Chandal Nolasco Da SilvaWhile the advertiser market share battle between Facebook and Google continues, attention has been shifting towards an increasing number of new online advertising opportunities. According to our 2018 Digital Predictions video collection and ebook, one of the hottest PPC trends this year is all the other platforms available to advertisers.
There are a ton of rising stars, as seen in the image below from the latest State of PPC report:
The image shows how much PPC marketers plan to increase budgets by channel, with a number of new advertising ecosystems on the rise. With increasing budgets being invested in everything from LinkedIn to Pinterest and even Amazon (not shown above), marketers are sure to uncover new opportunities and audiences from these new ad platforms in the year ahead.
Pinterest has over the last two years started dazzling advertisers exponentially. Based entirely on visual appeal, the image-based social media platform provides promise for advertisers who have products to showcase.
Lisa Raehsler, the Founder and SEM Strategy Consultant at Big Click Co., believes Pinterest will continue to win over advertisers:
“Pinterest is a very exciting ad newcomer! With 150 million users monthly we’re looking at the original platform built for visual searches for product-focused users. For advertisers with a visual or visual related products, Pinterest will be the platform to test and roll out budget to for at least branding and upper funnel efforts.”
Much of Pinterest’s success has been with the amount of visual content they offer to searchers. Since humans consume visual information 60000 times faster than text, an image-rich search engine with new UGC daily is a powerful platform for advertisers without a doubt. We’ll see if Pinterest continues to pick up steam with advertisers as a result.
Amazon Ad Opportunities
Amazon is maybe the fastest growing…everything in the world right now. As a business and supplier of goods they’re dominating, as a shipping and delivering provider they’re trailblazing innovators and they’re doing pretty well as a platform for advertisers too.
Even within Amazon alone there are different PPC ad types. John A. Lee explains different advertising opportunities on Amazon in his Acquisio Digital Predictions:
“On display, Amazon is fast becoming a major-player DSP. According to e-Marketer, Amazon’s ad business was the 2nd fastest growing of 2017. And get this… according to a ClickZ/Catalyst survey, 2/3 of respondents plan to increase ad spending on Amazon in 2018.”
Similarly, Greg Meyers, Founder and CEO of AfterClicks Interactive, predicted that “Amazon will make a strong push to take a bigger chunk of the online ad market as well as make significant enhancements to their Sponsored Ad Network.”
Aaron Levy, Manager of Client Strategy at Elite SEM, brought Amazon’s voice search opportunities into the discussion. He explained:
“It’s still yet to be seen how marketing messages will fluidly fit in to screenless, voice-based search. Amazon’s been very public about their likely sponsor messages to flow in, however I forecast the initial iterations of the product will be VERY basic, and category focused. Pampers might be able to sponsor every diaper oriented query, but I predict it will be on a share of voice purchase basis vs. a Cost Per…Hear?”
We agree that voice search still hasn’t come far enough for advertisers, but are happy to learn that Amazon is again trailblazing with sponsored messages. Indeed metrics like Aaron’s brilliant “Cost Per…Hear” prediction are hopefully on the horizon this year as Amazon leads and lights the way.
Additional Ad Types on the Rise
Advertisers have been diversifying their ad channels over the last few years. SnapChat has earned hundreds of millions from advertisers annually. LinkedIn advertising has started to take shape thanks to the recent Microsoft acquisition. John A. Lee, Learning Strategist at Bing/Microsoft, believes that Bing and LinkedIn ads will continue to grow alongside other rising stars. He said in his predictions:
“Take a look at 2017 additions Reddit Ads and Quora Ads. These are vibrant, unique internet destinations that have created simple, yet laser-targeted, self-serve advertising platforms. Remember Yahoo Gemini? Yes – they’re still kickin’. In 2017 they quietly launched dynamic product ads, carousel ads and more.”
There are a number of growing opportunities for advertisers online and they’re getting more and more attractive every day.
Less is Sometimes More
One of the things that makes alternative or less mainstream ad platforms so attractive to advertisers is that they’re less saturated. From this perspective advertisers need to get into these channels now, understand them and start building an audience before they too are flooded with competition. Another reason these alternatives are great for advertisers is better audience targeting capabilities. Lisa Raehsler points out in her 2018 Acquisio Digital Predictions that these new ad platforms can offer “more attractive options for niche audiences who are difficult to capture with accuracy on Google.” With so much momentum behind different ad types and platforms already, predictions about their growth are sure to come true in 2018, but only time will tell if these up and comers survive the long run.
Click here to get all the insights from this year’s Digital Marketing and Paid Media Predictions videos and eBook.
Image Credits
Feature Image: Unsplash/Bryan Minear
Image 1: Screenshot by Chandal Nolasco Da Silva. Taken January 2018 from the State of PPC Report
Arnav Patel
Holly Miller