AI, Third-Party Cookies, CPCs, Attribution & More: How to Prepare for 2024

Episode Description

When you think back on 2023 in PPC, how will you remember it?

For me, this is the year we’ve seen incredible advancements in AI.

While there is so much excitement in that field, there are also areas that didn’t look quite as good. Revenues are down for several agencies this year. CPCs are rising, and hence costs of advertising are high.

And looking ahead, third-party cookies are going away next year which can leave out attribution to a guessing game.

With a lot of uncertainty up in the air, how can you be better prepared?

In this episode, you’ll hear from 6 experts in the field who’ll share what they’ve seen in 2023 and what to look forward to in 2024.

Episode Takeaways

Agency Resilience and Market Trends

Agencies faced client losses due to economic pressures in 2023. Advice emphasizes financial preparation and strategic resilience to withstand downturns up to 18 months. Successful agencies often focus deeply on specific niches, enhancing trust and expertise within those areas.

PPC Strategy and Client Management

Setting realistic client expectations, especially regarding result timelines, is crucial. Agencies should focus on quality and profitability over scaling, transitioning towards sophisticated strategies as automation takes over routine tasks.

Data Utilization and First-Party Data

Utilizing first-party data is becoming essential due to increased privacy regulations and the decline of third-party cookies. Agencies need to adapt by enhancing data collection strategies and compliance with privacy standards.

Technological Adaptations and AI Integration

AI is streamlining PPC by automating tasks like ad text generation and keyword research, freeing up agencies to focus on higher-level strategic work. AI’s role is expanding into predictive and generative applications, setting new standards for marketing creativity and effectiveness.

Additional Takeaways

The outlook remains optimistic for agencies that adapt effectively, leveraging technological advancements and focusing on value delivery. Community engagement and shared learning are encouraged to navigate industry changes collectively.

Episode Transcript

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Hey, and welcome to PPC Town Hall. So in today’s episode, we asked a number of PPC experts their take on 2024 and some of the biggest challenges that we’ve seen in 2023, how we can do better in 2024 and what new stuff is on the horizon that’s going to change how you do PPC in the year going forward. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this episode.

KASIM ASLAM: Hey, it’s Cosmos Solutions 8, and I’m here to give you my opinion on what I think we have to look forward to in the year to come.

So 2023 closed out pretty soft for most agencies. I know at Solutions 8, we lost more clients than we’re used to. And for reasons that always have frustrated me, I got love letters as people left saying things like, Hey, we’re tightening our belt, we’re bringing it in house, we’re trying to control costs.

And I think All of that is market related. Um, actually feel like that’s, that’s pretty obvious. We’re looking at a market that is just difficult to read. You know, some people say there’s no recession at all. Some people say we’re right on the cusp. And then in some industries, it feels like they’re actually already in the thick of it.

So my advice to agencies is hold on. I know that sounds like really weird advice, but I’ve been through, um, a major recession, a pandemic. downturns, adjustments, iOS 14, et cetera, et cetera. And every instance, those shakeups do a really good job at eliminating the people that just don’t have the staying or the sticking power.

And so the timeline that I always have in my head is about 18 months. Um, you know, the, the, the great recession was about 18 months long at its worst COVID was about 18 months long before we started seeing recovery. Um, Be ready to write out the storm for 18 months. What that also means is put yourself in a position to where, you know, you can do that from a financial perspective.

Agencies need to get really good at the game of money. You have to be able to control your cashflow, control your costs. The nice thing about the agency business is your costs are tied to your income. Not all businesses are that way. A manufacturing plant doesn’t necessarily have that luxury. Um, but that, that only helps you if you’re willing to be flexible.

And sometimes you have to control your costs and make decisions that are really hard. And that’s just the, the, you know, that’s the byproduct of being in business. So make hard decisions, be willing and ready to ride out a storm for 18 months. Because if you do, what ends up happening is, you know, you lose.

30 percent of your client base, but then we lose 80 percent of the competitor base. And as the market shifts back in the, the competitors have a harder time ramping back up and then you’re there to be the cleanup.

KIRK WILLIAMS: I’ve been sending this to a lot of, of agency owner friends lately. And that’s, that’s Rand Fishkin with spark Toro.

He recently did a whiteboard Friday that I think really does a great job of. Of capturing what 2023 has been like for, for digital agencies. I would, I would encourage you to check that out. And, uh, one of the things that ran brings out is that those agencies who have been, have been doing a, you know, have been able to be successful, even as things have gone difficult are, uh, there’s a couple of different.

Factors about them. And this is what I’ve, what I’ve seen as well. So there are the ultra niched, niched, niched, niched, however you want to say it, ultra niche down agencies. Right. And that means, uh, as Rand brings out, it’s not, it’s not just simply that, Hey, you do e commerce. It’s like people who really focus on.

We’re like the best e commerce person for selling like dog collars in North Northeastern United States or whatever. Right. Silly example, but the idea being, if you really know this well, and you really have experience and can build trust there, that, that, that seems to be attractional, like those agencies still are doing well, and then you have the other side, and this has kind of been my personal experience is that you also have the other side where.

Uh, those where there’s, there’s some level of, um, branding to them, especially with like the founder, if you will. So, uh, those who are, are kind of known for their content and they’re, they’re known for being good at their job. Uh, so there’s kind of this trust symbol around those as well. Uh, those are the agencies, especially in the smaller, small, midsize agencies that, uh, That ran a notes are, are doing well.

And, and that, that’s what I’ve seen as well. I’m personally, we saw that we, we took a pretty big dip in the middle of 2023. We recovered all of that. And then some towards the end, which I was, I was, you know, expecting that, but also hoping for it as Q4 came around and it did, um, I think 2024 really is the year where agencies should be less focused on scaling and less focused on obsessing over growth and should.

