With new devices being released every year, new trends in their design, and new marketing techniques overall, we will continue seeing changes in search advertising as well. Here’s what’s worth paying attention to:
1. Larger Devices Taking Over
Around a decade ago, every phone manufacturer was trying to make their devices as small as possible. Then came the iPhone and changed everything. These days no one worries about a screen being too big, and in fact, even a new term was created for the largest among smartphones – phablets.
With those big-screen devices, people can consume more details about the products you’re promoting, especially since right now more and more people use their phones as their main devices to access the web.
Another results of this is that we’ll be able to get more inventory for our ads. After all, since larger devices can display more ads on a single view, ad network managers will surely start serving more of them too.
2. New Paid Listings
Every once in a while Google likes to change things around and introduce new paid listings within their results pages. Something like this happened a while ago with Google Shopping, where previously free listings on the side became a paid product.
A similar fate might be in store for local listings and other sub-sections of the main search engine. It’s probably a good idea to look around for any new developments in that space.
3. In-Stream Ads in Results Pages
In-stream ads are something that Facebook has been using for a while now (the ads in the News Feed), and they are reporting it to be hugely effective in terms of revenue. For instance, in their earnings report, we can find that Facebook grew their ad revenue by 64 percent in Q3 2014, compared to Q3 2013.
We have every reason to believe that Google might start experimenting with in-stream ads as well. This would be very easy for Google and would probably improve the click through rates greatly, considering the fact that the users would no longer be able to quickly distinguish the ads from the organic content.
4. New Ad Types
It’s only natural for Google to try looking into new ad types and possible new placements. The markets for in-app advertising and video ads are likely to keep growing and start being introduced more on mobile devices and throughout other products of Google.
Google can’t afford to stay in the slow lane, while companies like Facebook start introducing video ads and experiment with new ways of delivering video to people across their different devices.
In today’s online marketspace, the only constant element is change itself. If we want to stay relevant as affiliates, we need to learn how to follow it and experiment with new tools as soon as they become available.