2024 Digital Marketing Trends Discussion
As a marketing agency and consultancy, we' have the opportunity to see across a broad range of businesses and marketing campaigns. Today, we discuss trends we’re seeing in the digital marketing landscape in the past year or so.
Joe Kim (00:01)
All right, I think we're recording now. Today, we are going to just talk about some of the interesting things that we've been seeing. So well, I mean, in terms of digital advertising, at least because, you one of the unique things that you get as a marketing agency is that you you see like dozens and dozens of different clients. And so, you know, when I was working in house at other brands,
You can kind of see what's going on with your brand specifically. And sometimes you get to chat with other digital marketers and you can kind of get a lay of the land and see if there are any kind of major trends. But when you're working with multiple ad accounts, multiple channels, multiple clients, we get to see different trends kind of pop up. And so I thought we'd take a little bit of time to kind of talk about
what some of those trends are. as we're starting to roll into Q4 2024 here, it might be a good chance to talk about how those trends might affect Q4 and how you wanna run your campaigns for the rest of this year. yeah, why don't we start with kind of what we see going on in Google these days.
Calvin (01:23)
We're losing quite a bit of transparency on the channel lately. I believe they're sunsetting the impression shares. So soon we won't be able to see what kind of market share we're going to have when we're running ads against other competitors.
Joe Kim (01:41)
Yep. Yeah, that competitive reporting seems to be going away. And this is like, God, when I started running ads back in like 2013, they like people were really upset about like enhanced campaigns. And you guys probably don't remember what that is. But you know, it's like, you know, over the last decade or so of advertising, we've seen just kind of like little little, you know, Google taking away control and transparency from the advertiser.
John (01:48)
.
Joe Kim (02:11)
you know, this is just like another step in that. Yeah, totally, totally. And, you know, I think one of the other things that we've been noticing, or that I've been noticing is, you know, it used to be really fairly uncommon for people to bid on in a like a competitor's brand term. But I think that's becoming really, really common now. And I think a big part of that has to do with the fact that performance max doesn't let you have like brand negatives.
Calvin (02:11)
especially with Performance Max.
Joe Kim (02:41)
And so Google is just like, we'll fuck it. Like, you know, we're going to put like this competitor term here. And it's not to say that you should never run competitors terms, but it's kind of hit or miss. And sometimes they can be really, really expensive and not drive any conversion. But it's definitely driving up the cost and CPC of brand terms, which used to be dirt cheap, know, two cents a click, three cents a click. And now we've seen them go up like
bit. yeah, that's just one of the examples of, you know, losing transparency and control over the ad channel. So anything else coming to mind for you guys?
John (03:22)
Yeah, just the relevance or I don't even know if relevance is the right word, but really how hard Google seems to want to be pushing advertisers to performance max. That has really increased recently. you know, one of the things that I've noticed across all of our clients, like the performance max campaigns are now, you know, performing as well as if not better than
brand search term campaigns. And I don't know if that's just a concerted effort behind Google to try to push everybody to the more automated algorithmically driven, probably AI driven campaign type that is Performance Max. I've seen conversions in Performance Max really, really jump up recently.
And you you can launch a performance max campaign and it takes almost no time at all for that campaign to just hit the ground running and start producing conversions. Now that quality of those conversions can be argued, but overall it's pretty clear that Google really wants people running performance max campaigns. And it's not necessarily all a bad thing. It's actually quite good in that, you know, we are seeing some really
great conversion rates and great ROAS coming out of Performance Max. But I think that is just really key to note as, you know, if you're an advertiser on Google, like don't overlook PMAX. where kind of, it's where the tides are shifting towards and, you know, performance is there to back it up.
Joe Kim (05:10)
Yeah, and the only thing that I really don't like about that is because it's so difficult to keep brand and non -brand separate within a PMAX campaign. Like they've got to be watering down those numbers with lot of brand queries. So that's the only thing I'd be really careful of. It is nice that it's pretty easy to get set up there and then it deploys to all the kind of Google channels.
You know, they're even using like AI tools to help you write, add, copy, or even generate creative for you. can't remember. Are we seeing, we're seeing some AI driven, like, creative generation and copy generation in Facebook as well.
Calvin (05:50)
Yeah, it's across both channels.
John (05:51)
Yes.
Joe Kim (05:54)
No, it I like I get the impression this is just like anything AI related with the with the big tech companies for Google is just like behind the eight ball that you're sucking at it. I mean, my general sense of the AI driven copy within like PMAX and stuff is really bad. I don't think we've used any of it, have we?
John (06:15)
No, and fortunately up to this point, both in Google and Meta, it seems like all of those AI generated creative and copy items, they're all optional up to this point. So you do have the ability to toggle them on and off. And we have not used them to date.
Joe Kim (06:36)
Yeah, mean, like, it's just, you know, pay that 10 bucks a month for like, you know, GPT and like, get your copy from there. It seems like it's a lot better. Anyways.
Calvin (06:47)
you know, or continue to use, or continue to use, continue to use copywriters because that's always the best way when you have a human writing it and really engaging with the brand in a very, you know, in a real human connected way. I feel like it's always the best of you are able to afford it. Obviously there's a lot of tools now that make things a lot more affordable in terms of with AI and simplification of things, but I think.
John (06:47)
Yeah, no, I was just building out a performance max.
Joe Kim (06:57)
for sure.
Calvin (07:14)
If you want more control, think we're losing that in return for ease of use. But that's not always the best solution. If you really want to scale, I think.
Joe Kim (07:27)
For sure. you know, the analogy I've heard that's really fitting is like AI is like a calculator for words. And so, you know, just because you've got a great calculator doesn't mean that you fire your accountant, right? So, you know, it's a tool that we've used definitely to be more productive and, you know, crank out more ad copy, but it's definitely not a replacement for a good copy.
Calvin (07:53)
Yeah, I think it's good for iteration and then using human skill sets and expertise to really find what's working and then reworking things to put the polish on the final results or final product.
Joe Kim (08:02)
Yep.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of using it for brainstorming.
John (08:12)
Yeah. AI just doesn't have the ability to nail the brand voice yet. Like it can put together well -crafted ad copy that is, you know, technically solid copy. If you break down, you know, what goes into an ad, but it is never going to nail the brand voice or the authentic voice that the brand is trying to speak in to the customer. it's, it's not going to nail sounding like the brand and it's not going to nail sounding.
Joe Kim (08:21)
Mm.
John (08:42)
Authentic to the customer no matter how hard you try to point it in the right direction I mean I put in prompts where you point it at you know the clients website you pointed at specific blocks of Copy that was written by a copywriter at the branch and it's still it's not gonna nail it and really it's not even close yet, but But I think it'll get there but to Calvin's point at this point and even in
foreseeable future, it's not going to replace a copyright.
Joe Kim (09:15)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, it might replace me because I'm a terrible copywriter. You know, that's why I have you guys work for me. But yeah, to your point, I don't think it's gonna replace a good copywriter anytime soon. Nice. Let's see, I know we had some unfortunate news on Facebook. You know, one of our best practices we use for audience targeting is around having robust like exclusions in our audience. You know,
That's kind of along the same vein of removing transparency and control from the advertiser. Facebook is basically copying that from the Google Playbook. It's not, it's fairly blatant to actually come to think of it, but it's in that same vein. What other kind of things are we seeing in Facebook these days? Any trends? Any interesting notable?
things that we're seeing out there.
John (10:16)
Kind of similar to Performance Max and Google, Meta now has Advantage Plus campaigns where it's not quite as piecemeal as Performance Max. Like, if you're not familiar with Performance Max campaign, like in a nutshell, you essentially build out a bunch of different
creative assets, bunch of different headlines, a bunch of different descriptions, and Google will just kind of mix and match and build all of that into ads. From what I've seen with the little bit that I've used, Advantage Plus campaigns to date, it's not like that in that you still give it specific ads that you have built out to run, but the audience targeting is all automated. And that...
I think the rise of the Advantage Plus campaign and Advantage Plus targeting coinciding with the removal of the ability to add exclusions to audiences, think is really, one goes with the other. There's a reason that Metta rolled out Advantage Plus targeting and then.
took away the ability to add exclusions. They're obviously trying to funnel people more to the automated campaign.
Joe Kim (11:40)
Yeah. Yeah. And again, it's one of those things where it's like, maybe it's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, we see the campaigns performing, but it's, you know, we lose some or a good amount of transparency there because like, like, you know, one of the biggest forks within like a campaign structure that we always just like retargeting versus prospecting, right? Like we always expect a retargeting audience to outperform a prospecting audience. And just losing that visibility with an advantage plus campaign is I mean,
John (11:46)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Joe Kim (12:10)
Again, they're watering down solid performance by hiding those numbers. So yeah, that's unfortunate, but we're reworking our best practices to try to mitigate that loss as much as possible. And I think we'll come up with clever ways to find that audience that we're looking for. Let's see, what about creatively speaking? What's interesting out there in the creative that we've been seeing?
that's effective.
John (12:52)
You know, it's, it's, it's hard to say because, you know, video is obviously the most effective. it's the most engaging and it's what the algorithm likes the most. it's more expensive. so, I think it was Calvin had a really good point when we were, you know, kind of introing this call and talking amongst ourselves, but.
Joe Kim (13:08)
Yeah.
John (13:18)
you know, really just needing to stand out more and more like the traditional ad, even traditional video ads just aren't, cutting it. Like you really have to be more, more attention seeking, more edgy, more eye catching than ever before, because I've seen a lot of ads out there that are really, really good ads. And just knowing that you're, you know,
As an advertiser, you're not just competing for, you know, within your space, you're competing with everything that's going into somebody's feed organically and every other ad that they're getting served that isn't necessarily in the market that you're serving. So, you know, more than ever.
Joe Kim (13:59)
Yep.
John (14:09)
You know, people are getting inundated with ads and just finding a way to stand out. mean, I know this, that's nothing new and groundbreaking, but it seems like it's, it's becoming even more prescient and, you know, just having to get very, very creative with your ads is, becoming an imperative.
Joe Kim (14:29)
Yep, yep. Yeah. And then like the space, like, you know, 2024 is an election year. So like, I've been seeing like political ads getting pushed out there too. So that's like a whole nother audience that you don't typically have to compete with in a Q4, but like, Hey, like, you know, it is what it is. It's out there. They're buying up the inventory. So, what are some examples of, maybe some, some like creative that's like been
I can't talk. Maybe some surprising results that we've had recently.
John (15:11)
Hmm one client went through a very high production value photo video shoot to produce assets for a campaign that you know, we kind of went back and forth about you know, how much we personally and professionally liked or didn't like the assets for the campaign the final product of this
production. you know, no matter what we all personally thought about it, like the performance just was not there. And this was like relatively high production value campaign that just really, at least in the meta meta ecosystem, kind of missed the mark. So that was really surprising. And that just goes to show you like how
Joe Kim (15:42)
Mm
John (16:05)
imperative it is to think outside the box and just be attention grabbing in different ways because you know I was of the opinion that these were pretty solid ads I mean they ticked all the technical boxes you know and they were really well done really crisp and they just kind of missed the mark so that was a little bit surprising.
Joe Kim (16:31)
Hmm. So like the technical quality of the creative and the video assets were really good, but just the message wasn't punchy enough. that is that what I'm am I picking up what you're putting down?
John (16:41)
Yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't really know what it was that caused these to not perform all that well, because I say like technical meaning more so the, you know, like we talked about in the last call about like what technically makes a good video ad talking about the hook in the value propositions in the call to action and keeping it this certain length. they, they nailed all of those boxes from a technical perspective. And then.
As you alluded to Joe, technical production, producing, you know, really high res videos with great voiceover, with great graphic overlays at the right moments. they, they checked all those boxes and the, the juice just was not worth the squeeze in that instance.
Joe Kim (17:32)
Interesting. Yep. I mean, sometimes you just don't get it, right?
Calvin (17:36)
Yeah, and you sometimes it's really up to the market to decide even if we think it is really good the numbers speak for themselves and something that I've noticed is like the ads that are actually more geared towards like user generated content and
kind of blend in with the rest of people's feet, like as their people are scrolling on their feed or going through their stories. Although there is an element of interruption that you have to do with your ad, I think it also has to feel like it's not completely different from the regular content people are watching or consuming.
Joe Kim (18:08)
Yeah, yep, yep.
Calvin (18:13)
So it's like a weird fine line that you have to dance or else like if it feels too much like an ad right away, I feel like it's kind of natural just skip, skip, skip right away, you know, you're seeing this even in my own behavior. I noticed that as well. So people kind of have to it's weird. Like they have to not know that's an ad right away, but then, you know, it kind of leads into that. So I'm seeing a lot more of those ads kind of the blurring the lines.
Joe Kim (18:23)
Right, right, right.
Calvin (18:39)
type of creatives doing quite well and actually even from myself I'm seeing myself being engaged by those kinds of ad creatives as well.
Joe Kim (18:48)
Yeah, because like when you're when you're kind of doom scrolling through your feed and you just see something that's kind of obviously an ad and it you I don't know about you, but I always kind of have like a little bit of a defensiveness and like I don't want to be sold to it right now. So you just like skip it right? So yeah, to your point, if you can kind of be a little sneaky and get in there and get the kind of first little bit of your ad message to them without being super, super obvious that you're an ad. Yeah, you might have a point there. Maybe that's something you should
Calvin (19:03)
I'm sorry.
Joe Kim (19:17)
We should try it out.
Calvin (19:19)
And I'm seeing that with the strong hook too, with a lot of content. It's like a strong hook that might not completely relate to the product or service you're advertising at all, but it gives people that little dopamine hit to be like, okay, what's going on here? I'll stay here, you know? Just like random stuff like an egg smashing on a pan or something. And then you're advertising like, you know, sunglasses or something. don't know. Just like things like that, you know?
Joe Kim (19:33)
Right, right, right.
like, have you seen that content recently where it's like, it'll be like a video of a guy like in a car accident and just getting ejected from like, like a moped or something, right? And then it'll roll into like a physical therapist office and they're like, they roll into like, they edit it so that like that first part, even though it's totally irrelevant, it turns into an ad. And that's, I mean, that's
Calvin (20:08)
Yeah, that stitch.
Joe Kim (20:09)
of what we're talking about here right yeah yeah yeah those can be really funny
Calvin (20:12)
I'm seeing that work really well for organic content that seems to work really well. I think even advertisers can take that same mindset because you might not be able to use a meme video in your actual ad creative because I don't know legal purposes or whatnot, but playing into that game I think could help blend into the normal content people see and post.
John (20:13)
Yeah, yeah.
Joe Kim (20:38)
Right, right, right. Yeah, I that kind of stealth organic into an ad kind of hook, right? Yeah, I like it. We should we should try to investigate that a little bit more. Awesome. Well, we just got a couple minutes left. And you know, it's after Labor Day. So we're not allowed to wear white anymore. But besides that, I think, you know, we typically think of this as like, man, you got like six to eight weeks of testing left before you got a lock in, right?
Calvin (20:44)
Yeah.
Joe Kim (21:08)
What are the kind of things that we're thinking about in terms of getting ready for Q4 here? know we're about to release a blog post where we've got kind of like that Q4 playbook. so they kind of like date ranges and that kind of thing. You know, that's fairly standard. But yeah, anything you guys are thinking about for Q4 coming up here pretty soon?
John (21:31)
Well, first of all, just like a gentle reminder, sent out to all of our clients that like, we're on the precipice here. Let's make sure that you have everything dialed on your end with what you want to be promoting, when you want to be promoting it, what sort of deals, discounts, et cetera, that you're going to be running between now and early 2025.
just so we can have everything queued up on time and not be running around at the last minute trying to build out ads and you know get them launched to meet deadlines. So getting clients all on the same page and prep is kind of the first step and then from there it's just a matter of execution. We know it's never not that clean but
But planning, planning, planning is what it comes down to at this point.
Joe Kim (22:33)
Yep, for sure. Calvin, anything from you?
Calvin (22:39)
I think I was along the same thing, just having a strong marketing strategy, knowing exactly, you know, what's going to be happening through the rest of the year and knowing when assets are going to be available and having the right conversations before getting everything set up and launched.
Joe Kim (22:59)
Right. So you should kind of maybe decide if you're going to have a Black Friday sale before Halloween, Right. Because we've never dealt with that before.