Just, I think in my opinion, and this is what I try to do all the time, but I think especially a lot of agencies are going to start seeing this, like less focused on growing themselves and actually trying to pursue revenue growth so that they can sell and a little bit more on like actually doing the job that you’re supposed to do as an agency and doing that well and focusing on profitability and, and, uh, and I think that’s going to be.

Uh, really an important philosophical mind shift for a lot of agency owners that I think a lot are just going to struggle with because it’s, it’s difficult to have that mindset. I think it’s pretty important.

ANDREW LOLK: It’s my opinion that, that this is technically not. True. I do think that 2023 was a tougher year than most in a lot of industries.

Um, but it, it all comes back to planning agency as a resource game. Um, we pay a lot of money in order to get people in the door and then we sell their time. We get in a pinch if we have more inventory on, on hand. Then we can sell. So your most important task is to make sure your, your agency is right sized for right now.

Meaning you don’t have excess people in the agency that you can’t sell their time out to clients. That’s step number one. Once you’re right sized and everybody’s your right size accordingly, several times throughout the year, uh, at least once a year, for instance, Savvy, we only did, we didn’t hire last year.

We actually, we actually. What did we we lost two or three three in total and hired one and it was all part of the plan It wasn’t part of the plan who we lost and fired and stuff like that But the goal of the year was actually not to come out of the year with more people than we were we wanted to be a status quo because we were feeling That the market was a little bit tough and we’re the kind of agency where we like to get clients on board that fit us perfectly.

We don’t want to have clients in that aren’t, yeah, they haven’t bought into the Savvy way. So that means we can’t just sell a bunch, uh, that. Don’t really come in and then don’t work really. So my first tip is to right size your agency. Make sure you have the right people on board and the right size that you’re supposed to have.

And then I would look at what is your offering in the market? There are several good niches that are left that are not being pursued by anybody. We have a good niche in Savvy e commerce, largely e commerce stores only. We have a nice niche. We’ve talked that in really nice, but I can. Come up with maybe five other niches that I would have insured to build an agency again from, from scratch.

DUANE BROWN: Now, when it comes to agencies and surviving next year, I think the big thing agencies can do is niche down when you’re trying to be everything to everyone. You appeal to no one in the market, but when you niche down, when people have a problem, they think about you as a solution. And so I think getting better next year, figuring out who you are and how you market yourself is how you’re going to survive next year by niching down.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Now I think agencies, it’s always tough, right? Because you have multiple bosses, they all have different goals. Some of your clients have competing goals and they don’t understand why those goals might be conflicting in terms of how you run a PPC campaign. Many clients are probably impatient. They come to you and they’re like, Hey, can you fix this?

And. They have, they expect it will happen overnight when you make a big change in an account. They can take weeks, if not a quarter for things to settle back down and for you to see consistently good results based on maybe restructure that you’ve done or based on setting up new conversion tracking and feeding different and better data back into the automation systems.

So, you know, if, if you’re struggling, it’s really, I think a law about. It’s like setting those good expectations and making sure that the client is bought in for at least a couple of months of working with you and seeing things through and not constantly changing their mind on what it is they want you to achieve because if they’re constantly changing the goal, it’s very hard for an agency to do a good job.

Um, There’s, and I think the other thing that agencies have to think about is just what is the efficiency of their business. So as generative AI becomes more pervasive and tools, there’s definitely going to be a shift of the type of work that you have to do with human hours versus the work that can be done by machines.

And so when it comes to something simple, like attacks, generation, generative AI can do a really good job. It still needs you as the expert to connect the dots and say, Oh, well, I hear you. Here’s the business that we’re advertising for. And here’s the typical call to action. Here’s exactly what they saw, how they position it.

And you sort of teach to the GPT model, what that is. And then it generates some suggested ad texts and then you validate, okay, these are good. These are so somewhat off the mark. So we’re going to tweak it. And then you get it to the point where it needs to be, but, but that’s a shift, right? So the, the work that you do is more of that high value being the coach to the GPT being the, uh, the strategist who figures out even which generative models are we going to use because generative models, by the way, they cost different amounts of money if you use GPT 3.

5 or four or four turbo. Or a different one. Like, uh, it’s a llama from Facebook. That one’s free. If you use these different systems, there’s a different cost. So figure out like, Hey, maybe we use the Facebook one to do keyword generation because it’s good enough for that. But when we need to write like this high end, sophisticated landing page.

Maybe we need to use GPT 4 and spend a bit more money because the quality is meaningfully better and it is going to give us better conversion rates, right? So I think as an agency, just figuring out like, what are your humans doing now, but what are they going to have to shift to as generative AI gets a lot better?

I think that’s another thing for the agency to really think about. And then the other thing I would say to agencies is as you have more time available to be a strategist, figure out how to be less cookie cutter. Uh, when I work with in house teams, I generally see that they tend to be more sophisticated in their approach than an agency.

And so for example, they might have more time to figure out, like, because we run the business, because we’re in house, like we understand. What moves the ship? We understand the type of first party data we have. And so what do we do with that? Whereas an agency tends to be maybe more vertical specific. So they really understand.

Okay, if I’m working with automotive dealers, like these are the things they like. But how do you go deeper? Right? Like if generative AI is freeing up some of your time, how do you take that time to behave more like that in house person? And if you become like that in house person, You become more critical to the business.

You have deeper insights and it’s honestly harder for the client to fire you because it’s not like they can just go to a different agency who has their cookie cutter methodology, but they’ve actually invested in that relationship with you. They, they, they know that you know much more about their business and that.

