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PPC & Paid Social Media share similarities, here’s why!

PPC & Paid Social Media share similarities, here's why!

PPC and sponsored social media advertising are becoming more muddled. Find out how to modify your strategy for a paid media environment that is integrated.

Even while ad networks are driving “PPC” and “paid social” marketers closer together, one of the biggest tragedies in the world of digital marketing is that these two groups do not view themselves at the same marketing table. 

“Google-first” or “Meta-first” advertisers typically find it difficult to transition to the new platform. However, when paid media—that is, more than simply search engine results pages and feed-based advertising—becomes the standard, marketers will have to learn how to adapt their tactics to different platforms. 

Through audience targeting, creative, and account structure settings, ad networks have already started to blur the lines. As the demands of brands and the digital channel landscape change, we’ll explore:

  • Analyzing the ways in which the socializing trend has changed targeted strategies 
  • Providing advice on how to successfully manage these changes.

belief, which associates PPC exclusively with Google, this article views PPC as encompassing all sponsored media, not simply those on Google’s platform. 

PPC’s transformation into paid media

PPC primarily seeks to understand user intent. This could occur on third-party websites with contextually connected material and advertisements, on search engine result pages like Google or Bing, or through contextually targeted films.

In the past, PPC tactics have relied heavily on keywords as the foundation of the majority of ads. But in the last few years, PPC keywords have taken on a more similar role to audiences.

This change calls for a more thorough analysis of the variations between PPC terms and audiences.

According to current definitions, a PPC keyword is one that most closely matches the user’s search query in terms of intent or grammar. The match type that is selected also affects how effective a term is; this can take into account a number of factors, including audience signals, landing page relevancy, and other aspects. 

Broad match, for example, takes into account a greater number of variables, such as audience insights. In contrast, phrase and exact match simply consider syntactic similarity between close variants.

Although we won’t go into great detail about match types in this article, it’s vital to recognize their contribution to the growing incorporation of audience data into keyword strategy.

Platforms like Google and Microsoft gave keywords and negative keywords precedence over exclusion or targeted audience exclusion for a very long time. Targeting only required keywords; audience segmentation was considered an optional extra. Understanding audience behavior and properly incorporating keywords into ads became essential as keywords began to represent characteristics of the audience.

Paid media account structure have changed.

This change is in line with the general trend of PPC being more “socialized,” putting more emphasis on targeting and audience data to improve campaign optimization. A/B testing techniques, PPC account architecture, and scaling success have all altered dramatically as a result of paid media. 

In PPC, the majority of structural choices are typically decided at the campaign level. Fundamental choices are often made at the campaign level, even though Microsoft permits modifications at the ad group level. 

Nonetheless, there’s a rising movement toward sponsored social campaign structures where important strategic choices are made at the ad set level.

In contrast to campaign-level options, Microsoft has traditionally permitted more precise management at the ad group level. 

At the ad group level, Google’s Demand Gen campaigns feature more targeting and exclusion possibilities. 

This change is noteworthy since it abandons the conventional campaign-wide tactics in favor of a segmented strategy akin to sponsored social media platforms.

This management approach is different from standard PPC tactics, which usually put more emphasis on bidding strategies, match types, and keywords than on the target demographic or particular user intents.

Bidding Beyond CPC

It is important to take into account how bidding tactics are evolving in paid social and PPC. 

Cost-per-click (CPC) bidding was once a major component of PPC and other paid media, where advertisers paid for each click on their advertisement. 

Nevertheless, the CPC bidding mechanism has become a little out of date as video and graphic content continue to dominate the advertising environment.

In order to promote overall growth, the shift to different media formats necessitates a complete approach to paid advertising that includes text, images, and other ad types. Ad campaigns may be seen more holistically, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of how different formats can help brands achieve more than just click-through rates.

Furthermore, it’s critical to reevaluate how auction prices are perceived through various sources. There is a misperception that lower pricing indicate poorer quality traffic, while higher auction prices indicate greater quality traffic. Due to this prejudice, video and image ads may be undervalued even if their format may result in lower auction prices even though they are not always less effective.

Practitioners of sponsored social media and traditional PPC should reevaluate the benefits of reduced auction prices. As opposed to ignoring them, make sure that tracking techniques such as UTM parameters are properly set up for precise attribution. Acknowledge the substantial influence that visual content can have on transactional search advertising performance.

By embracing these insights, you can optimize campaigns across paid media platforms and produce more accurate attribution and better results at a lower cost.

How to deal with paid media’s socializing

These are five doable actions you can take right now to adjust to and prosper in this changing environment.

  1. Review your approach to your channel
  • It’s important to incorporate paid social media into larger paid media plans, but don’t overlook channels that have worked in the past. 
  • Rather, modify your strategy by evaluating creative forms, audience targeting, and bidding tactics to align with changing circumstances.
  1. Adopt audience-focused targeting
  • In paid media, concentrate on comprehending important audience segments for your company.
  • Try out different targeting strategies to find the most effective ways to interact with your target audience.
  1. Use inventive content to innovate.
  • Ads should be inventive as more and more content is available in the form of images and videos.
  • Investigate various content forms and evaluate your audience’s response to determine which ones work best.
  • Keep abreast on social media trends to inform your artistic decisions.
  1. Adjust for various bidding techniques
  • Transcend conventional CPC bidding.
  • Investigate alternate bidding techniques like cost per acquisition (CPA) or return on ad spend (ROAS) that can be more in line with your campaign objectives.
  • To find the optimum bidding strategy for each channel and campaign type, try out a few different approaches.
  1. Make use of sophisticated attribution and tracking
  • It is essential to have strong tracking and attribution models when paid media channels intermix.
  • Make sure the UTM parameters are set up correctly.
  • For more precise measurement of the effect of each channel and campaign on your overall marketing goals, think about implementing more advanced attribution techniques.

Conclusion

By putting these recommendations into practice, you’ll be able to make more educated judgments that will lead to increased growth and efficiency in your marketing endeavors as you navigate the complex world of socialized sponsored media.

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