Digital Marketing Update April 2025

A lot has been happening in digital marketing in April. With a lot of you head deep in budgeting for the new financial year, let’s start this month’s digital marketing update with some of the latest changes in digital advertising:

Advertising Marketing Update

Google’s CPC

Google’s CPC (cost per click) rates have been increasing by 4-5% each year. This means that in addition to focussing on efficiency, you’ll likely  need to increase your budget just to maintain current performance levels.

Tik Tok’s CPM rates

New data from Q1 2025 revealed that whilst Meta’s CPM (cost per thousand impressions) rates continued to rise, Tik Tok’s CPM rates have dropped significantly. An opportunity worth exploring, particularly if you want to target Gen Z.

Google partner with Roblox

A further consideration for those targeting Gen Z is rewarded video ads – offered by Google through their new partnership with Roblox. (Meet your audiences where they are).

Threads Ads

Meta have rolled out ads on Threads (no surprises there).

Meta recruit AI focussed roles

Meta have added 600 new roles focussed on AI. What does this tell us? If you’re using meta ads, you need to at least be experimenting with their automated campaigns such as Advantage+. Meta’s going all in on machine learning and their advertising platforms are fast becoming less about targeting and more about predicting intent. Use the features they’re recommending for best results.

Apple Ads

Apple’s search ads have been rebranded. They’re now called Apple Ads. Could this signal the start of something bigger? Ads on maps or podcasts perhaps. Seems likely.

Search Marketing Update

Google’s monopoly

Moving onto search, Google have been all over the news again – facing a £6.6billion lawsuit over search dominance in the UK. With the US quick to follow – the US Department for Justice is also targeting Google for its monopoly over search. Outcomes from both of these cases have the potential to significantly impact the search landscape.

Google CTRs hit an all-time low

Talking of the search landscape, never have we seen greater shifts than in recent months. Google CTRs hit an all time low (just 37.6% of Google searches in March resulted in a click) thanks to AI generated summaries and zero-click SERPs. (Google maintain that AI summaries lead to higher quality clicks even if volumes are reduced). If traffic is still your aim, you need to focus on long-tail queries that avoid rich snippets. And if you want to become part of the AI summary game, use structured data to enhance your preview.

YouTube test AI overviews

Unsuprisingly YouTube are also testing AI generated overviews.

Social Media Marketing Update

Tik Tok’s Creator Academy

In social, Tik Tok have introduced the Creator Academy. This will help influencers with an understanding of marketing foundations. And if you’re a brand working with influencers, partnering with creator academy grads should give you confidence that they’ll produce compliant, high converting content. Time will tell but looks like a great move from Tik Tok. (Though, I suspect grads will charge higher rates).

Instagram launch Edits

More good news for creators as Instagram launched their own video editing app, aptly named, ‘Edits‘. Probably worth a look even for the CapCut fans.

So there you have it – a whistle-stop tour of digital marketing updates from April 2025.

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