Firing you is going to mean like having to do that re education with someone else. And that means potentially months of lost productivity. Um, so if I was an agency, I would really try to figure out how to become maybe a little bit more creative in some ways, and to really push the envelope on some of the latest PPC strategies, um, in regards to.

KASIM ASLAM: The, the double squeeze. I feel like we’re in the trash compactor in star Wars because, you know, it’s getting harder and harder and harder to make things work for clients. Clients are losing money, having an inventory and fulfillment problems, um, tightening their belt, bringing things in house. And then at the same time, uh, you know, as far as Google and Meta are concerned, uh, CPCs and CPMs are getting more expensive and Google recently admitted to inflating CPCs, which is not a surprise at all.

Um, my recommendation to agencies, there is go full funnel. We’ve been so spoiled at the bottom of the funnel. And everything’s direct response. Uh, run some brand campaigns, watch the impact on your, your, your, the efficacy of your overarching marketing. It’s unbelievable. And big businesses, big brands know this, but little brands have forgotten this.

Um, run campaigns without conversion action. Oh, I can’t believe he said that, but see what happens with the cost of traffic. Um, you know, when you trust your targeting and trust your creative to actually do the work, uh, lift yourself out of the Coliseum, the dog fight that Google and meta wants you to be in.

And if you can do that, you’re going to find that there’s some pretty, still some pretty significant margins to be had.

KIRK WILLIAMS: You know, I want to, I want to start by noting that There are, there absolutely seems to be some monkeying around that Google has admitted to in auctions and that’s frustrating that that can harm trust and, and I wish they would stop behavior like that.

I’m not the one to say whether that’s illegal or unethical, that’s not my place. I will say absolutely, Um, that sort of behavior harms trust with advertisers, especially when you have that layered on with things like black box, but with P max and, and that sort of thing where it’s, it’s difficult to even get, um, information about where your ad dollars are going.

Right. So I do think that Google has a trust issue right now. Um, but in some ways like inflated CPCs as time goes on, that’s, that’s, that’s not just simply Google’s fault, if you will. So that’s just the, the nature of an auction. And I think it’s fair to admit that there’s just a nature of people identifying, like these are more valuable auctions and we’re willing to invest more money in that.

That kind of goes up over time. That can be really difficult, especially for newer brands, especially for newer businesses. So one of the things that I think is, is a shift that has occurred and needs to occur for, for people who, you know, paid search advertisers is, uh, In the past, I think, you know, keyword bidding and shopping in that there was a lot, I think it was easier for anyone, those with big budget or limited budget to just kind of, you know, To spray and pray a little bit with lower CPCs just to see, Hey, let’s spend quite a bit and see what happens and get some data and really try to invest that well.

And then like, then we’ll figure it out from there was kind of the mindset and that worked. I’m not even saying that was necessarily a bad mindset now that it’s, it’s, you know, Much more difficult because CPCs do directly impact our ability to advertise, right? Because even if it’s a valuable click, if it’s a 3 click, but you’re selling an 18 product, you need to have such a high conversion rate in order even just to make that worth it longterm or, or, or there needs to be some mix within your, Within your account on the whole, that, that means you can lose some money over here on these keywords or what have you to make that make that make sense.

Right. If that’s not the case, it really is difficult to get a lot of that data, especially as a startup and especially as a newer business. So I think really having your ducks in a row and knowing like. Who your target audience is having that offer that you really have thought of and you’ve tested and you know is going to be doing well And then and then putting that in front of the right people in front of the right terms I think that is actually even more essential.

So I think what I would say is I think it’s even more important for businesses to actually have their business figured out by the time they’re starting Google ads, Google advertising, I think, or, or investing more money in it because there’s less margin for error for you to not really know the best way to present your product or your brand or position.

And to lose a bunch of money on, on Google ads. I just think it’s easier to do that. So I think the more that a business has a great product with a great offer, great landing pages, the more they have all of those ducks in a row, the more they’re going to be able to more quickly tell what is working, what’s not working in Google, because you just can’t really.

Throw a bunch of stuff at the wall within Google anymore with higher CPC. So I think that’s really important.

ANDREA CRUZ: We have always known that it’s an auction, right? And there are many components of information happening. What matters the most is that you are still feeding that first party data into the systems to be able to provide the best information you have at your disposal.

And when you do that, you can really focus on the ROI. It doesn’t matter how many competitors are out there. Cause. When you put that information first, you are able to get the best results and know specifically how that is impacting your bottom line. And you can focus your efforts on those users who are worth the most to you.

ANDREW LOLK: Um, it’s just a comment on the whole inflating CPCs. We, I wouldn’t say we knew this was happening, but we know that Google aren’t playing a fair game here. It’s their marketplace. And we always knew that there were some kind of shady things going on in the background. I didn’t know it was this bad or this blatant.

So it caught me a little bit by surprise that it was so blatant as it was. With that being said, all of this is outside of our control, outside of being Expedia or, um, someone at Google. Biggest price comparison engines in the world. Nobody really goes out in place, uh, goes toe to toe with Google on some of these things.

So you as general advertisers can’t really do anything about it except for expanding over to other marketing channels. You’re just not as dependent on Google as others. And the, and they, they say it, they optimize it.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Basically gives you the answer right here.

ANDREW LOLK: The post clay experience conversion rate optimization has to be your biggest lever in any business out there.

So we, we have access to about 40 different advertisers and have touch points with many, many, many, many more. One of the biggest things that we see again and again and again is there isn’t a dedicated budget for conversion rate optimization. If you are serious about running any kind of online business and you’re worried about increasing CPC costs, or you’re, you’re worried about not being able to work, then, sorry, being able to get, continue being on a, on a channel like Google.

