As Search and Social Converge Marketers Spy an Opportunity

As Search and Social Converge Marketers Spy an Opportunity
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The way people find information online is going through major disruption. For marketers, it’s also potentially very lucrative. Social platforms like TikTok and Instagram are introducing new ad formats to get in on the action long held by search giant Google.

Growth in U.S. ad spending on search is expected to slow in the next three years, according to a September 2022 Insider Intelligence report, as search faces more competition from other media, notably Amazon and retail media providers.

Meanwhile, users have been going to platforms other than Google to find information. As more of the media landscape is dominated by creators, and not just websites, people have been looking to TikTok and Instagram for information. A Google executive at a conference last year said that the company’s internal research shows that almost 40% of young people are using Instagram and TikTok as a search engine. And as ads have made useful links harder to find on Google, more people have been appending “Reddit” to their searches.

There’s likely to be similar ways that people are searching on Google or Instagram.

Liam Johnson, Brainlabs

This was all before the hype exploded around the potential of generative AI to replace the search experience with a chatbot.

Against this backdrop, Instagram and TikTok have been introducing new search ad formats. Last week, Instagram announced it was making ads that appear in search results more widely available. TikTok has been testing search ads as well, though has kept public announcements limited.

Neither platform allows for granular keyword targeting, as is common on Google, but rather match ads to relevant searches and users using AI. While currently the inventory available is too low and the product offering too unsophisticated to make search advertising on Instagram or TikTok a key piece of a brand’s media strategy, the intersection of social and search is an exciting opportunity for brands, five media buyers told Adweek.

The promise of search ads on social is not only about allowing advertisers to adapt to a changing media landscape. It also lies it capturing valuable intent signals, closer to the bottom of the funnel, that have previously been unavailable to marketers. That is, if the social platforms can master the trickiness of search advertising.

“As an advertiser, we are looking forward to Instagram search ads,” said Katya Constantine, CEO of DTC agency DigiShopGirl.  “On platforms like Google and Amazon, search ads tend to drive a more qualified and engaged user.”

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