MGM Resorts is testing search on Pinterest and TikTok, a very different performance experience versus traditional media such as Google and Bing. 

Scott McCrary, director of marketing at MGM Resorts, says it’s almost impossible to compare the two types of search, during an interview at the latest MediaPost Performance Marketing Insider Summit.

“We started with brand and non-brand terms, taking them from Google and Bing, putting them into TikTok, and it’s just a different type of search,” he said.

“Normal” search from Google and Bing performs so much better, he said — not by a foot, but “by a mile.”

The biggest challenge became having to reevaluate each campaign depending on the platform it ran on.

Social search reaches a different audience compared with Google or Bing, and TikTok enables brands to advertise in a different way — for example, through video. “There will be a value there, we just need to find it because you can be so much more creative,” he said.

The latest version of artificial intelligence has begun to have a major impact on the way advertisers advertise. That will only explode in 2025.

When asked where he’s finds challenges with search programs, McCrary said it’s “business as usual” until he starts to see cost per clicks rise or get to a level he cannot afford or Gemini starts to push out ads and makes first position bidding not worth it.

Return on ad spend (ROAS) is “creeping down,” but being in the Las Vegas market can become really “noisy,” because online travel agencies get aggressive and competitive.

He said it would be difficult to get others on the team and leadership to move away from search because it’s very trackable. And that the lead time for someone to decide to come to Las Vegas could be anywhere from seven to 30 days. It’s too easy to track someone who clicks on a link and then fully attribute it through the company’s platform.

Jonathan Kagan, director of search and digital media strategy, at Amsive, a full-service marketing agency, joined McCrary in a panel discussion moderated by Doug Parks, director of event programming at MediaPost.

Parks asked McCrary and Kagan to describe tactics they plan to stop using in 2025.  

McCrary pointed to exact match types, and full broad match will likely take its place. 

Kagan plans to leave phrase match types for broad match. The concept of keyword bids will likely disappear by 2027, he said, and bids will break down by keywords and signals.  

“We started preparing for [the transition] about three or four years ago,” Kagan said.

And what does Kagan expect to use more often in 2025? Google Performance Max, he said — although challenges remain.

“We’re almost four years in and it’s still a black box,” Kagan said. “Google keeps rolling out new enhancements to it, which are almost meeting the bare minimum standards that they should have done on day one.”

In the year ahead, voice strategies and search will become more useful. Kagan said he piloted Google Voice search in 2016. Since then, he has focused more on audio ads rather than voice search.

“We go to YouTube to stream audio ads in programmatic,” he said. “People are not asking ‘what are the cheapest shoes near me?’ They are looking to hear that ad.”

What happens to search in the next three to five years? “Search volume barely changes and all the ruckus about going over to AI chat tools is wrong,” McCrary said, speaking from his gut.