From its earliest days more than 30 years ago, to its advertising dominance today, digital marketing has become a critical component to business growth across the globe. Today, digital makes up more than three-quarters of advertising spend in the U.S. dwarfing traditional media. And with AI’s plunge into the pool, the transformation of digital marketing is likely to reach tidal wave proportions in the coming decade. From advanced analytics that create more personalized customer experiences to automations that allow for unparalleled scalability, AI will be at the forefront in 2025 and far into the future. But it’s not the only component to effective performance marketing this year. To find out what’s around the bend, we asked a few of the experts who work behind the scenes at CloudControlMedia to weigh in.

What’s Happening in Social Media Advertising in 2025?

Benefiting from AI capabilities and bolstered by consumer expectations, social media advertising is more dynamic and personalized than ever. To compete effectively on social media platforms, you need to focus on the channels your audience uses most and send them messages that resonate with where they are in the sales cycle. As to the demise of social media giant TikTok, Paid Media Manager Kelsey McCreary says don’t count the channel out yet. Since the Supreme Court’s recent ruling upholding a TikTok ban and the more recent stay of execution promised by the incoming administration, there may be uncertainty around the platform, but Kelsey is watching closely.

“The future for TikTok may be murky,” says Kelsey, “but I have a feeling it won’t be going away completely.” And Kelsey suggests that marketers keep their eye on YouTube opportunities. As the second largest search engine in the world, YouTube is already an obvious choice for advertising. Even though Kelsey says many creators are exiting the platform to create their own outlets, YouTube is an important advertising channel. She warns, though, that YouTube needs to keep up.

“YouTube needs to continue to evolve,” says Kelsey. “It cannot stay stagnant or something else new and shiny is apt to swoop in and steal market share.”

PPC Search Advertising for 2025

Whether on YouTube, Google, or Bing, search should remain a critical component to your digital strategy. It allows you to reach an audience actively looking for what you offer. And even as the behemoth Google fights the Justice Department attempts to break up its monopoly, it still holds a market share of more than 90 percent. Google isn’t going anywhere in 2025 or 26 or 27. The engine continues to expand, evolve, and scales its use of AI.

According to Associate Director of Digital Media Larry Harrington, AI in search is a given this year. He expects that AI ad units will soon become more widely available and Larry suggests that organic AI overview results will soon be accompanied by ads.

“They might be designed as what else to consider, in addition to the SEO-based AI overview,” says Larry. “My guess is that targeting for these ads will be keyword based.”

As to Google search in general, we already know that the search engine does quite a bit to keep you from leaving the search engine –pulling information directly from websites so you never need to click to the website. Larry predicts even more of the same.

“Google’s own results will take up more space above the fold,” says Larry “with the search engine prioritizing ways to keep you from clicking off the search engine. Quality Score will matter more than ever in 2025 with advertisers not only vying against competitors, but also Google.

The Evolving SEO Landscape in 2025

One important way to improve Quality Score is to leverage search engine optimization. It’s not enough for your paid landing pages to be well-optimized; your entire online presence needs to send a consistent message of authenticity, quality, and relevancy.

With the cataclysmic changes to search algorithms in 2024, Director of SEO Joseph Colarusso says SEO is more important than ever. The SEO landscape is ever evolving and is expanding far beyond owned media properties.

“With users prioritizing social media platforms as search engines, businesses need to expand the way they think of SEO,” says Joseph. “It’s not enough to have an optimized site. You need to think of all the ways prospects might find you online—including places like YouTube and Reddit—and make sure your presence across the internet is optimized for search.”

Joseph notes that AI has also changed the way people conduct searches. Instead of relying solely on a search engine like Google, users may be having conversations with ChatGPT or Claude.

“Leveraging how people actually speak focusing on user intent and using long-tailed keywords will become increasingly valuable, especially considering how AI overviews show up in search,” says Joseph.

Cultivating Organic Social Media in 2025

Brand authenticity has always been at the foundation of a good internet presence, but its importance is critical in 2025. And active social media engagement is one way to stay relevant in front of the stakeholders you most want to attract. According to Director of Social Media Marcy Ansley, 2025 social media needs to be a multifaceted conversation. Organizations need to speak, engage, and above all listen.

“Brands that want to truly be successful with social media need to be listening to what’s going on – and not just in their own industry,” says Marcy. “Some of the most iconic social media brands aren’t necessarily creating trends but often they’re trend jacking; they’re tapping into trends and making them their own. Finding a creative way to make these movements their own can be hugely beneficial. And while doing it successfully can be a challenge, thankfully, there’s a new team member to help jumpstart those creative trend jacking: AI.  Artificial intelligence can help brainstorm campaigns, develop content, and so much more.”

