As we look ahead to 2023, our leaders are reading the tea leaves from 2022 releases and announcements and predicting where major advertising platforms are headed over the next 12 months.
The big takeaway: be prepared for a focus on data quality.
Google will continue to push for automation. Although the barrier of entry is lower than ever, novice advertisers will struggle to get quality results, and great advertisers will stand out by using advanced techniques to harness the power of machine learning.
Facebook, still struggling with signal loss, will have to give advertisers a little more control (signified by a recent announcement that they’re bringing back reporting by platform.
LinkedIn will finally provide offline conversion tracking (this is more of a hope than a prediction).
Data clarity will become more important than ever in B2B. Connecting CRM data to ad networks will be crucial as the industry moves further into automation. Automation is like electricity looking for the path of least resistance, so if you’re feeding it the data too early in the funnel, you are setting up your campaigns for lots of low-value conversions. Controlling the conversion to make sure it’s pushing energy in the right place is going to be more important than ever.
Linkedin will continue to improve its targeting to try to match other advertising platforms in its level of sophistication.
TikTok growth will continue but at a slower rate as it becomes more normalized in American society. Many advertisers will still struggle to achieve optimal ROI as TikTok’s user base remains outside of their core demographic.
I have two buckets of predictions here. First, platforms will continue to develop solutions to changes in the past 1-2 years that caused loss in tracking, data, signals, etc. Google is pushing enhanced conversions, and Facebook has been constantly working on Conversions API and making the process simpler for advertisers to adopt. They’ve also (finally!) brought back conversion-level breakdowns for analyzing segments like performance by demographics, platform/placement, device, etc. They’ll continue to push out advertising-friendly features to recoup some of the spend trickling to other channels.
My second major prediction is that platforms will push to keep users within the platforms themselves instead of sending them to a business’s website. Keeping users on-platform helps combat tracking/data loss with iOS14 and other privacy-related tracking updates (e.g. the death of cookies).
In-platform lead form ads have performed well across multiple platforms (especially Facebook and LinkedIn) because with less barrier to entry, those ads tend to convert at a higher rate. In the past, the concern has been the quality of leads generated from those ads.
To address this, Facebook is continuing to update their lead form ad capabilities. There are now more filtering options to focus on quality vs. quantity of leads that come in. There’s also a new option to create “Custom” form types that allow brands more flexibility to work with - this can help tell a story with rich context, visual assets, and customizable sections before users submit their info as a lead.
LinkedIn recently came out with Document Ads, which allow users to download gated content straight from an ad on their platform without having to go to the business’s website.
Smaller platforms like Snapchat and TikTok have also rolled out on-platform lead gen campaign types and will continue to lean into finding ways to directly engage users and collect valuable data.
Google will focus heavily on content quality and E-A-T, leading SEOs to focus on signals of expertise, quality of content (both writing and the technical aspects behind it), and the ability to cite research and build authority. As tools like AI make more subpar content easier to produce, and modern website builders make it easier to make baseline SEO-friendly sites, quality, expertise, and authority will be the most important differentiators.
Our predictions series will continue with a look at 2023 strategic shifts! Stay tuned.