The advertising industry has grown substantially since the inception of social media, Google Ads, and the myriad of other options available online for advertisers to take advantage of. This being said, each and every year there continue to be new and exciting ways to elevate your game.
In this article, we are going to go over a few different ways to step it up in 2021. From the ever-growing presence of AI and machine learning to voice search and social commerce— advertisers have the world at their fingertips when it comes to ad distribution and optimization.
Table of Contents:
- AI and Machine Learning
- Google Ad Exchange
- Voice Search Advertising
- Micro-Influencers
- Interactive Ads
- Social Commerce
Using AI and Machine Learning To Create Better Ads
AI has advanced substantially over the past decade. From self-driving cars to chat boats— AI is everywhere. Social media companies like Facebook as well as Google utilize AI to hyperpersonalize ads to target users based on their every movement online. By sorting through the piles of data they collect on every one of their users would be impossible without the use of AI and machine learning capabilities.
But not only social media and search engine giants have the capability to use AI to its fullest extent. Advertisers themselves can access this power as well. Currently, only 23% of businesses have started to utilize the power of AI.
Optimizing Campaigns and Ad Spend with AI
Gone are the days of meticulously staring at piles of data on which time to run ads, how much to spend, and how well each channel is performing. Now, you still need to keep an eye on your campaigns and track your metrics as before. But now you can optimize your campaigns in real-time with AI-enabled systems that humans have a harder time keeping on top of.
These systems allow advertisers to create hyperpersonalized ads that can connect brands directly with their consumers. Predictive analytics can take a user’s interests and start recommending more relevant products to them, and improve the productivity of advertising tools ten-fold.
John McColman from InFront Marketing had this to say about AI and how it can help your advertising campaigns “Using AI to optimize our advertising campaigns has resulted in us being able to give our clients more targeted ads that have substantially raised conversions and click-through rates. Most of the ads that we have used AI to help with have reached over 15% click-through rates, and conversions have gone up by nearly 25%, and this is just the beginning.”
Giving Users the Right Content at the Right Time
Advertisers know that it’s all about the timing when it comes to ads. You need to be able to show the user that right ad at the right time. This would be almost impossible without the use of AI and machine learning.
By teaching our programs to find the absolute best time to show our users the products that we want them to see, we can drastically increase conversion rates.
The timing involved with this, along with utilizing the correct channels, as well as showing it to the right customer is incredibly difficult to do. The drive to increase conversion rates depends on constantly improving your targeting methods so that it achieves hyperpersonalization. The only way to do this is through advancements in AI-powered predictive analytics technology.
Google Ad Exchange
Google Ad Exchange (also known as AdX) is used to give publishers a better platform to find advertisers for their sites, displaying the publisher’s inventory of ad space to advertisers from across the world. They can then hold real-time auctions for advertisers to bid over the advertising space available on their website.
AdX gives both parties an open marketplace to utilize to the fullest. Publishers are able to find qualified advertisers that fit the topic of their site and control who is advertising on their site. Advertisers can find the sites that best fit their targeted demographic more efficiently and bid in real-time.
This gives advertisers a more streamlined process for finding potential websites that they would like to advertise on. This could be an incredibly powerful tool if used correctly. We will see just how much advertisers love this platform in 2021, and what Google will implement to give both parties more features to get their ads out to prospects.
Voice Search Advertising
Voice search has been getting a lot of attention recently. Due to Amazon Alexa and Google Home exploding over the past two years, advertisers, SEOs, and developers have been trying to grasp the power of these devices.
Currently, you can order products on most of the devices directly from Amazon and a select few other sites. The challenge with voice search is that it is very limited in the number of options it can give to users. Advertisers need to shoot for that number one spot if they are hoping to truly get the benefits of voice search.
This means higher costs for placement, more competition, and more work to get the results you want. However, we cannot let the power of voice search go answered. Now is the time to figure out a strategy that can capitalize on voice search before it’s too late!
Voice Search Advertising Tips & Tricks
Some of the ways we can begin utilizing voice search in our advertising campaigns start with the way we create our ads and landing pages. The keywords we use and the content we create for our page needs to be optimized to be more conversational, and allow the searcher to get the correct information in a more informal way. Instead of being very technical with our content, we need to create content that actually speaks to the user.
The most important part of this is the way keywords will shift away from more traditional styles to longtail conversational keywords (or keyword phrases). So when researching how to incorporate voice search into your strategy, remember to look at more conversational tones in your content and keywords.
Micro-Influencers
People are catching on to how influencers make their money nowadays. Their followings are so huge that most have sold out and started to push products that don’t truly align with their follower’s values or just plain suck.
Micro-influencers are a bit different. Instead of employing one large influencer with a broad following, advertisers are looking at utilizing 5-10 micro-influencers instead.
These types of influencers hold greater control of their following as they are typically more trusted than their counterparts. This also allows you to spread your reach across multiple different audiences that get relatively the same amount of exposure.
Its been even proven that higher follower rates get less engagement. So that page on Instagram with one million likes only gets around 1.7% of the time.
NordVPN has employed the use of smaller to medium-sized YouTube channels for quite some time now. They offer pretty much the same deal across all of these channels, not giving one channel a specific edge over another. This has allowed Nord as well as a few other VPN companies the ability to hit an extremely large number of people by spreading out their ads across multiple channels. And they still do this today.
Interactive Advertising
Interactive ads are fun and inviting. By incorporating more interactive elements into the different types of ads at your disposal, you can drive more engagement and more conversions. But it must be done tastefully.
Some of the best examples of this are mobile gaming ads. Some companies have started incorporating small versions of their games directly into the ad itself, allowing the user to play the game right there and give it a try. After the small sample is complete it prompts the user to download the game. I find this to be a great example of interactive advertising done right.
Other forms of interactive advertising include being able to scratch away a layer that is hiding a specific deal or offer that they are offering. Instead of glancing over the ad they add an edge of curiosity to the user. Curiosity is one of the most powerful human emotional reactions as some people just can’t get rid of that itch. They have to know what it is, allowing for more engagement. Even if the user isn’t sold on the deal, it’s the first step towards remarketing and giving the user something they truly feel compelled to buy.
Social Commerce Evolution
Social media platforms are constantly evolving. They are changing the way we view the world, talk to our friends, and now: the way we sell products.
Facebook has started implementing changes to its platform to allow for direct buying to happen right inside the app itself. In 2021, I’m sure that we will see entire stores being created via the Facebook marketplace.
These platforms are going to turn into much more than just lead generation networks. In my opinion, Facebook is looking for ways to compete with Amazon and increase its profits to new heights. Advertisers need to be ready for this coming change, cause Facebook will not be the only one to start doing this.
Brands are going to start selling products through Facebook and other social media platforms directly on their pages and in their own personalized stores. We need to be able to come up with new and intuitive ways to get more sales for these brands directly in the social networks they are built upon. This will definitely be a way to elevate your advertising strategies in 2021.
Conclusion
Online advertising is one of the most rapidly evolving industries today. Every few months, it seems like there is a new and exciting way to help increase our client’s revenues. We need to always be at the forefront of innovation, watching and taking notes on the ways different platforms are evolving with us. That is the key to strong strategy development in the advertising industry. By staying cutting edge, and ahead of the curve, we can get to new heights and allow for the success of our ads to increase before others catch on. Cause with every industry, there are those who get left behind and those who are thrown to the forefront of innovation.