There’s a lot to keep up with in performance marketing this year. Don’t have time? We do! Reach out to any one of the experts at CloudControlMedia or check out our services and find out where we can fill in the blanks on your team. Contact us today.

~Linda Emma leads the owned media team at CloudControlMedia

In a record-setting event, more than 1800 people attended the annual AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education held in Las Vegas this month. The 2024 conference provided attendees with knowledge and strategies from keynotes, sessions, panels, and workshops. There was also plenty of time to share coffee, drinks, and business cards. Most importantly, there were helpful insights gleaned from experts and peers alike:

5 AMA Key Takeaways about Higher Education Marketing

1. Is It Time to Rebrand Higher Education?

With the majority of Americans no longer believing that higher education is worth its big-ticket price tag, there was a lot of discussion at the AMA Symposium about how to better position the value of a degree. From keynote speakers to fireside chats, the message was the same: it is time to reshape public perceptions.

To that end, Utah’s Board of Higher Education launched an initiative to reeducate the public about the benefits of higher education. In their presentation, Amanda DeRito of Utah State University, Nikki Koontz of Southern Utah University, and Chris Nelson University of Utah shared their campaign to emphasize their institutions’ affordability, along with the individual ROI and overall economic impact of a college education.

2. How to Differentiate When Schools All Say the Same Thing

As difficult as it is for the sector to raise its brand, it can be even more challenging for individual schools to appear truly unique. The affordability factor that the Utah system raises is used by hundreds of schools. But so are claims of innovative programs, passionate faculty, state-of-the-art facilities, diversity and inclusion, vibrant campus life, and high job placement rates.

The dilemma isn’t easily solved but you can start from a foundation of authenticity. Sessions provided suggestions about how to do a photo shoot that makes your university look and feel uniquely yours and how to use current student stories so future students can picture themselves at your school. Keynote speaker Steve Robbins, Ph.D., emphasized the social-neuro science behind the critical need for inclusion—so make students feel like they belong. And Rohit Bhargava offered up five secrets to differentiate your higher ed brand:

1. Stand for something
2. Share the unexpected truth
3. Find workarounds
4. Embrace the conversation
5. Expand your audience

3. Students Crave Personalization in Marketing

It can’t come as a shock that kids who were told how special they are for a generation don’t feel very special when they’re targeted with generic messaging. Director of Content Strategy at the University of Rochester Brian Piper noted that less than 18 percent of students feel like messaging is personalized to them. And that’s a problem.

But there are plenty of solutions that can make students feel like they’re your top priority. Piper noted that it’s not just the message, but also the messenger that matters. Whether it’s an email or text reminder, your communication with students should be personalized to them and coming from an actual person. And all of your content should be relatable, conversational, and written in the second person.

4. Artificial Intelligence for Higher Education is Here to Stay

Although AI no longer headlines the news every day, it remains at the forefront of higher education marketing. Sessions delved into how AI can enhance personalization, streamline operations, and improve student engagement. Whether you use AI tools to help bid and optimize digital campaigns, create outlines and personas, or repurpose, retarget, and redistribute content, it’s no longer a nice-to-have. You need to use AI or you will lose out to the competitor institutions that do.

5. Using Digital Marketing Data to Compete for Online Students

Saving the best for last: CloudControlMedia General Manager Christopher Roberts and long-time CCM partner Steven Rutt from Abilene Christian University Online provided more than 100 AMA attendees with a well-defined roadmap to attract and enroll online students using data. Highlighting the success the partnership has achieved for ACU Online—more than 20% year-over-year growth for three consecutive years—Chris and Steven shared actual data and the methodology that has fueled those double-digit enrollment increases.

Among the points the pair stressed were the need to:

• Allow the agency to be an extension of your institution’s marketing team
• Set achievable enrollment goals ​
• Translate goals into detailed plans ​​
• Build effective and efficient digital media strategies​
• ​Test, adjust, and improve digital media for ongoing success​

“It absolutely is a partnership,” said Chris. “Steven and his team are savvy about the data and how the process works. The results we achieve are due in large part to the partnership we have.”

What seemed to resonate most with the audience was the detail of the data ACU Online and CCM rely on to make decisions. Using a feedback loop generated through the CloudControlMedia Platform and connected directly to the ACU Online CRM, the two teams use down-funnel data to make media-buying decisions that have the potential to yield the best results. Equally important, they can continually test and adjust plans and campaigns.

Are you looking for a digital marketing partner that can drive growth? CloudControlMedia is a performance marketing agency maximizing results for our clients. And the great example we shared at the AMA conference? We’re happy to share it with you. Contact us today to sign up for our upcoming whitepaper.