Conversion optimization is the biggest thing. And it comes in three different ways. One, it comes in the traditional hire consultant, go through your site, do some user testing, improve your navigation, improve your category pages, improve your product pages. That’s one, everybody should do that. Two is general pricing strategy and how you’re running your pricing across the site.

Number three is, is the offer that you have. If you’re a Direct to consumer website. You have a lot more leeway than you actually think in terms of what should your offer be instead of just being 10 percent off 20 percent off, should you give a Friday gift with purchase? Should you give a bulk discount?

Uh, Francis bulk discounts work really, really well around Christmas where We’re right around Christmas and they work really, really well because people are buying gifts and you get a 100 product for 60 because you buy three of them. That’s often a very good business for you as a consumer brand. And it’s really good business for the end client and customer.

Perfect offer to give out. Many people don’t do it because it doesn’t work that well in January. Depending on what it actually is, but many of these gift products don’t work that well as a volume play or a bulk discount in January, February or every other month. So you have these three areas, which is regular conversion optimization, you have pricing on your site, and you have the offer that you actually have on the site that you can work on in order to improve Google ads.

And that really should be a huge point. And I’ve forgotten that before, number four is landing pages, landing pages, especially if you’re like, Anyone should really be working on, uh, landing pages at any size.

DUANE BROWN: Now CPCs, they go up every year. That’s like death and taxes. You know, it’s going to happen every year, but if you want to survive next year, the big way to survive, the increased CPCs we’ll see next year is optimizing your funnel.

No longer can you just worry about what happens in the ad account. You’ve got to worry what happens after somebody clicks on your ad, that post click experience. And so making sure everything from your product pages to your landing pages, to your checkout, or I’ll optimize. means you’re more likely to convert more people.

And if you’re going to convert more people, you can then withstand the rise in CPCs from Google. But let’s be honest, everybody has their CPCs going up, whether you look at Meta, aka Facebook and Instagram, or TikTok, it isn’t only Google that’s doing this, so you need to make sure you optimize everything after that click.

As long as what’s in your ad account, if you want to make sure you can combat the rise in CPCs.

NAVAH HOPKINS: First and foremost, it is important to note that we need to take control of our own destiny. There are amazing ways to put those protections in place using tools like Optmyzr, but you can actually do a lot of that for free using Portfolio Bidding.

Uh, and you actually put a bid cap in place to go along with your bidding strategy. So if you’re using a target cost per acquisition, or if you’re using a target ROAS goal, make sure that you’re coupling that with a portfolio bidding, uh, cap just so that you don’t overspend. Additionally, make sure that you’re using exclusions.

Uh, it’s really unfortunate that people are still not using negatives or still not excluding audiences. Uh, if you’re even remotely in doubt of something’s value. Don’t allow it to have access to your budget.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: And so when it comes to the CPCs that Google is charging, this is Google’s in charge of their auction, they will set thresholds that determine the price that someone has to pay to be in that auction.

And so, sure it’s an auction. You pay more than is necessary to beat your competitor. The sort of the floor, the reserve price that Google maintains, that is Google’s to set. They run that auction. It is theirs to decide. We play in that world and if we want to advertise on Google, then we have to play by those rules.

That’s just a reality. And so I think what we can do is we need to have better measurement systems and we have to have better automations to respond to whatever we detect is changing. You know, if Google goes and makes a change to the threshold of an auction, then we should be able to see fairly quickly that, Oh, there’s a rise in the cost per click.

And so an Optmyzr, we recently introduced vertical industry benchmarks. And so this is nice because now you can start to go in and you can see. Oh, my CPC is up 10 percent versus last year, but look, everybody else in this industry, theirs is up 20%. So your increase is actually less than the increase that others are seeing.

So that might be a good signal means what you’re doing is better than the average, or you can see the reverse. You could see your CPC is up 20 percent and most people in your industry are only up 10%. And then we have insights that say, well, okay, listen, the average advertiser in your vertical has this many campaigns and they use this.

These bid strategies and you can start to compare it to what you’re doing. And now you can start to understand perhaps what is it that I’m doing? That’s causing me to have to pay more than the average person. And so now that you have these insights, you can start to act on it. You can start putting rules in place that automatically.

detect the change and make the required response to make sure that your costs are not completely out of control. Um, and so I think at the end of the day, it’s like, we, we have to see ourselves as like active participants and not necessarily just the victims of something that’s being done to us. Like the world’s going to happen.

Google’s going to do what Google does and our job, our mission as the people who’ve been put in charge of PPC accounts is to take all of these things into account. And make the most of what we’ve been given by the world. Uh, so being the active participant, and that’s kind of the paradox almost because a lot of what Google says is like, hey, listen, just tell us what you’re trying to achieve.

We’ll let the automation handle it for you. But at the same time, you do want to be an active participant. And yes, you want to communicate to Google. What it is you’re trying to achieve, but you want to have safeguards in place. You want to have PPC insurance in place. And that’s where a tool like Optmyzr comes in because it allows you a third party that’s watching your back, right?

It’s, it’s looking at what is Google doing and what might that mean for you so that you can respond more quickly and keep things in line so that your boss is happy, your client is happy. And you keep that business, right? Because nobody wants to churn the business because finding a new customer is way harder than doing a good job for an existing customer, but how we keep that existing customer happy, that is changing.

Right. And I don’t think we’re going to go back to the old world where things were easier. So we just have to figure out how to adapt and continue doing that in 2024 and beyond in regards to tracking.

KASIM ASLAM: Uh, give up on tracking, give up on the dream that there’s such a thing as attribution. And this is, this is horrible to say, but it’s true.

