Google Marketing Live 2024, held yesterday evening, unveiled a suite of new features designed to elevate advertisers’ strategies and improve user engagement. Here’s a breakdown of our highlights and the major announcements from the event:
Ads in AI Overviews
Google has been showing ads above and below AI Overviews (formerly known as Search Generative Experience) based on user queries. The latest update is the testing of Search and Shopping ads directly within AI Overviews for U.S. users. These ads will appear in a section labelled “Sponsored,” ensuring they are clearly distinguishable.
AI-Powered Recommendations
One of the most exciting announcements is the new dynamic ad experience powered by AI. For instance, if you’re searching for short-term furniture storage, you might see an ad for a local storage business. This new ad experience allows you to:
- Upload photos of your rooms and the furniture you need to store.
- Receive a detailed description of the items in the photos.
- Get recommendations for the appropriate storage unit size and packing supplies.
- Easily proceed to the business’s website to complete the transaction.
Optimisation for PMax and Standard Shopping Campaigns
Google is introducing a new goal for PMax and Standard Shopping campaigns called profit optimisation. This feature leverages Smart Bidding to optimise for profit using data from cart-level conversions and cost of goods sold (COGS). Advertisers can now switch between revenue goals (maximum conversion value/target ROAS) and profit goals without affecting performance. This new goal is a game changer for clients who are looking to maximise ROI across a broad product range.
Enhanced Reporting and Brand Guidelines
For PMax campaigns, Google is rolling out asset-level reporting, providing conversion metrics for each asset. Additionally, new brand guidelines will allow advertisers to set their brand colours and fonts, either by providing them directly or confirming the colours and fonts detected from their website. These settings can be previewed and adjusted before finalising. These features will help generated assets feel on-brand quickly and easily.
Improved Audience Targeting
Audience lists for lookalike segments in Demand Gen have become more accessible, with the minimum list size reduced from 1,000 to just 100 users. This change allows for more precise targeting and improved campaign efficiency. These changes will make it much more accessible for smaller clients, with less first-party data available, make better use of these features.
Google Ads Data Manager and Marketing Mix Model
Google Ads Data Manager is now available globally, offering a comprehensive tool for managing and analysing ad data. Moreover, the open-source Marketing Mix Model (MMM) Meridian will be available to everyone later this year, providing powerful insights and analytics capabilities.
Additional Announcements
Beyond the major updates, Google also teased more news, including new Shopping ads formats, updates to Shorts ads, creator collaborations for YouTube Ads, and various measurement updates. These updates from Google Marketing Live 2024 signal a significant step forward in digital advertising, with a strong focus on AI-driven solutions, enhanced reporting, and more flexible and precise targeting options. Stay tuned for more detailed analysis and how these changes can benefit your campaigns.
If you’d like to learn more about how these changes will improve your advertising or have any questions about our PPC services, please get in touch.