Google has cancelled its plans for a blanket removal of third-party cookies. Again. Although the search giant promised to phase out cookies back in 2020 and has given users three deadlines for deprecation, it’s now opting out. According to Privacy Sandbox VP Anthony Chavez, the company has chosen “an updated approach that elevates user choice. Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time.” This new approach will be similar to what Apple offered three years back that had apps ask whether or not they could track you. The new policy would affect all chrome users.

What Are 3rd Party Cookies?

Cookies are snippets of data placed on your browser when you visit websites. They allow various things to happen: experiencing faster loading the next time you visit, keeping you logged in, and allowing advertisers to better tailor ads to you. They can also track your behavior across the internet. Unfortunately, this is where some companies have abused cookies and run afoul of privacy regulations. Some companies, such as Apple, have already removed 3rd-party cookies, mostly because advertising only makes up a small percentage of its business. But for Google, which very much relies on advertising and cookies, stepping away from them has not been so easy. And since they haven’t found a solution that satisfies its business goals and its advertisers, it’s keeping 3rd party cookies. 

What Is the Privacy Sandbox?

Launched by Google in 2019, the Privacy Sandbox is an initiative to find a way to evolve the internet to be less intrusive when it comes to privacy without removing many of the features that both users and advertisers are used to. The main goals of the Privacy Sandbox are to phase out third party cookies and to reduce tracking across multiple apps or websites. This would mean that all current infrastructure that the internet is built on would need to change. Google and other platforms have been rolling out the tools to move in this direction, but not everything has been updated so easily. The cookie and pixel firing that that the internet is built on has led to some businesses not being able to pivot so easily.

Why Did Google Change Its Mind?

One of the major drivers of this change in course is that offerings such as display, demand gen, and Performance max were having a harder time tracking without cookies and a new solution had not yet materialized. This meant that Google would lose more than it stood to gain with this switch as these new products had been heavily pushed as the wave of the future. 

While Google’s halt to cookie deprecation means that there will not be a mass removal of cookie tracking, it does not mean that there will be no changes. Like with Apple devices, tracking will be harder when relying solely on cookies. The privacy sandbox will still continue to grow, and marketers will need to respond.

As a result of Google’s decision, the impending cliff of cookieless tracking has been avoided but that does not mean new enhanced conversion tools are without use. Those who select not to be tracked will no longer count in conversion totals and Apple devices still offer their own struggles. Enhanced conversions through Google and similar offerings from others remain an important step in ensuring that conversion data in platforms are as accurate as possible. All of the machine learning that goes into google campaigns these days rely on that data to know what is and isn’t working.

Are There Alternatives to 3rd Party Cookies?

As privacy continues to be a paramount concern to users on the internet, we can only expect more updates to block cookies and make tracking an ongoing challenge for marketers. So, a quality tracking setup that uses cutting-edge tracking options remains important. Getting campaigns as much accurate data as possible can make all the difference in the results of marketing efforts. 

CloudControlMedia is working diligently to stay ahead of the ever-changing shifts in cookieless tracking to ensure we continue to drive the most effective results for our clients. Are you getting all you can from your search campaigns? Contact CloudControlMedia today and we’ll let you know. 

Larry Harrington, Director of Paid Media Strategy

Whether you’re partial to chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin, Girl Scout or Keebler, the thought of a world without cookies may be terrifying. Oh wait, that’s not the kind of cookies that are crumbling. Rather, it’s those snippets of code that get placed on your browser when you land on a website. Once at the very foundation of digital advertisers’ targeting strategies, the use of third-party cookies has been in decline for years due to privacy concerns. And now that Google has joined the trend, you need to prepare for their full demise.

What Are 3rd Party Cookies?

First-party cookies are set by an individual website—the one you visit. Second-party cookies are not common but are used in data-sharing agreements, where a website you visit has a specific data collection partnership with another entity. And third-party cookies are set by a server other than the one you access. In practice, that means when you go to a favorite brand’s website, it first uses first-party cookies to optimize your experience there. It may save your contact info, login, credit card info, and even your product selection and buying preferences. That website may also allow third-party cookies. Through an arrangement with outside advertisers, these cookies can track your browsing across other websites.

Advertisers will tell you third-party cookies allow them to provide you with an optimized user experience and personalized ad content; they serve you ads for products and services you most likely want to see. What advertisers may not tell you is that third-party cookies have been the lifeblood of what they have done almost since the dawn of digital marketing. Third-party cookies and the targeting and personalization they build help increase engagement, conversions, and sales. What they deem good for you is even better for them.

Why Are 3rd Party Cookies Going Away?

