock