Google’s AI Search Shift: The Current State of SEM
Diversifying Beyond Google and Meta
AUTHOR:
Ally Duffey Cubilette
At Capacity, we understand that resources—like time, money, and staff—are limited. When managing paid advertising for our clients, our media plans focus on channels that will best serve your strategic needs and are most likely to meet your audience where they spend time.
For years, that meant investing first and foremost in Google and Meta, and while those channels are still an essential investment, usership among other platforms is growing—which means evaluating your channels strategically is critical for meeting your marketing goals in 2024.
A Lay of the Digital Land
Don’t get me wrong: Google and Meta are still the powerhouses of marketing arts and culture. Focusing on Google and Meta channels has long ensured our campaigns have the reach and scale to make an impact and allowed our clients to focus on creating the most compelling content for those specific channels.
Unpacking Meta’s Dominance
For the last decade, Facebook and Instagram have been by far the most used social media platforms in the U.S. and the most common among arts ticket buyers. Meta allowed us to efficiently reach potential audiences where they are spending the most time.
Social platforms provided unique opportunities to reach new or less familiar audiences with impactful visuals and creative flexibility. As opposed to a print ad or OOH placement, we can vary our messaging, test, and respond in real-time to performance. Granular targeting ensures we aren’t just shouting into the void, but instead focusing our investment on likely buyers.
A Closer Look at Google
Google has also allowed us to efficiently reach users, wherever they are on the internet, with a variety of ad types from the Google Search Engine to YouTube to the Google Display Network. The Google Grant and paid Google Search give us visibility on the most common search engine: Google has 85-90% of the search engine market share in the US, according to Statcounter. YouTube’s monthly active users are surpassed only by Facebook, as seen above. Finally, the Google Display Network reaches over 90% of internet users and allows us to efficiently reach audiences as they browse over 200 million apps and websites. Across placements, Google remains a significant and powerful channel.
When to Expand Beyond Google and Meta
There is still an extremely strong case for investing in Google and Meta first. But media usage has been shifting in recent years, from the rise of TikTok to the proliferation of ad-supported streaming services. It feels like we have entered a 2.0 phase of digital advertising.
Beyond shifts in where users are spending their time, a greater focus on digital privacy and increasing regulation has led to the deprecation of third-party cookies across many browsers. (Update: on July 22, 2024, Google reversed its decision to deprecate third-party cookies. Here’s the latest guidance from CI on this change.) Starting with the iOS14 update in 2021, Apple has rolled out changes for iOS users that can limit advertisers’ ability to measure behavior across apps and websites. Over the next few years, these developments will fundamentally change how we reach our target audience, where we reach them, and how to measure the impact of that digital investment.
This is what we are thinking about now and for the future:
Consider budget.
With smaller budgets, you still need to be more selective about the number of channels you can invest in. Remember, people have to see an ad about 6 times to read and recognize it. Distributing a smaller budget across too many channels can mean you won’t reach a meaningful level of repetition to make an impact.
Consider assets.
Where you place your ads will also depend on the kind of assets you have available. Video and vertical video are necessary for advertising on streaming video, YouTube and TikTok.
Select channels strategically.
Select channels that align with your goals and objectives. This can help guide smaller budgets. Do you have programming that will resonate with a younger audience? Consider TikTok and Instagram first. Are you promoting a professional development initiative? Consider LinkedIn. But given where TikTok now stands in the average American’s daily life and its projected growth, organizations with larger budgets should begin allocating towards advertising on TikTok. 33% of US adults now say they have used TikTok—that’s up 12 points from 21% in 2021. Across industries in the U.S., TikTok now accounts for ~12% of social media ad spending.
Look to digital alternatives to traditional media.
Compared to traditional radio, digital radio reaches a younger demographic; and compared to YouTube/Display, digital radio also offers longer (30 seconds), unskippable impressions. 2023 was the first year that cord-cutting households in the U.S. outnumbered paid broadcast and cable TV households. While linear TV still accounts for a larger share of advertisers’ investment, the budget allocated to connected TV (CTV) and streaming is growing. The most popular streaming platform: YouTube! Over 80% of US adults say they have watched content on YouTube, making it a great place to start to experiment with additional video placements.
As user behavior shifts, digital radio and CTV can offer an opportunity to meet audiences where they are spending time. Beyond that, digital platforms offer more levers for targeting based on context or other user behavior. While measuring conversions and direct ROI for these placements is limited, typically more data are available than you would expect with a traditional linear buy. And who wouldn’t want better targeting and more data?!
Embrace experimentation.
At CI, we are always looking to data to inform our recommendations—and the data shows it’s time to start experimenting. For your organization, that may mean reallocating some social budget to TikTok, where we know so many Americans are now spending hours scrolling, or reallocating some linear TV buys to streaming video.
Strategic Media Plans FTW
Media plans are both an art and a science. We are always balancing where our audience is most likely to be, where we want our brand to appear, and how to most efficiently drive awareness and sales. There’s a lot we could do with all the money, but limited resources mean we have to consider our investment more carefully. And isn’t that part of what makes our work more interesting?
Dive Deeper with Diversification
CI’s VP, Managing Director Christopher Williams, Senior Consultant Molly Garber, and I explored this topic in a CI Deep Dive conversation on March 13—sign up to watch on-demand below.
Looking for a Marketing Partner in 2024?
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