It’s getting more complex and more difficult and it’s statecraft between all these big companies and trying to keep data from us and keep us in the dark and keep us blinded. And, you know, we have these, these flawed attribution windows across different Traffic channels, and they’re all lying about what they’re capturing or they’re lying is the wrong word.

But you know, they’re reaching with both hands Start to look at things from a broader perspective use things like media efficiency ratio and marketing media mix and you know All those all those roi just like cash in cash out And then, uh, zoom in as you feel necessary and relevant, but don’t make your decisions from a zoomed in perspective.

So we’re, we’re, we’re back to correlation and causation. It’s the way that, that companies ran their business when we were doing radio, television, newspaper, back in the dark ages. Um, at a certain point, I do expect AI to help supplement with the interpretation of data and to find those correlative properties that can kind of say like, well, gosh, every time I run top of funnel YouTube, my Facebook, uh, direct response.

Boost by 300%. And it’s going to take. A mechanism like an AI driven analytics tool to do that. So far from what we’ve seen, and I’ve looked at everything by the way, and I’m an investor in many of them, there’s, there’s nothing that’s perfect, uh, but I would anticipate that it’s going to be no surprise to anyone who’s paid an attention, but basically attribution has always been complex and messy.

KIRK WILLIAMS: And it’s just going to continue to get that way because as accurate tracking continues to leave, um, everything is going a little bit more towards a modeled. Think, think, you know, the best way to think about that is. It’s the best guess that AI can do, right? It’s, it’s, it’s modeled. It’s saying, Hey, because of all this, we kind of think that this is what happened here.

And, um, as, as you know, that’s like, as, as you can assume, that’s going to have some issues and there’s going to be some, there’s just, that’s just always going to be somewhat, somewhat lacking in terms of reality. So one of the things that Google is leaning into, and I think one of the things that we as Google advertisers can do initially to.

To be helping combat this is really leaning into first party data, especially getting things like enhanced conversion set up that’s utilizing first party data, um, in, in order to identify like which conversions actually have happened because it’s, it’s actually taking things like the email address of that person who, who bought from you and, and using that to talk to, to connect that to that visitor.

Right. So as you actually using first party data, um, to make those connections. And then it’s going to, it’s going to, I think, continue to build conversion modeling off of that and enhance conversions as, as well. So initially I think just continuing to have first party data, your customer list that you’re uploading to the Google, all that stuff is going to be increasingly important.

All the while, remembering that in some ways we’re going to go back with attribution, in my opinion, to more of like traditional marketing, uh, Measurement. And that’s, and that’s like before the, the brief era that we had with, with digital, where it seemed like we were able to track direct ties between like this person visited here and then they purchased, therefore, you know, this source must be worth it.

That sometimes, you know, in some ways that tie wasn’t actually that helpful because it made us think that we knew more about that visitor journey than maybe we actually did. So in some ways I think this is going to push us back into some old school marketing measurement methods, um, in which, you know, we’re going to have to, we’re going to have to figure out how can we better.

Actually measure when we release this creative, when we bid on this campaign, you know, there might be ways where we need to do Some geolocation tests or, you know, media mix marketing and all that stuff. Um, modeling so all that to say, uh I think attribution with privacy is going to be one of the one of the biggest things that continues to change That everyone’s going to be trying to figure out and we’ll see how google does with on the modeling side of that But definitely whatever you can do on the first party data You going to help you long term with that

ANDREA CRUZ: people struggling with this, but these days there are so many different ways to still make sure that you are measuring all your marketing efforts from beginning to end doesn’t matter how short or long your sales cycle are when I talk to marketers out there, I am still surprised that a lot of people are not using brand leaf studies, all of the platforms have them, Google LinkedIn, you name it, they all do.

And some of them doesn’t ask you for a big commitment of budget. Now, if you have a team that it’s help able to help you with halo analysis, incrementality analysis, MMM. You should be leveraging these tools because they’re going to make your life as a marketer easier.

ANDREW LOLK: It is my belief that the fact that most people haven’t been wanting to learn GA4 has been a really nice thing.

Because I believe from a strictly advertising standpoint, Google Analytics has been overrated for years. Especially come out with Facebook. Everybody has always known that whatever Google net access or Facebook says have been so far off in many cases. Uh, and it’s the same more like it’s the same in many other cases.

Again, this last non direct, uh, click is, is a nightmare from an advertising standpoint, and then isn’t the right way to. do advertising. GA4 is getting better with some data driven execution and some other things. But again, it isn’t, I’ve never liked it. And I don’t think it’s perfect for the way that you’re supposed to run advertising.

So I actually think it’s a good thing that most people haven’t gotten that far into GA4. Um, don’t get me wrong. GA4 is an excellent tool for many different tools, for many different use cases. But marketing analysis, marketing attribution and marketing analysis is not our marketing measurement. It’s not one of them in my opinion.

So I think that the best thing marketers can do in 2024 is lean into some of the tools that are out there. There are some really nice overall attribution tools out there like Northbeam, um, that I believe that more, especially Advertisers and e commerce can utilize in order to just get a better understanding of what ads are driving sales.

We’ve seen cases, especially with YouTube, uh, where we, where Google ads is showing, uh, 50 percent ROAS, but North View is showing a 200 percent ROAS. So I think there are many other tools out there that you can actually use to get a better understanding of how your marketing works, rather than just relying on A, cookies and B, Google Analytics 4.

DUANE BROWN: I think the biggest thing when it comes to GA4 is actually spend time in the platform. If you say every day, Monday to Friday, I’m going to spend 15 minutes in GA4, you’ll not only be able to use it a lot better, but you’ll understand how it’s going to impact you when cookies go away next year. We can’t stop cookies going away, but we can get better at the platforms we have access to and understand how the attribution works today and how it’s going to be impacted when cookies go away at some point in 2024.

