Keywords are the future for search advertising

Whenever you search on Google for something you're thinking about buying, you're using a selection of keywords and signalling your intent to make a purchase. If you search for "brown shoes" and adverts appear in your search results suggesting where to get brown shoes, you've experienced "search retargeting", a technique that brands are combining with artificial intelligence (AI) to figure out what makes consumers tick. By mapping and analysing the keywords that consumers use in their search queries, brands can learn more about what people actually want to buy. "Keywords are a great signal of intent," says Carl White, co-founder of Nano Interactive, which provides search targeting technology to brands. "With the developments of AI techniques, you can feel out what people are really searching for. And you can make strong assumptions about what their intent is based on the kind of combination of keywords."