FUTURE OF DIGITAL MARKETING
THE FUTURE OF SEARCH:
WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM
PPC AND SEO?
For all the hype surrounding emergent channels such as social and talk about the demise of SEO, the
importance of organic and paid search to the iGaming sector shows no sign of diminishing. The Media
Image’s Brendan Ashe and Chris Avery gaze into their crystal balls for iGB Affiliate as they predict where
search is headed.
What’s ahead for PPC?
It’s relatively difficult to speculate where
PPC will be in five years, given the huge
growth we’ve seen across the industry
recently. This has obviously intensified
the level of competition, bringing with it
(especially in the gambling space) massively
inflated CPCs across the industry. For
instance, we’ve seen the keyword “Online
Casino” jump from just £0.50 a click to
up to £100 a click over the last five years.
There is no longer one-size-fits-all approach
in this industry, and to turn PPC activity in
the gambling space into profit and revenue
you need to rely on the best technology
available in the market.
●●Smart advertisers will be relying on
technology to support increasingly
complex optimisation and bidding
processes
With increasingly complex bidding
options, more sophisticated tracking and
extensive campaign formats, leveraging
technology is key for effective account
management. Recently, we’ve seen several
advances in this field, the most notable
of these being the introduction of cross
device attribution. This has recently been
unveiled as a DoubleClick product, and
is set to rival Facebook’s Atlas platform
over the next couple of years. The typical
conversion journey is no longer a linear
process on one device, and PPC’s last
click attribution has been its biggest failing
over the last year. Incorporation of such
advanced technology into life time revenue
analysis will give businesses new insights
into what areas to focus on for the future
development of their company.
●●Optimisation triggers will become more
complex
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iGB Affiliate Issue 52 AUG/SEP 2015
Closing the loop on the relationship
between mobile, desktop and tablet is only
the beginning. Already we’ve seen huge
advancements in integrating Paid Search
campaigns with offline triggers, such as
weather and news feeds, TV advertising
and physical location. There are already
a few nascent technologies that pick up
on when an advertiser’s TV ad is shown,
and automatically upweight bids across
paying £100 a click for premium terms,
then it better work out at a reasonable ROI
in terms of LTV. The reality is that for a lot
of casinos this is not the case.
The challenge is then to identify ways for
Google to try and identify and separate the
valuable customers from the less valuable
customers, and price them accordingly.
In a lot of ways Google isn’t too far away
from being able to offer this. They already
“There are already a few nascent technologies that pick up
on when an advertiser’s TV ad is shown, and automatically
upweight bids across engines to boost exposure.”
engines to boost exposure. In testing, the
tool is at its most effective when used to
hijack competitors’ TV advertising. Whilst
this is still relatively new technology, it
is clear that over the next five years we
will undoubtedly see additional triggers
being used to refine PPC strategies. This
will finally allow PPC to go beyond the
limitations of keyword targeting and
provide additional insights into user intent,
motivation and behaviour that PPC expects
can leverage to better target their ads.
●●Bidding will become more personal
At the moment, the gambling space is
one of the most competitive industries in
PPC, as highlighted by the dramatic CPC
inflation outlined at the start. This inflation
has put pressure on a lot of advertisers
to justify PPC investment from an ROI
perspective, and the increased competition
appears a bit of a double-edged sword to
Google. On the one hand, they’ve increased
revenue on premium terms. On the other,
they’re coming close to pricing themselves
out of their own market. If advertisers are
offer “in market” audience segments
through Display, which have yielded good
results, and surely this can be overlaid
on traditional PPC. This would allow
advertisers to group potential customers
into separate audiences based on their
potential value to the business. The current
targeting – being primarily keyword-based
– doesn’t support this distinction and we
expect Google’s targeting criteria to become
much more “personal” and drive the next
evolution advertisers can leverage to justify
and manage ever-incre \