Calvin (23:05)
Yeah.
John (23:05)
Mm
Hahaha
Calvin (23:10)
Yeah, especially in Q4, into the holidays, think it's really good for agencies and marketing teams to really be like this in terms of communication.
Joe Kim (23:11)
Awesome.
John (23:20)
Mm
Joe Kim (23:22)
For sure, for sure. Yeah, and we're going to be probably haranguing our clients here pretty soon about Q4 plans, getting all that promotional messaging ready to go. Yeah, making sure the offers are solid. Yeah, what about any highlights from last year coming to mind for our Gray November Q4 kind of stuff?
Calvin (23:54)
I think a lot of CPMs and costs of inventory is lot higher, but I am seeing a pattern of people starting earlier in order to kind of warm up their audiences, up their customer base, and kind of catch the early parts of the season before things get really expensive.
John (23:55)
question.
Joe Kim (24:01)
Hmm.
Right. Yeah, I think I remember like on like, as soon as November 1 rolled around, it was just like, there's everyone's just like sale messaging, right?
John (24:25)
Mm
Yeah, no, that was one big thing that was different last year than 2022. And it's just going to be starting earlier and earlier every year. So just being out in front of it as much as possible and, you know, trying to. I mean, run your promotions before the clutter gets in there is what it it boils down to. And, you know, it's all in how you craft the messaging and just like, you know,
Joe Kim (24:52)
Yep.
John (24:59)
Hey, this is our Black Friday on, you know, first of November sale. Like this is the sale. There's not another one coming. and just get out there in front of it and avoid the clutter because you know, everybody is going to be running these ads post Thanksgiving. So I mean, getting out in front of it and, cutting everybody off might be a good way to go about it.
Joe Kim (25:06)
All right.
Yeah, because we always see, particularly for e commerce, like things really slowed down like, like mid to late October, because the customer has been trained at this point, like there's Black Friday sales are going to come, I can wait a week or two and you know, get 23 % off of the thing that I'm trying to buy. So John, what you're suggesting is we should actually start Black Friday, like October 14, right?
John (25:49)
Maybe not quite that early, but pre -Thanksgiving for sure.
Calvin (25:49)
Well, for some people, I...
Joe Kim (25:54)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Free Thanksgiving for sure.
Calvin (25:54)
Yeah, I've seen it definitely work for certain companies. I've noticed that they run their own kind of promotion before Black Friday and they actually don't even run the Black Friday sale. So that it's like, we're having running like a 30, 40 % sale, you know, and it's like, you know, fall sale and then they're just quiet during Black Friday so they don't have to compete during that time. like, you know, there's, there's choices that you can make.
John (26:05)
Mm
Joe Kim (26:05)
interesting instead of it. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I've seen that too.
Calvin (26:22)
depending on how you want to play it. I've noticed that too and I've seen it work. Just till I kind of break away from having to compete in that crowded space.
Joe Kim (26:34)
Yeah, and like what I've seen in the past is even if you're not promotional, like that Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend, like their conversion rate still like ramps up pretty substantially, even if you're not like dropping your prices 20 % or what have you.
John (26:35)
And I think...
Exactly. Exactly. And I think it's even worth calling it out and any ads that you're running early, like, Hey, like we're not running a Black Friday ad. This is the sale. So get it while you can. and then like Joe just said, like, enjoy that, ramp up in conversions. That's going to happen naturally around Black Friday anyhow.
Joe Kim (27:13)
Yeah, it's definitely a potential strategy.
Okay, well, let's a lot to talk about and cover. You know, these are kind of the trends that we're seeing and you things that we're hoping to look forward to in this coming quarter. So yeah, as usual, just like and subscribe and follow us on all the social media. And of course, we also have our newsletter. So go onto the website and sign up for that. And you will be the first to hear about when we have little discussions like this. So yeah, thanks everyone for your time.
John (27:43)
Keep your eyes open for that new blog coming out too. We're probably going to be publishing that in the next couple of days here. And like Joe said, it's kind of the Q4 playbook for digital advertising.
Joe Kim (27:55)
Yep, absolutely.
All right, thanks guys.