10 Performance Marketing updates you should be aware of

The first 2 months of 2023 brought some digital marketing product updates - Google, Meta and LinkedIN, updates that either bring new opportunities for marketers, or optimize situations where things were not functioning too well.  We developed a list with the most important and the implications of each one:  

• The Insights Section in Google Ads. Google came up with an update on insights on search terms, creative assets, audiences and the history of modifiers. 

The Insights page in Google Ads helps us identify market trends and better understand the performance of campaigns in real time.

• Search Terms

Help us understand what users search for and how. The instrument analyzes search queries for which our ads were shown in the last 28 days, grouped up by categories and subcategories, and offers performance values for each.  We can use this report to discover new search terms to add in search campaigns. 

• Creative Assets

Help us understand what are the creative elements that resonate with our clients and can offer inspiration for creating new visual elements to better suit our audiences preferences. 

• Audiences

Help us better understand the features of our public segments that convert, and help us define much better our target audience. Thus, we can improve targeting, marketing assets and the overall performance of the campaigns. 

• The history of edits in the campaigns 

 Underlines what recent changes were made from the account and the impact it had. When an important change appears, these stats help us quickly find out the reasons behind it and act upon it. 

• A new B2B targeting feature on LinkedIn 

The new updates on LinkedIn come at the right time for us to adopt processes and tools to enable spending optimization, agility and reactivity to market conditions, while maintaining a growing strategy for 2023. The quality and volume of the data we collect are very important, with long effects, and advertisers are more and more interested in solutions that allow better data tracking and reporting.

• Instagram brings ads in personal feed

Instagram introduces new ads placements, in the Explore Home area and the personal feed. According to Instagream, the objective is to allow users to discover brands and profiles as early as possible, mainly in the grid they see when they read the Explore page.  The ads in the personal profile feed aims to offer advertisers the possibility to increase their reach by using the assets existent in their feed.  Meta ads will show up in the public profiles feeds of users aged 18 or above. The Meta delivery system will place ads in profiles where they will perform better. 

• Google parks the <similar audiences> feature. 

Starting in May 2023, new lookalike audiences will no longer be generated, and existing lookalike audiences will no longer be added to campaigns and ad groups in Google Ads and Display & Video 360, say Google. That's why, starting in 2023, we'll gradually replace lookalike audiences with stronger, more sustainable automated solutions to help you engage with relevant audiences and access growth opportunities, while meeting user privacy expectations. Once these changes  take place, marketers will have to switch to more durable strategies. The best solution is automatisation, that helps us reach more relevant audiences and measure results in ways that are focused on confidentiality. 

• Google Ads has a list of Youtube podcasts available for targeting 

Google introduced the possibility for ads to appear during Youtube podcasts, allowing advertisers to adapt their ads to podcast content globally, either with audio or video content. Since Youtube is one of the most popular platforms for podcasts and given that podcast listeners are growing in numbers, making Podcasts available for advertisers is certainly great news. 

• New updates for Performance Max 

As 2023 brings new opportunities, the upgrades brought to Performance Max Campaigns help us focus on what is relevant, and double the efficiency of the ads. The updates aim to optimize campaign planning, impact estimation and personalization strategies based on feeds.  A novelty is also the new possibility to introduce 15 headlines, upgrade from 5.  Moreover, Google introduces more insights to help advertisers understand and interpret the information.  

• Google Search paid ads will be easier to spot compared to organic results , since  business name and logo will be displayed alongside the ad. 

Searching on Google is now more natural and intuitive, and advancements in AI capabilities allow for new upgrades. Displaying the logo and advertiser name near the paid ads is a new way of gaining users trust and loyalty.  Căutările sunt acum mai naturale și intuitive, iar progresele în inteligența artificială 

• My Ad Center will show ads published by an advertiser in the last 30 days, which will allow advertisers to get a more accurate overview of the competitors in a certain niche. 
• Google enables video campaigns performance estimation in Reach Planner 

Starting at the end of last year, we can use Reach Planner for Video Action Campaigns, which facilitates video campaigns planning based on conversions, views, reach and impressions. Reach Planner offers a prognosis of the way our campaigns will perform, based on the selected audience, buget and other settings like location or formats.  The prognosis are modeled on the market tendencies and historical performance of similar campaigns, and take seasonality into account. 

• Google simplifies content targeting 

Starting March 2023, Google announced that content targeting will be updated. The content in Google Ads is now separated into three categories: topics, placements and keywords.  Google will mix these three ways of identifying content in a singular integrated way to direct content.  This new way of content targeting will allow our ads to reach more possible clients and will be easier to configure.