NAVAH HOPKINS: Now, another big point is privacy, um, and the compliance around that, uh, the U. S. is finally starting to join, uh, the E. U. and the U. K. with, uh, privacy compliance, other markets are starting to get on board as well, and with G. A. 4. 5. fully being in place this year, we now are really well and truly in the model data era.

So make sure that you’re uploading those offline conversions that you’re giving the networks the data that they need, but also make sure that you’re leveraging more than just Google ads, because candidly, Google ads, as lovely as it is. It’s not going to be the end all be all for reaching your target market.

There are a lot of really great other networks out there with additional audiences that will let you bypass much of the privacy pieces. Microsoft lets you parlay in LinkedIn. Um, Amazon has some of the best first party. Uh, and proprietary audiences, uh, on the market. So definitely don’t be afraid to leverage other networks aside from Google while still with Google owning that they are still the gorilla in the room or the main player in the room.

Uh, we want to make sure that we’re uploading our conversion data and that we’re also. Being as, uh, integrated as possible, uh, with things like customer match, uh, IE email lists. Do you know that, uh, Microsoft and Google still require that thousand people per, uh, customer match list? Whereas other audiences like with meta ads, you can get away with a hundred for your seed audience.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Now, first party data is another huge trend that I think is going to matter much more in 2024 than in the past few years. Uh, And we’ve seen the tide shifting. I mean, so obviously we’ve seen Apple becoming much more locked down when it comes to privacy. Their browsers will strip out things like GCLID from Google.

So it becomes really hard for advertisers to know where did it come from? What were the keywords? And so it’s hard for you to feed data back into Google for their AI. To do better bidding, better targeting. If Apple is not allowing you to take that data from Google and connect it to your ultimate business results, like it’s not just someone filling in a lead gen form, but it’s somebody actually buying something.

And of course, to be able to connect those two dots, you’ve had to have the G clit or some other parameter. that you can use to inform Google about, okay, this thing happened on my site. And this is how I connected back to the Google advertising world. Now, the good news is that a lot of these privacy concerns on the Apple side, they really impact what’s happening on Apple devices.

But anyone who’s using Chrome from Google, who’s using Android devices, that data is still going to persist. So I don’t think there’s like this. There doesn’t need to be any proof. panic, right? We’re going to lose some data, but Google is working hard to use modeling to fill the gaps that come into existence.

And so some of the Google data itself, that’s going to remain very, very good. But I think the bigger question, aside from all the technology of how do we measure things that really the big thing that we should be worrying about and thinking about because it’s a big opportunity. Is what is your first party data and how do you bring that to action in your PPC accounts?

And so instead of kind of being lazy and going to the ad engines, whether that’s meta for Facebook ads or whether it’s like Google and using all of their audience data, Like, think about what is it that you know about your customers? Uh, what do they do on your website? What different behaviors do they have?

What different similar or what similarities exist between different groupings of customers? And so you can take that really far, but I think in the early stages, it’s just about communicating some of the basics to Google, right? So who, um, who came to different sections of your website? Who’s an existing customer, who’s a long time customer, who’s a customer that might be ready to make another purchase based on sort of the lifespan of the thing that I sell to them, communicate that back into Google and then start doing some interesting things with it.

I also think you can actually think about, um, sort of the custom audience segments and what might someone have searched that identifies them as having certain interests. And so if you think about hotels, it’s not just about communicating back to Google, whether somebody stayed in a hotel or booked a hotel from your brand, but it’s about like what other research may they have done that helps you understand the mindset of that prospective customer.

And so have they done a lot of research about. Backpacking, right? That may indicate to you that they are more, uh, good customer for your lower end properties. Whereas if someone’s doing a lot of searches for like fancy handbags and like Italian shoes, this has nothing to do with travel, but if they’ve been searching those things, then maybe you can tie that back and say, well, Hey, you should see my ads for my five star properties, because that’s more likely where you’re going to want to stay.

So I think in 2024, just start thinking about like, what is the audience data? That you have on your side. Like, what do you know in your business could have an impact on the decision that the consumer makes, and then start thinking about where does that data live in my first party system, where I don’t have to go to a third party to, to figure this out.

And then once you have those dots connected, then it’s about feeding that back in to the Googles, the metas, all of the ad platforms so that they can now leverage your first party insights to show ads at the right time to the right person at the right price. And so, of course, whether GA4 is the solution to that or you use BigQuery Google’s other technology or somebody else’s technology completely, it’s about having the data, right?

But also having the business conversation about why do we even need that data? In the first place, and then I’m really excited because Optmyzr is basically that layer that sits in the middle, and it can take your first party data that you have, and it can put it back into the app platform that you choose, and it can actually make rules around this, right?

So you can now say, well, if I know these things about my customer, then I want to put them or I want to, you know, have a campaign about that, and I want to set higher bids, or I want to show different ads that you can bring all of this together and actually start acting on the first party data.

KIRK WILLIAMS: Yeah. So this is funny because literally as of this morning, I tweeted out an article that I saw where it was, where it said literally 100 percent of agencies, you don’t see a hundred percent of anything, right?

You, you, you might have like the majority of people and it’s like 87%, you know, vote one way or something. That’s a huge majority to have a hundred percent. That means that. Everyone that they surveyed or whoever they talked to, right? Every single one of them said something. And that is when a hundred percent of agencies are using AI, right.

In their marketing. I just thought that was kind of funny because I think that’s one of those things where like, Well, of course we’re using AI, right? Everyone’s using AI. That’s, that’s how you, that’s how you set yourself apart as a digital agency, keeping up with things. So I think the question isn’t just simply is someone like, are you using AI?

