Google Marketing Live 2022: Key Product Updates You Need to Try Now
At this year’s Marketing Live, Google announced a string of additions to its ad platform. Here are 10 core updates that marketers can harness to drive more revenue.
Making visual ads immersive for searchers
Video Ads on YouTube Shorts
Online video watch time has increased by 34% YoY, with YouTube Shorts averaging over 30 billion daily views as per Google’s analysis.
The staggering bump in engagement compelled Ads teams to launch two new ad types.
Advertisers will be able to run ads for Video Action and App campaigns on YouTube Shorts. In the coming months, YouTube Shorts will also display product feeds, helping advertisers reach customers in a more interactive format.
Google will periodically update video ad platforms to make them more accessible for marketing teams across the globe.
Video Ads in Google Discover
Currently, Google is testing video ads in Discover, where users would have a more visual way to explore ideas and inspiration.
Knowing that Discover offers a more personalized experience for users based on past search activity, launching ads on this platform can enable your audience to connect with your brand in a more intuitive way.
Transparency in automation
Updates in Performance Max Campaigns
AI-driven advertising is the future as Google’s machine learning algorithms have improved over 50% in their understanding of human language.
User needs are evolving at a dizzying speed, and the technology we use to advertise needs to catch up to match user intent.
The launch of Performance Max campaigns in November 2021 has enabled advertisers to advertise across channels and formats with one single campaign. This campaign type may not drive results for every marketer and the industries they serve, so we encourage you to experiment with it before re-structuring your ad account.
According to Google, the broad match and Performance Max’s capabilities have helped advertisers drive 13% more incremental conversions at a similar CPA (cost per acquisition).
Here are improvements expected to roll out under Performance Max campaigns later this year.
- Experiment tools: When you pair your existing campaigns with Performance Max, you can run A/B tests to see incremental uplifts in conversions from each campaign. This campaign type is yet in Beta for those campaigns that have a product feed and will be launched through the rest of the year.
2. Advanced campaign support: Google will roll out extended campaign management support across Google 360 and Google Mobile App.
3. Optimize for sales goals: Advertisers can leverage in-store goals by optimizing campaign goals to drive more visits, sales, and other local-hosted conversion actions. You can also leverage burst campaigns to draw more in-store sales during seasonal spikes in product demand.
4. Optimization recommendations: Google will provide further guidance on improving your campaign optimization scores. Recommendations will come from a combination of your campaign set-up and external driving factors, such as search demand and volume for your product-based keywords.
Improving campaign performance using Insights
Insights empower you to make decisions that drive sustainable revenue growth against your campaign goals. Due to seasonal changes and fluctuating trends, it’s been challenging to unpack how insights you’re shown translate to specific action items toward your campaign goals.
More explanations: Instead of having to cross-reference data across different tools, the Insights tab will provide you with more transparent information about why performance changed within the Google Ads dashboard itself. This enables advertisers to speed up decision-making at the campaign level.
Personalized trend data: Google has an index of more than 50 trillion pages (which is still a conservative estimate). Due to the millions of searches conducted every day, Google is able to identify multiple signals across ad auctions that can help advertisers better optimize the performance of their campaigns. As part of this rollout, Google will provide the following data points over the coming months:
- Attribution: The path taken by users to convert from visitors into paying customers is called a conversion path. Currently, this feature is available in Google Analytics, but now an identical feature will be available in Insights. Conversion attribution will show advertisers what drove conversions across campaigns.
- Budget: This feature will recommend ways you can optimize your budget based on how your ad spends are pacing against campaign goals.
- First-party data: These insights will help advertisers understand which customer segments are driving results while respecting consumer privacy.
More browsable and interactive shopping experience
Merchant Checkouts
With direct checkouts now enabled from Product Listings, shoppers can buy on the advertiser’s site upon clicking through the ad-promoted product. Google is currently hosting a closed pilot since user interaction with the advertiser’s site can be limited upon buying directly from the listing. Once the feature is made available for more general purposes, it will be expanded to more retail partners.
Swipeable Shopping Ads
Browsing time has blended with shopping time. Google will display Shopping ads alongside organic results for users to view products in greater detail and to have a more engaging buying experience. Shoppers will also be able to view products in 3D models right in the search results.
Shopping Feed Updates in Google Ads
As the consumer experience becomes more blended, Google will roll out shopping feeds in YouTube Shorts and Search for retailers to see how their video-led shopping ads perform on these channels. You can now optimize based on gaps in your ads, such as insufficient bidding, incomplete targeting information, and more such insights.
Enhancements to Responsive Ads
Automation in Responsive Search Ads
In the coming months, Google will be able to pull content from landing pages in your campaigns, specifically high-performing assets, to optimize for your customer’s unique search journey.
