• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, May 5, 2022

Marketers are buying into automation, according to a study published by PPCsurvey.com. The State of PPC Global Report 2022 highlights findings from more than 500 paid per click (PPC) specialists from agencies and brands worldwide. It highlights ad adoption and spend, priorities and technology, agencies, in-house teams, and more.

The study was fielded between October and December 2021. About 540 people participated in the online survey. Incentives were offered to complete the survey. Two-thirds of respondents came from EMEA, and one in four were from North America.

When asked “What part of your work is most satisfying?” 62% of the 461 participants who answered this question cited results, 8% cited strategy, 8% said analysis, 5% said relationship, %5 cited innovation and experimentation, 4% cited optimization, 4% said onboarding, and 3% said consultancy. The remainder included coaching, creativity, and reporting.

Those participating in the study showed a high adoption rate for automation in Google ads. Some 97% of respondents use Responsive Search Ads, 95% have implemented Smart Bidding by targeted CPA, 91% have implemented the Recommendations tab, 83% cited Smart bidding by target ROAS, 83% cited The Insights tab, rounding out the top five.

The bottom four include 65% for Smart Shopping, 63% for Discovery campaigns, 51% for Local campaigns, and 37% for App campaigns.

The top 5 automations specialists are most satisfied with:

Scripts -- 82%

tCPA Smart Bidding -- 82%

tROAS Smart Bidding -- 80%

Smart Shopping -- 78%

Data-driven attribution -- 76%

Responsive search ads -- 71%

Surprisingly, 17% of participants aren’t using any project or task management software in their work. With all the tasks and projects that come with running PPC campaigns, they are still likely to keep track in a spreadsheet.

The top five are:

Google Data Studio 69%

Excel 44%

Supermetrics 23%

Swydo 6%

AgencyAnalytics 4%

The data also reports on advertising revenue for 2020 and 2021 for the main ad networks. Most companies’ yearly growth in ad revenue was more than usual, largely due to the pandemic and the boom in online shopping.

Google, of course, ranked highest with 43% growth to $209.5 billion in 2021, according to the report. Google search & other ranked No. 2 with 43% growth to $149 billion in 2021. Google network grew 37% to $31.7 billion, and YouTube Ads came No. 4 with 43% growth at $28.8 billion.

Facebook and Instagram combined grew 37% to $114.9 billion, and Amazon grew 58% to $31.2 billion, Microsoft Search grew 10% to $8.5 billion, and Twitter grew 41% to $4.5 billion.