I think it’s more like, how are you using it? And. And how is that going to be different from maybe how someone else is doing or like what, what else, what else are you going to do with that in a, in a, in a qualitative way that will actually be different than what everyone else is doing. Cause everyone is using smart bidding.

Everyone, everyone is trying chat GPT for things like product descriptions and things like that, or, or in some way, shape, and form. That’s one of the ways that we use chat GPT to rewrite Product descriptions quickly. Cause a lot of times products go into Google shopping and it’s just a big mess, the descriptions are.

So I think that. I think that there are going to be important ways that AI is going to help serve digital advertising that I don’t even know if we know all this, um, yet because, uh, AI for data analysis still seems to be a struggle. I was just talking to someone about that, that AI used for data analysis can still have some struggles.

Um, but it seems that those who utilize AI to help give them additional ideas on maybe, uh, a piece of creative that they’re working on or. Or even, even just getting, getting some ideas for, um, you know, inputting here’s, here are these target audiences. Here’s how we want to talk about, like, like what are some, what are some keyword ideas with all of this information that input, right?

I think there’s some ways to do that. That’s really beneficial. And then I think there’s going to be a lot, a lot of ways that AI is used, uh, that, that we’re not even sure, you know, how that’s going to be, especially for us, Google advertisers, uh, with, with Google at the wheel, we’re starting to see that already with Google and AI, right?

Um, the, the ability to immediately, and this is what I’m super excited about, like, especially for smaller clients, the ability to hop in there into some, some, uh, images and create some really good image and video assets. Utilizing AI that we never would have been able to in the past for some of these small clients where It’s it’s not going to be the best thing that you’ve ever seen Certainly, I still believe that like really smart creative people would be able to beat those But I think it’s going to I think it’s going to set a new baseline, especially for creative I think it’s going to set a I think AI is going to set a new baseline For just being able to get some solid creative action Then that then like the best humans will still be able to beat, but this will at least allow smaller businesses even to just to get in the game earlier on some of that.

So I think that’s a little bit of how I see AI working in, in advertising. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the future.

ANDREW LOLK: I have three things. One is stop looking for it to be the golden goose and everything like you should, where it makes sense and leave the rest. I find that. PPC is a great example.

Do you want to write ads? Do you want to find keywords? Most of this is a waste of time to put a system in place for anyone. But these edge cases, or if you’re an agency like we are, we have 12 people on staff getting some good prompts going for how to write ad copy and translate it across 10 different countries or languages in Europe.

That’s great. So lean into where it makes sense instead of trying to make it anything and everything. So again, right. Hyper localize that code, but that’s something you can’t really do unless you’re, it takes forever, but you can chat, get chat, GPC to do it. Translating at code seamlessly works perfectly.

Use it for Excel formulas. It’s amazing to. To finalize Excel formulas or to expand on original thinking from you, try to lean into the things that are actually working for you instead of trying to make it everything, because that’s where I see it be the biggest mistake people are doing. Then number two, raise the bar.

If your skillset is writing ad copy or just overall writing articles or scripts for YouTube videos, then using AI to write any of those things. Isn’t going to take you very far. Use it where you’re bad or things that you find repetitive. For instance, uh, one of the brands rerun, we send a weekly pizza tip out.

It’s not fair. It’s not that complicated with a preset prompt. We’re able to take a one paragraph tip and turn it into a full email tip on how to make better pizzas at home that we didn’t have for full email that the basically take a process that was that they used to. That used, we used to have to hire a content writer to, to do, do it now with just a prompt and a click of a button.

And then the last one that I wanted to mention is, is something that’s not really ready yet, but it’s something I believe AI will become better and better at, and that’s analyzing data. Um, it’s not quite there, at least not. At at least the chat GBT. Um, but more and more systems and optimize will be one of the ones that, that take advantage of this really quickly, I believe.

So I highly recommend spending more time learning how to use your favorite AI to do analysis. So when Theis and. Maybe tools with optimized comes out with better use cases for AI analyzation, analysis. When all these things become powerful enough, then you can actually start using it. Because I believe that for our, our case, that’s going to be something that’s going to be much better than what you actually ever expected.

Because it’s one of those things that I’m really good at. And it’s one of the things that I use every single day in my PPC work is better analysis and. That analysis then drives better outcomes, which can lead to better strategies and accounts, which again, leads to better performance. So overall, those are the three things that I believe that you can get most out of when it comes to AI.

NAVAH HOPKINS: I do think it’s useful to take a step back and look at how can we leverage AI into our performance. Um, so the first and foremost, I would argue is Asking networks questions and asking, you know, it’s questions now. Optmyzr does have the Optmyzr sidekick, which is our own way of leveraging AI to understand what’s happening in your account, but actually strongly recommend looking actually, um, a G4 and asking G4 questions from reporting because it’s actually able to then crawl through Uh, your events, your reports and feed you back on information.

It’s not going to tell you exactly why what happened happened, but it’ll at least give you that information. The next thing I strongly recommend is actually coming up with iterations for ad creative. So if you have an idea. Of of an ad that you want to make, uh, but you’re not quite sure all the various ways that it could be.

What used to be required is going into search trends and identifying different ways. People search and kind of cost of living in different places. All these things you now can just. prompt engineer, all those different iterations. Now, I will say not every bit of creative and not every bit of content that you will get from an AI solution, whether it’s chat GPT, BARD, Bing’s AI, uh, There’s all going to be different solutions there, but I do strongly recommend using that.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: 2023 was an amazing year where we look at all the advancements that happened in artificial intelligence. And, uh, it really was in November of last year that we had Shad GPT coming out. And in the beginning, people were experimenting with it, sort of trying to figure out what it could do. Um, and even some of the things that were frustrations back then, like it wasn’t really good at math, it would make up a lot of stuff.