Since customers need direct and fast support to questions they may have about your products, Google is testing a feature where they can message your business from your search ad. This functionality will move into beta by this year-end.
Mobile-First Responsive Display Ads
To display your ads at scale, Google will enable you to show visual and video ads on full-screen vertical ad formats. Based on a retailer’s shopping inventory, Google will introduce scrollable image and video ads for the most engaging shopping experience.
Build Ad Assets with Asset Library
The Ad Library will function as a collaborating tool for advertisers to import, organize, and curate ad assets using a variety of templates in both image and video. This library can be integrated with your organization’s Google Drive for ease of access. Each individual asset also comes with insights on how your audience has responded to your messaging.
Measuring the impact of your campaigns
Search and Conversion Lift Tests
Later this year, Google will activate conversion experiments in Google Ads, Display, and Video 360 including geo experiments where you can test increments in conversions against key goals of your campaigns.
With the geo-experiment functionality, advertisers can compare regions where their ads are shown as compared to where they aren’t being shown. The Ads team will make it easier to run conversion lift and geo-experiments to ensure your existing campaigns aren’t compromised, in addition to safely running these experiments.
Privacy Sandbox
According to Google’s VP of Ads, Jerry Dischler, 65% of the world’s population will be covered under modern privacy laws by 2023. You need tools to build resilience for this future.
Within the advertising industry, there’s a growing need to re-evaluate Ad platforms to include privacy-safe options. As a result of this initiative, Google is advancing to a more privacy-safe ad environment where testing will begin for interest-based advertising and remarketing ads, incorporating user signals from Google’s Privacy Sandbox APIs.
Google shares that it will be possible to model buying journeys even when users opt against sharing personal data, such as turning off cookies and certain ads based on relevance. You will also be able to combine first-party data with automation while respecting user privacy across all ad platforms.
My Ad Centre
Later this year, users can opt to see ads for categories and brands they’re interested in while opting out of those they don’t wish to engage with. This puts users in control of how their data informs the ads they see across YouTube, Search, and Display channels.
Reporting with Google Analytics 4
With the rollout of GA4 officially slated to complete next year, many advertisers are migrating to the new Analytics dashboard for a more connected experience across ad platforms. You can see how your visitors interact with your brand across multiple touchpoints to further optimize your conversion points.
Streamlined Lead Generation and Reporting
Google has expanded to more browser types and model types to provide advertisers with a fuller view of customer buying journeys. Customer information is protected by a matching process that does not share sensitive information with third parties, the publisher, or the advertiser, including Google. Additionally, Google will also roll out an offline conversion import feature, where you can ensure a privacy-safe data import to measure your campaign performance against leads. This will significantly help you improve your conversion measurement.
Advertisers will also have the option to integrate enhanced conversions with CRM platforms, such as HubSpot, Zapier, mParticle, Segment, Tealium, and others. This will allow you to view at what point in the customer journey visitors are converting. The following chart shows a lead funnel report that will become available later in the year, where you can view lead performance in more granularity.
Simplifying Tag Management
Proper tagging is essential to user privacy and the accurate measurement of conversion actions through products like Consent Mode. The goal is to implement consistent tagging across Google Analytics and Google Ads, where the new Google tag will replace the existing global site tag. This will allow advertisers to control settings centrally without worrying about embedding additional code.
What to expect in a few months
Dozens of updates are anticipated to go live in the coming months as Google solidifies the utility and value of the functionality still in Beta versions. Here’s a recap of what’s already active and what’s upcoming in Google Search 360 channels.
Active now:
- Conversion-modeling updates
- Data-driven attribution as default
- On-device conversion measurement
- Ad Asset Library
- GA4 Home Experience
- Immersive shopping ads
- Visual product feed
- AR in Search
- Performance Max
Upcoming:
- My Ad Centre
- Privacy-safe advertising
- Google tag
- More support for enhanced conversions
- Lead funnel report
- Automatically-created responsive search and display ads
- Google Business Messages
- Insights page
- Attribution insights
- Budget insights
- First-party audience insights
- Optimization scores for all campaign types
- YouTube Shorts ads
- Discovery video ads
- Google audiences on ad-supported TV apps
- Search lift tests
- Conversion lift tests
- Visual ad experiences
- YouTube Shorts and Search – Product Feeds
- Store sales in Performance Max
- Merchant Checkout
- Product improvements in Google Ads
Looking to drive measurable results with digital advertising? Call us today
Is it time to level up the performance of your ad campaigns? We’d love to help with your ideas or project. Contact us today for a free consultation.