As Search and Social Converge Marketers Spy an Opportunity

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. New USTA Ads Focus on Next Gen Players in a Post-Serena World 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.” The promise of social search Instagram, and to a growing extent TikTok, already excelled at performance marketing, where ad buying is linked to driving certain outcomes, such as sales. But with search advertising, brands can learn even more about what their customers want, at a time when cookie deprecation has made signals harder to come by. “Before ATT (App Tracking Transparency) and iOS 14, we had so many more signals,” said Natasha Blumenkron, senior director of paid social at Tinuiti. “By bringing the browsing signals back into their social platforms, we can better enhance what the user is receiving in terms of content.” While robust results from the product are still incoming, Ivonnie Dulce, senior director of paid social at agency Dysrupt, saw click-through rates were average to slightly above average on ads within search on Meta, compared to the brand's benchmark on the platform. As more apps converge features, from short-form video to search, the process of making marketing assets can be more streamlined and symbiotic, said Liam Johnson, senior account director at performance agency Brainlabs. Lego Campaign Shows What Happens When Girls Are Free to Play Anything “It poses a lot of interesting synergy with Google search because I think there’s likely to be pretty similar ways that people are searching on Google or Instagram,” Johnson said. “[There could be] a more holistic approach to copywriting where things are performing well.” The challenges of mastering search For all the promise search ads on social hold, not all marketers are keen to give social platforms full reign to match ads with relevant searches before more precise keyword targeting is available, especially when social platforms have had a mixed record on brand safety, said Amanda Grant, vp and global head of social at GroupM. Instagram is currently only showing ads for limited number of English search terms, selected with brand safety as a priority, a Meta spokesperson told Adweek. The artificial intelligence driving associations on Instagram and TikTok can already be spotty. Creators routinely outfit their videos with trending hashtags and sounds that have nothing to do with their content to juice views, something that may get even more messy when advertisers are in the mix. “It’s about making sure the ad experience feels very native,” Blumenkron said. “Keyword exclusion [needs to be in place] to make sure the advertiser isn’t going rogue and keyword stuffing,” which refers to advertisers using popular keywords that have nothing to do with their product to attract eyeballs to their sites. As Meta and TikTok work out these kinks, advertisers will still have to follow the eyeballs. “When we see younger audience [using] social platforms as a first place to search, it is a missed opportunity,” to not advertise on these new surfaces, Grant said.