With billions of searches performed on Google every month, it really doesn’t make sense for advertisers to ignore the search engine giant and the power it wields in the marketplace. Fortunately, Google offers up a variety of advertising options for businesses looking to reach potential customers, and in 2017, it should only continue to refine those options, as well as add more.

Here are the top five Google AdWords trends and pay-per-click advertising predictions going into 2017:

• Mobile Is King – It is predicted that by 2020, over 6 billion smartphone users will be walking around on planet Earth. And in fact today, Google searches on mobile phones already account “for 53% of paid-search clicks.” It seems that many advertisers will eventually focus only on mobile devices and leave other devices behind for good. On the flip side, mobile phone screens are smaller than computer screens,
  meaning that there are fewer overall search results on a phone, giving even more reason to “pay to play,” as they say!

How You Can Get Ahead: Before running mobile ads for your site, make sure your site loads quickly on mobile devices, and offers users a great mobile experience.  

• More Personalized Ads – Google is always getting better and better at showing more custom, local results for searchers, and Google advertisers are never far behind. Lately, Google has been offering advanced personal targeting options that enable businesses to focus their AdWords budget on a smaller, but vastly more relevant set of customers, making ads extremely cost-effective.

How You Can Get Ahead: Set up “Conversion Tracking” in AdWords, so you can quickly discover which zip codes, keywords, ad copy, campaign settings, videos, or images are driving the most qualified traffic to your site.

• More Visual Ads – Advertisers are starting to get great results with both image and video ads. According to a study cited by Search Engine Journal, “consumers are 80% more likely to engage with content that has relevant images.” Other reasons to believe video ads are here to stay include the fact that they are comparatively cheaper than other ad types, and 69% of businesses already claim “their budget is shifting towards video marketing.”

How You Can Get Ahead: New to video advertising? Consider shooting a short, simple, 15 to 60-second YouTube video that is targeted to keywords you’re already bidding on and have built an audience around in AdWords.

• Google Shopping Ads – Did you know that “retailers spent 56% of their ad spend on Google Shopping” in 2016? Google Shopping ads, such as video ads, continue to offer more powerful local targeting, and for some big advertisers, may be necessary to run.

How You Can Get Ahead: Just getting started with Google Shopping? Take a moment to learn more about structured data, or “microdata,” website code that helps Google understand the product information on your website.  

• Bigger Ads– As of January 31st, 2017, Google started enforcing “expanded text ads.” Among other changes, PPC ads will now have two headlines (versus one), and will be mobile-optimized out the gate. Essentially, expanded text ads are now double the size of traditional text ads!

How You Can Get Ahead: Try out different versions of ad copy to see which messages catch people’s eye the most.   

If you don’t know where to start, consider getting help with your Google AdWords strategy today! Beyond Indigo Pets is a Certified Google Partner and offers PPC marketing for veterinarians who want to grow their practice online.