PPC changes 2018 and their impact on advertisers in 2019

Major changes in SEM made waves throughout 2018 and are redefining nearly every aspect of paid search marketing. There were a number of momentous shifts, nearly all with a common thread of more automation and machine learning.

Google Ads: New brand name, new UI – The name change from AdWords to Google Ads is indicative of the fact that keyword selection plays a lesser role in paid search marketing than even a year ago, but more broadly the name change reflects the platform’s growth from one created for text ads to one that now includes dozens of ad formats across Search, YouTube, Gmail, Maps and a network of partner sites and apps. With the new interface, we lost some things such as Display Planner and gained a YouTube reach planner, notes and the ability to make changes from the Overview page in addition to other new features.

Responsive Search Ads – RSA are part of the continuum of letting machine learning models do the work of ad creative optimization. Some of the initiatives that have come before it: dynamic search ads, automated ad suggestions and Google efforts over the past years to get advertisers to give up manual A/B testing and add at least three ads per ad group. An ad strength indicator and somewhat more extensive reporting for RSA were introduced in August. Same month, Google said it would soon roll out RSA to more languages and in the meantime extend the extra character benefits of RSA to text ads for everyone. This fall, Bing added support for the third headline and second description in text ads, including the ability to import the longer ads from Google.

Exact Match – As with ads more machine learning was injected into keyword-to-query matching in 2018 with the inclusion of same meaning words in close variants of exact match keywords. The match type lost its literal meaning and forced marketers to rethink how they use match types altogether.

AI-powered insights – Google and Bing have dedicated significant resources to developing much more robust recommendation engines in their interfaces. Bing introduced a competition tab, performance insights and location recommendations that highlight performance changes and competitive pressures, all delivered with machine learning. Google also continues to iterate on the data visualizations available from the overview page. The goal is to spend less time downloading and analyzing spreadsheets and more time focused on strategy and creative tactics.

AI-powered bidding – The manual bidding option is now buried below a growing list of machine learning driven bidding strategies, including ECPC. On the smart bidding front, Google introduced Target Impressions share, Pay for Conversions in Display Campaigns when Target CPA is the bidding strategy and rolled out Smart Bidding for search partners. Bing introduced Target CPA and Maximize Conversions bidding strategies.

Audiences: LinkedIn data for Bing, MSAN and more – Bing launched the Microsoft Audience Network (MSAN) which encompasses native ad inventory on MSN.com, Microsoft Outlook and the Microsoft Edge browser, as well as syndication partner for what are now called Microsoft Audience Ads. It uses AI for ad delivery optimization and uses data from the Microsoft Graph for audience targeting, including web and search activity, demographic and consumer behavior activity and select LinkedIn profile dimensions. In October, Bing also made LinkedIn categories of company, job function and industry available for targeting in search and shopping campaigns in the US.

Universal Automation vs. Hybrid Management – Google introduced goal-optimized Shopping campaigns, Smart Campaigns for small businesses and Local campaigns for driving in-store traffic. With Smart Campaigns, everything from ad creation, audience targeting, ad delivery across Google channels and soon landing page creation are automated based on the advertiser’s goal. Goal-optimized Shopping campaigns employ machine learning to automatically optimize ad delivery to achieve the defined conversion goal value, such as revenue or return on ad spend (ROAS). It also combines dynamic remarketing and standard Shopping in one campaign to deliver an ad across Google properties and the Google Display Network. For Local campaigns, advertisers set a budget, and the ads are generated automatically based on ad creative elements from the advertiser and their location extensions. Google automatically optimizes ad delivery across Search, YouTube, Maps and websites and apps in its ad networks.

Based on the trajectory of automation in ads and exact match, this hybrid approach has the potential to spell the end of manual control of match types (except negatives), bid modifiers, geo-targeting and other tools we use for campaign management. This doesn’t mean people will be erased from the equations and certainly not in 2019 but it will require SEM specialists to adopt a very different mindset. We have to embrace machine learning as a tool that helps us find opportunities that are imperceptible through traditional techniques.

