Performance Marketing Trends to Look Out for in 2020!

Happy Crystal Ball Season!

Before we dive into my predictions for the year ahead (you can always skip ahead to the juicy part), it’s important to remember that the ultimate test of any prediction is how well it stands up to future scrutiny. And it has been a while since I last wrote a Predictions list, indeed the last time was in November 2017, predicting Trends in Paid Media in 2018. How did I do?

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/social-media-trends-look-out-2018-tristan-sanders/

Hm, not bad! To break it down by each prediction…

1) I’d say we have seen a move towards greater efficiency in the last couple of years, no doubt. The Paid Social suite of products on all the platforms has stabilised and the industry has matured to an extent. Having said that, I am still surprised at how simplistic a lot of campaigns still are. Most campaigns I’ve worked on in 2019 have been cold-targeting users via the platform’s native ad managers, targeting large clusters of users with ads. The tactics that I’ve seen employed, whilst not necessarily wrong in any way, haven’t really progressed in the last few years.

In conclusion: a mixed bag. I think what we’ve seen is “efficiency” move up the agenda of just about anyone doing Paid Social at scale, but not a whole lot of innovation going on.

2) As such, in terms of my prediction of “Paid Social accounts increasingly resembling PPC accounts”, it’s something that I was hoping for but haven’t really seen, in truth. Indeed, with Facebook’s Power 5 recommendations, the best-practices now represent the opposite to this approach (as outlined in my previous article). Whilst I don’t think this is correct, it means my prediction was, well… wrong!

3) I was right about my third one, however, though it can hardly have come as a shock. Video is now undoubtedly mobile-first and some of the creative I deal with reflects this nicely. But by no means all. Whilst advertisers are thinking more in terms of how video is served via Social Media advertising, the days of receiving video assets in letterbox format, edited primarily for TV or, at best, edited for Social as an afterthought have not yet fully gone.

This is why I have chosen my #1 trend for 2020 to be what it is.

TOP TRENDS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING IN 2020

1) Video to become mobile-first. Truly. This time.

That means advertisers thinking first in 1:1 or 1:2 when concepting their video content. Coming up with ideas that stand out in the feed, tailored to the channel, optimised for Sound Off in Facebook and Sound On for TicTok and…

…all the things that we’ve been told 200,000 times in the last five years. This is the primary way that just about ALL users consume content in 2019 and it’s still not being properly prioritised or acknowledged. The fixation with TV is still there and that’s reflected in the assets Social Media advertisers are still all-too-regularly having to handle.

Time for this to end. Please. This has to happen.

2) Looking beyond (the steadily declining) Facebook.

…but the other platforms need to help us out.

The drip-feed of bad news about Facebook doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon and the platform feels stale, dated and, well… have you seen it lately?

Me neither. More people will claim to try and “detox” from social media in 2020… I remain skeptical, however. I suspect many will just double-down to the ones they really like and, judging by the industry trends, that means Instagram and TicTok, with a bit of Twitter. If it’s B2B you’re after, LinkedIn still seems the place to be. Whatever, in 2020 it’s going to be heavily about diversifying platforms and going after the ones that work for you.

What this means to us advertisers is that it’s ever-more important to identify which channels are working best for our media and post-exposure KPIs quickly and then to really go for that channel — I’m talking about making it your primary driver of your bespoke creative output, the one that you invest your time and efforts in sweating and optimising.

3) To this end, in 2020 we’re going to have to really understand Stories.

45% of ad-spend in Instagram is already on Stories. More money is still being spent on Snapchat YoY. Which is fine… the formats are highly visual, there’s loads of flexibility there for some really creative ideas.

But anecdotally, I hear that the average dwell time for a Snap Ad is c.0.5 of a second.

If brands are trying to convey complex, video-based messages in a Promoted Story format… they generally don’t have a chance!

Nonetheless, it’s seems to be where the user base has increasingly headed to in 2019 and in 2020 brands are going to have to focus on how to stop those thumbs… or, frankly, make assessments as to whether these placements are really working for them. “Reach” in an of itself is meaningless with such short dwell times — a deep-dive is needed by every advertiser regularly using Story formats into the KPIs that matter: shifts in sentiment (brand-lift-type surveys offered by the platforms are a good place to start and a must for these campaigns) and the quality of any traffic being sent.

Finally, don’t be surprised if the platforms don’t innovate their formats somehow to ensure that happens, say a 1 second pause before a user can move on.

4) Longer-form content on Social TV will become more of a thing.

The social networks seem intent to continue in their quest to drive users into watching longer-form content on their platforms and, whilst I can find little concrete evidence of its success, anecdotally it seems to be a trend. Encroaching on TV-time is certainly not a play the platforms are going to be giving up on any time soon, and here there is ample evidence… users are spending less and less time watching broadcast TV. The market is only going one way, and in 2020 advertisers are going to have to watch this very carefully.

So if a move to more video viewing time on social platforms is to be one of the ongoing trends for 2020, what should social media advertisers be doing about it? Well, for one, if a product is new-to-market, requires technical explanation or just has potential for entertainment, then why not try combining this trend with Trend 1 and developing bespoke long-form content promoted by a paid-for campaign comprising of teaser, short-form edits?

Four Paid Social Trends for 2020!