There’s been progress made in all of those areas. But we’ve gone from GPT 3. 5, chat GPT, to now GPT 4. The GPT 4 turbos come out. And now we’re talking about in the next year, probably having something like GPT 5. Uh, we also have Gemini from Google coming out. We have, it’s not just large language models, but it’s also, uh, things that can help you with image editing.

Like there’s Alpaca, which you can teach your brain style and then it can generate images in that style. And so to me, it’s really exciting to see all of this amazing generative artificial intelligence that’s coming out and just sort of figuring out where it can help us. And of course, you know, I’ve been talking about scripts for well over a decade, Google Ad Scripts.

And I think one of the little frustrations has always been that people say, well, yeah, you know, you have an engineering degree, you know how to write a little bit of code. So maybe for you, that’s easy to generate scripts. But now if you look at chat GPT, you can actually have a conversation with it and you can get it to write scripts for you.

Uh, we had a great episode this year of PPC town hall with Niels Roijmans. And he basically showed an example where he’s built a GPT, where you give it an image of a whiteboard sketch of what you want the script to do, kind of the flow chart, and it understands the image and then it actually writes the code to do that in a script.

So I think one thing that’s fascinating is we’re no longer in a position where we should ever say. I don’t know how to do this thing. Instead, we should say, I haven’t yet tried to do this thing. And when it comes to me personally, like I’m not that good at graphic design, but I’ve been able to put together some graphic designs this year using generative.

And sure, they’re not perfect, but they’re good enough for me to give to someone. To get them to understand what is my vision, like what am I trying to achieve and then they can make it perfect. But again, these are just things like I have an avatar of myself that’s rapping. I have an avatar of myself that’s making jokes.

I’m not a rapper. I’m not good at telling jokes. But these are things that I can now actually start to experiment with. And again, they’re not perfect, but I think in the next year. Wait for it to get like massively better on Google hasn’t really said what they’re doing with Gemini, but they have said it is drastically better than anything we’ve seen from even GPT four and that’s crazy, right?

I mean, so that’s just in one year we’re going to see tremendous, uh, bounds and leaps being taken in this technology becoming better. So I would really keep an eye on that and then, you know, help it, okay. Or, or use it to help you with some of the simple stuff in PPC. Like obviously, like you would do an Optmyzr, use it to generate headline variations, use it to do more keyword research, put a new keywords to develop audiences, custom audience segments, custom affinities, all of these things.

But then also think about how can you really push your PPC to the next level? Uh, so maybe you’ve thought about, well, I’d like to do some, uh, MMM. Some media mix models, and maybe you don’t know how to write the code to do this, or you don’t have a tool to do this, but again, you can go to GPT and you can say, this is what I’m trying to achieve in the GPT advanced analysis capability, and it will write the Python code for you to do the regression testing, and it’ll even tell you along the way.

What kind of data you need to put in as inputs to get the outputs that you want. So again, just like the things that you’ve been trying to do, but you just sort of haven’t figured out, go and talk to generative, like ask it, what is it going to take for you and me, me, the human, you, the GPT to work together to actually achieve this and do it in a fraction of the time, uh, compared to if I had gone and hired someone to do this for me.

So I think generative is really, that is the big thing for 2024. It was clearly the big thing in 2023. It’s going to continue to be the big thing. And so if you can figure out where it can help you, you’re going to be ahead of your competitors.

KASIM ASLAM: For now, my best advice is hang in there, hang on. Um, I think this is going to get pretty, pretty rocky to be honest with you.

I think agencies are in, in small businesses in general are in for. An interesting time ahead. Um, and for agencies, that’s going to get worse because AI is already eating into so much of what we do. You know, a lot of what we used to charge to do AI can do for free in fractions of a second. And so, you know, it’s going to be, um, it’s going to be a season of being nimble, but the people that are willing to be nimble are going to profit from it.

Greatly. I hope nobody minds what ends up being something of a sobering message, but that’s what I think. That’s how I feel. I hope that’s helpful. I’m rooting for y’all. Love you. As a B2B

ANDREA CRUZ: As a B2B marketer and thinking about 2024, we all know that consumer prices and inflation is expected to come down a little bit, but in the B2B world, we know those changes take longer.

It’s still going to be very expensive for organizations to borrow. So anything that comes on the realm of AI and cookie defecation will affect us. For sure. So we need to stop doing the same task in 2024. We can pass all of that to AI. Stop writing our copies from scratch. Stop, um, building keyword lists from scratch and use AI tools to be able to help us with those tasks.

That said, and this is very critical, you should always be sure to personalize the output that AI is giving you. We are all going to sound the same if we’re all using the same tools. And your brain should always be reflected. in whatever output you’re putting out there to the algorithm.

NAVAH HOPKINS: So my biggest takeaway is keep calm, carry on.

We will not only endure, we will thrive. 2023 has been a lot. There have been a number of changes. There have been quite a number of confusion points and stress points. Points, but at the end of the day, we’re still here. We are still growing on the path to profit and victory, so absolutely know that. Going to 20 20, 24, there is a lot of hope.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: If you’ve enjoyed watching this episode of PPC Town Hall, please subscribe at the bottom. We’re coming back in 2024 with many new episodes. If you have a suggestion for a speaker, we haven’t had on the show who would be an amazing addition. Please let us know in the comments. And of course, we’d love to hear from you as well.

What do you think are the biggest trends for 2024? What are the things that everybody should be worrying about? So join the conversation and thanks for watching.