New Inventory Locations and Surfaces – There were a number of new surfaces for ad formats that opened up in 2018. Bing’s native ads extending across the Microsoft Audience Network is just one example. In November, Google made AMP Story ads available to all publishers, and there are now more than 100 ad tech vendors with AMP integrations. Hotel deals from Google Search are now featured on the Benefits tab of the new Google One cloud storage app (for Android only at this point). Expect to see more promotional opportunities. Google said more promotions from the Google Store and Google Express benefits and more will eventually be featured on the tab. Google has also been testing native ads in the Discover Feed (originally Google Now) on the front page of the Google app. It’s a limited whitelist test for now, but could open up more native inventory in a prominent location.

Connected TV advertising is growing rapidly, and YouTube says more people are streaming it on their televisions. This fall, “TV screens” became the latest device type for video and display campaigns in Google Ads. Eligible display and video campaigns are running on TV screens by default now, and can be managed with bid modifiers. Expect to continue hearing much more about connected TV advertising in 2019.

Amazon Ads – The Google - Amazon face off started with where consumers start their product searches. Now it’s extending to search and other advertising. Amazon was declared the third-largest digital ad seller in the US by eMarketer in September, (far) behind Google and Facebook. Its ad revenue is expected to increase by 50 percent per year through 2020, which would put its market share at 7.0 percent, up from 4 percent currently. In our Amazon Advertising Forecast 2019, 80 percent of Amazon advertisers said they plan to increase spends in 2019, with 30 percent saying they’ll shift some budget from search.

Google’s strategy to counter Amazon’s encroachment into product search is to partner with retailers. It debuted Shopping Actions in March to address three key challenges on the e-commerce front: (1) how to make mobile shopping from its properties like Search faster; (2) how to maintain market share for product search in a splintering mobile landscape of apps and digital assistants; and (3) how to compete against Amazon. Shopping Actions runs across Search, any Google Assistant-enabled devices, Google Express (which includes Shopping ads that now feature blue shopping tags instead of parachutes), and features a universal shopping cart and a Google-hosted checkout when users save their payment information in their Google accounts.

2018 is kind of a turning point in terms of SEM I think. “Keywords aren’t gone, but they’ve been greatly depreciated. SEM in 2019 is going to be much closer to modern programmatic than it is to the ‘enhanced’ era.

Employment Geography in India

Where do Indians find regular jobs easily? Where are Jobs harder to find? Are there parts of the country where regular factory jobs outnumber other kinds of jobs? Such questions are typically hard to answer because of the lack of granular jobs data in the country. The official employment surveys conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) typically have very small district-wise samples, which makes district wise estimates much less precise than state-level ones.

The only source that provides rich employment data at the district level and beyond is the census. While the latest census data pertains to 2011, it provides far more granular and rich information than any other data source on jobs. The comparison between 2001 and 2011 census data has been made by merging newly created districts in 2011 back with their parent districts so that all comparisons are on a like-to-like basis.

Most districts in some of India’s most youthful and populous states, such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, witnessed either a decline or stasis in the share of regular jobs between 2001 and 2011. These are the districts where the demand for jobs is the greatest, and where regular jobs are increasingly difficult to find. One big reason for the lack of much progress in creating regular non-farm jobs lies in India’s failure in manufacturing. Barely 26 of the 640 districts in 2011 had more than a fifth of their workforce employed in manufacturing. Most districts across the country actually saw the share of regular manufacturing workers fall between 2001 and 2011.

It comes as little surprise therefore that the farm sector was the largest employer across districts. The two big exceptions to this trend lie in the two extremes of the country—Kerala, where construction accounts for the lion’s share of workers across several districts and Jammu and Kashmir, where government workers make up the majority of workers across a large swathe of the state.

Manufacturing is the biggest employer only in a handful of districts: in the Coimbatore-Tirupur belt in Tamil Nadu, the Thane-Mumbai belt in Maharashtra, the Jalandhar-Ludhiana belt in Punjab and a few other districts scattered across the country. Till that picture changes, it is difficult to imagine an end to India’s chronic jobs shortage.