The Future of Search Advertising

...Peak into their vision for Search Advertising.

Weve seen a major shift towards SEO from our clients as the economic conditions have tightened. Whilst sometimes more expensive upfront, most see it as a sensible long term marketing investment.

So with budgets potentially shifting from PPC (Google AdWords) to SEO, I was keen to hear Googles thoughts on the future.

Googles AdWords Business Product Management Director (thats quite a title), Nicholas Fox, gave a keynote speech which highlighted where Google see search advertising heading.

Whilst he confirmed that Search Advertising is still about 3 key things (the holy trinity of Googles business),

1. Keywords
2. Text Ads
3. Cost per click

Googles vision is about search advertising that goes beyond keywords. Its an advertising program that manages itself.

What if we turned the problem around though? What if you told us what youre trying to sell and who you were, and we matched that to the right set of queries from our users.

Theyre also exploring new approaches that have no keywords at all in an effort to get better at connecting users with advertisers.

Googles also working hard towards cracking the cost per acquisition model. Understanding that marketing is primarily about delivering sales " they understand that businesses need conversions " not just traffic.

Whilst much of what Nicholas discusses seems a distant future, if you think how quickly Google revolutionized online advertising " the keyword less search advertising model might be closer than we think.

Feel free to digest the whole presentation by listening to the podcast below.

Heres a podcast of the presentation:

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