Paid media predictions for 2023

Tom Reynolds, Senior Paid Media Executive

2023 will see brands facing growing CPAs – some brands will be bringing paid media in-house without the necessary expertise, some will face an increase in exposure to irrelevant, or low commercial intent queries due to an over-exposure to machine learning. This will obviously reduce conversion rates and increase the cost of leads and conversions and could possibly reduce trust in paid media in general. Brands will need to ensure they can trust their providers to be on top of developments to keep costs low and returns high.

Will Dixon, Head of Paid Media

Google Search has been the main target for ad spend for more than a decade and although this is unlikely to change, 2023 could see brands shifting an increasing amount of their budget to other channels and platforms. Between economic anxieties, the growing offering of Microsoft and challenger search engines and general dissatisfaction with some Google changes, brands will be looking to get the most for their ad-spend and this might see them looking away from the main platform to get it.

It’s also likely to be another big year for Performance Max which has grown massively over the last 6 months (specifically since Shopping transitioned to Pmax only). Brands will need to focus on the following to take full advantage:

• Asset Group segmentation to provide the most specific assets for your products to perform.
• Use available third-party reporting to try and understand what’s driving performance and to discover if focus needs to be on video assets or imagery.
• Work on margin-level segmentation where possible and build a feed which can dynamically provide these margin categories.