Big Changes Coming to Google Ads
Google Marketing Live just happened.
Every year during this annual marketing summit, Google broadcasts new and innovative ways for enhancing the company’s platforms. In 2019, the biggest struggle seems to be how to serve effective ads in an already advertising-heavy digital market. Ads are on every website and social media platforms. It seems everywhere you look you will find an ad and sometimes it gets creepy. How can anyone make an impact in all the noise?
It might be surprising for modern consumers but Google’s primary focus is on the customer not the advertiser. The biggest themes of this recent summit were transparency, inclusivity, and responsibility. Google’s algorithms and machine-learning are being constantly tuned to ensure Googlers (searchers) are receiving the most relevant content when they want to see it.
How can Google enhance the user’s experience?
Google is taking the next step to pre-meditate what people want to see and when they want to see it. How is this possible? Magic! Just kidding, they hire super smart people that write a lot of code and programming to understand behavior and patterns among different users. We are more predictable than we think.
Do you think this seems invasive? Google is also taking many steps to secure privacy and transparency for users. A user has the right and ability to check their advertising settings and to learn why you are being shown specific ads. Google made it a point to share its company values: Be there, Be useful, Be responsible.
Now, let’s dive into the fun stuff that Google Ads announced!
This summit felt like an early Christmas present for geeky digital marketers like us! We can’t wait to get our hands on the goods! However, it is important to note that most of these new features are “coming soon” and have not been launched. As Google phrases it: “They will roll out later this year.” When does “later this year” mean? That is an unknown. Google is famous for launching products without telling people and secretly launching other products as a beta that only provides access to certain businesses. Regardless, we love the teasers and are optimistic about the new features roll out and guess they will be available before the holiday season in order to be leveraged for the busiest online shopping period.
The Google Marketing Live Summit was two full days of countless speakers and different topics. In order to save you time we have broken down some of the most exciting announcements made during the summit.
Gallery Ads
This will allow advertisers to include imagery in their ads and will be shown as a carousel in search results. Advertisers can use 4-8 images per ad along with taglines and headlines for each individual image. While testing this new ad, Google reports that advertisers had 25% more interactions than with typical text ad.
Bumper Ads
These are the ads you see before you watch a YouTube video. Google worked with top advertisers to test the perfect video length. How long should an ad be for viewers to see your message? eThe winner: 6 seconds. While these ad types are not new to Google, it will now be easier for any company to leverage bumper ads without having to invest in video editing software. Advertisers can upload a video as long as 90 seconds to YouTube, then drop the YouTube link into Google’s bumper machine. The machine will generate three or four different 6-second bumper ads.
Media Expansion:
Google owns the internet between search, YouTube, Gmail, etc.. What’s next? TV. Currently advertisers work with media buying companies or direct networks to have ads air. With the shift to streaming devices, Google can now tap into streaming services. Soon, having your ads appear on national and local TV will be an option within the Google Display and Video 360 ad inventory.
Shopping Actions:
Google Shopping (previously PLA) continues to evolve. When shopping showcase ads launched in 2018, they provided new opportunities to advertise products in aesthetically pleasing ways. However, you might have noticed that most of the ads you see are websites listed from Amazon. While Google might own the internet, Amazon is still dominating as the place to shop. Google is now going head to head with Amazon by allowing customers to purchase products directly through Google accounts—including search, shopping, videos, discover, Google Assistant, etc.. Advertisers can sign up now for access to Shopping Actions. This will add a shopping cart image on your ad that allows customers to purchase directly from Google. There is no cost for customers to use this service and companies can upgrade their merchant center account to allow for Shopping Actions in already existing ads.
Discovery Ads
Do you have the Google search app on your phone? If so, you might notice that when you open the app it shows more than just a search bar. A user sees different options here (news, entertainment, etc.) based on interests. Google plans to make ads available in this real estate in addition to discovery sections of Search, YouTube, and Gmail. It will powered by machine-learning with automation across the campaign and heavily image based. When this ad type was tested by Google, companies noticed a 25% lower cost per lead.
What items are we most excited about?
All of the above! In order to narrow it down a bit more we asked a few team members who attended the summit what they were looking forward to testing for clients:
Bill Mullaney - Marketing Technology Coordinator
“The Gallery Search ads are definitely the most exciting and we think will be most useful for us as a company. We will be able to move forward immediately after the launch with most of our clients that are currently running Google Ads. Shopping ads on Google Images is also exciting and may have a use for us with some of our clients.”
Adam Zippin - Marketing Automation Specialist
“One of the coolest features is the automation of ad creation. Google has been making “suggestions” for a while now, but the AI never seemed to quite hit the nail on the head. The new feature, on the extreme side, will allow you to upload a full YouTube video and have an ad auto-created from it. In simpler terms, this means Google has spent time and efforts on making its suggestion tool better. We expect this, in time, will allow marketers to get accounts up and running much faster while allowing us to focus on improvements to your campaign more than ever.”
Danielle Rearick - Paid Search Marketing Specialist
“What am I personally most excited about? EVERYTHING! I have 10 pages of notes from this summit and have been planning and strategizing how we as an agency can leverage these upcoming tools for our clients. Google is continuing to make big advertising available for small businesses. There is no limit to what you can achieve with digital marketing when you know what’s available and how to properly implement these items. This is why I LOVE my job!”
Ready to enhance your digital marketing strategy?
The team here at FirstTracks Marketing is here to help you grow your business. We can help you leverage all the new technology coming out to reach more of the right customers more often at the right time. Give us a call today at 603-924-1978 or fill out our short contact form, we look forward to growing your business soon!
