Unsurprisingly, AI took center stage during various announcements at Google Marketing Live 2024 today.
Updates also focused on creative, data and delivering what the consumer wants directly from search results. Now is the time to start paying more attention to view levels.
Here’s a summary of everything you need to know from Google Marketing Live, with links to our full coverage of every major announcement.
Google Pmax upgrade enables mass production of creative AI assets
Now you can quickly and at scale produce high-quality assets for maximum performance campaigns.
With generative AI, you’ll be able to create ads much faster, have branded ads, advanced image editing, and automatically showcase product feeds in AI-generated creatives.
New reporting features have also been introduced for YouTube and creatives.
Google Launches Immersive Shopping Ads Using Artificial Intelligence
Video and virtual ad types are for advertisers with Shopping ads.
Retailers can integrate short product videos into ads, virtual try-ons allow shoppers to see how tops fit different body types, and 3D shows spin.
Allow consumers to engage with your creative and products (virtually) before they even enter your site.
Advances in Google’s visual storytelling for YouTube, Discover and Gmail
Now you can target your potential customers with vertical videos, stickers and automatically generated animated display ads.
These video ads are now available to 3 billion users on YouTube, Discover and Gmail through Demand Gen campaigns.
More variety for your Demand Gen campaigns.
Google begins testing ads in AI reports
Your relevant Search and Shopping ads will appear in “sponsored” sections in AI-generated overview boxes on the SERPs.
You don’t need to do anything – existing Search, PMax and Shopping campaigns will be eligible.
How to make it ineligible is not yet known.
Google Data Manager for First Party Data Unification is available to everyone
Centralize and activate your first-party data for more effective AI campaigns with Google Data Manager, now available to everyone.
Use it for data integration (consolidates various first-party data sources into a single analytics hub) and audience and targeting insights.
Google provides marketers with new brand profiles, AI branding tools
New tools have been released to better present your brands and create visual content.
You can create a brand profile and highlight key merchant information in Search, including brand images, videos, customer reviews, offers and more.
Product Studio now includes brand alignment features that let you use uploaded images to inspire your AI-generated ad, and the ability to create videos from a single product photo.
Google is testing ads using artificial intelligence for complex purchases
Google is testing how it provides consumers with an interactive experience after receiving search results.
Artificial intelligence will be used to provide tailored advice and recommendations based on users’ needs and context.
The goal is to improve the user experience on SERPs and provide consumers ready to convert when they land on a brand’s landing page.
But what will this do to search traffic on brand websites? Time will show.
Why do we care? Many updates this year focused on making it less effort for consumers to click through the web. So it will be interesting to see what this leads to for traffic management. Still, there are a few features that have been introduced that have been long overdue (eg reporting) and allow brands to better showcase their creativity.