Driven by privacy concerns and legislation like Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act, browsers have been phasing out the use of third-party cookies for years. Apple blocked their use in 2020, but Google and its stranglehold on search was more reluctant. It delayed plans for the phaseout twice before hitting the go button this year. In January 2024, it began the deprecation beta for 1 percent of its Chrome users (if you were part of the test, you would have been notified). If that sounds like a miniscule effort, consider that the behemoth holds 65 percent of search and that one percentage represents 30 million users. And Google promises that the full deprecation will be complete by Q3 of this year.

What Will Digital Marketers Do Without Cookies?

If you advertise online, you use third-party cookies. And if they’re going away, you need to plan a new way of doing business. Now. Particularly with programmatic advertising that relies heavily on those third-party cookies, if you do not prepare, you could face a swift loss of inquiries and income.

But there are ways to target users, customize content, and produce solid leads and results without third- party cookies. Consider how you can best transition away from third-party cookies:

Leverage 1st Party Cookies

It was no accident that Google rolled out GA4 before it began phasing out third-party cookies. GA4 uses first-party cookies, and its new events and parameter metrics allow you to pull granular insights from your website that help you get to know your users really well. In this way, first-party cookies can be a win-win. They give users who visit your website the best experience possible. The data you save on individuals help you build stronger relationships, serve customized content, and deliver better customer service.

You can also use first-party cookies to track user interactions and behaviors on your website to create profiles of user preferences, interests, and actions. Those profiles can then be used to segment your audiences, hyper customize your content, and serve ads where your customers are most likely to roam on the internet. Personalized ads enhance the user experience, improve engagement, and increase conversions.

Another way to use first-party data is through contextual advertising. Among the most obvious contextual platforms are Google Ads. Your ads target specific keywords that match user intent. So, if you know your most likely customers love red hats and red shoes, when you bring on a new product line of red belts, you should definitely highlight those red belts in your ads. Users search, your keywords are right there, and voila! Search reveals the red belt nirvana they’ve been looking for.

Don’t Forget AI

You use AI alllllllllll the time. If you think you don’t, you’re not paying attention. It’s time to go all in on its exponential potential for digital marketing. Just a few ways AI can fill in the gaps for what you think you might lose without third-party cookies:

• AI Search Algorithms
  • AI-powered search algorithms can help understand the intent behind user searches and deliver relevant ads based on the context of the search query. This helps you align better with user intent without tracking individual user journeys.
• Predictive Analytics
  • Imagine if you could take all the historical data you have hidden away in CRMs, campaigns, and old-fashioned Excel spreadsheets and turn them into futuristic insights. AI can create predictive models for user behavior that help you detect patterns and trends that will help you target, personalize, and engage users without the use of third-party cookies.
• AI Lead Scoring
  • AI-driven lead scoring models can identify your best prospects by analyzing buying signals such as website visits, content engagement, and historical data. Once analyzed, the model can assign scores so your sales team works the leads most likely to convert. AI models also continuously learn and adapt, improving over time.

What About Zero-Party Data?

Zero-party data are willingly shared with you directly from the consumer. There’s no need for cookies because you simply ask your users for information. Examples of zero-party data include:

1. Settings

By simply setting up an account with you, users share important data. Their name, contact information and location are only the start.

2. Survey Responses

By gathering user feedback about product preferences, insights, and expectations, you can better customize how you interact with users—and even how you build your offerings and run your organization.

3. User-Generated Content

When users contribute reviews, ratings, and comments, it’s considered zero-party data—even if it does not occur on your site.

4. Interactive Content

Information you acquire through quizzes, polls, and games is zero-party data. When users willingly engage and provide information about themselves, it’s a treasure trove of data that you can use to segment lists, refine messaging, and personalize the content you send to them.

5. Customizations

You likely ask questions of users all the time. How do they prefer to receive communications from you? How often? Do they want to subscribe to your newsletter? What topics interest them?

What To Do Right Now About the Demise of 3rd Party Cookies

Digital marketing moves quickly and lots of businesses, advertisers, and agencies miss the train. Unlike Google’s daily algorithm updates that can wreak havoc on organic traffic and results and for which you receive exactly zero notification, you’ve been given fair notice about this whole third-party deprecation whatchamacallit. The Google gods have spoken. Ignore them at your peril. It’s time to develop pristine first-party data so you’re ready when third-party data disappears. Not sure how to start? Contact the experts at CloudControlMedia. We set our clients up for success long before the first rumblings of third-party deprecation. Contact us today.

Linda Emma is head of marketing at CloudControlMedia. With more than two decades experience in digital marketing, she helps clients tell their unique stories while driving performance metrics that translate to results.