More than 5 000 attendees from over 68 countries convened at Google Marketing Live 2019 that took place from 13 to 16 May in San Francisco.
Over the course of the conference, Google announced several live and planned features that will change the digital marketing landscape.
Some of the most relevant announcements include changes to:
- Discovery Ads and Gallery Ads;
- Conversions and Google Ads smart bidding;
- Bumper Ads on YouTube;
- Google Ads automatic audience targetting; and
- Google Shopping directly from search.
Why should brands be aware of these changes that were announced by the search giant? Because not only will the changes increase an advertiser’s reach but also its conversions.
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In the sections below I summarise the most important changes and what it means for brands.
We spoke to Craig Wight, Digital Director at Hoorah Digital Consultancy, for some insight into these changes.
1. Dynamic Discovery Ads
These are native ads that reoccur in different Google feed environments like the Google discovery feed, on Youtube, and the Gmail Promotions and Social tabs. Google Discovery Ads are dynamic ads that adapt to where it displays with the ability to have multiple ad elements for testing.
“With the Google discovery feed alone reaching 800 million people around the globe, this will open up massive reach for brands,” said Craig.
“This new feature will allow brands to leverage powerful Google audiences across multiple environments through visually appealing native ads with relative ease. Discovery ads follow a fairly automated approach in the sense that the advertiser creates the ad by uploading assets, adding headline variations and other elements, and Google’s machine learning technology will deliver the best combinations to your audience across the best-performing environments. This process makes reaching new intent-driven audiences at a large scale simple and accessible to brands.”
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Discovery Ads will be released to all advertisers on the Google Ads platform later in 2019.
2. Gallery Ads include visual elements
Industries that sell physical products like travel, experiences or food will be able to benefit from the search giant’s new Gallery Ads, the first Google Search Ad type that includes a visual element, that will be released later in the year.
This new ad format will include a gallery of photos that expands into its own full-page experience.
“The great thing about Gallery Ads is that the new visual ad unit can be added to the advertiser’s existing search campaigns,” he explained.
“There is, therefore, no need to build out additional campaigns for brands that want to make use of this new feature. Gallery Ads will appear in the top slot of search rankings and due to its expected high engagement rate, these ad units are expected to achieve high-quality Google scores.
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This means that, as more brands use the ad type, it will become pertinent to have this ad unit in your brand’s search strategy if you want to remain competitive.”
3. Changes to Conversions and Google Ads Smart Bidding
Four significant changes have been declared in terms of the Google conversions and the bidding process. Advertisers can now set conversions at campaign level, they can make seasonal adjustments with smart bidding, a new smart bidding strategy that will maximise conversion value, and conversion value rules.
Craig said that, setting conversions at the campaign level will permit advertisers to, for example, have campaigns in which a download is the wanted conversion action and others in which a demo request is the conversion intent.
“Brands will be able to select clear goals to the appropriate campaigns to inform conversion-based smart bidding strategies and conversion reporting.”
Seasonal adjustments will offer an alternative and allow you to fine-tune your campaigns based on your own promotional timetable.
Unlike the maximise conversions bidding strategy that was focused on generating the highest possible conversions within the set budget, the maximise conversion value bidding strategy is set to aim at a maximum conversion value within the set budget.
And this is where the new conversion value rules come into play. Advertisers will now be able to set conversion value rules based on aspects like location, device and audience.
“These changes in the bidding process will give advertisers more control over their Google campaigns,” Craig stated.
4. The Future of Video Ads
“Bumper Machine” is a Google a tool that will automatically create 6-second “bumper ads” from longer form Youtube videos. Research shows that running three 6-second ads had 107% higher ad recall and 134% higher purchase intent than the single longer ad.
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“This is a huge time and resource saver for brands. Particularly for smaller brands with budget constraints,” he said. “Advertisers no longer need to cut down their longer form videos to run bumper campaigns.”
5. Google Ads automatic audience targeting
The search giant is developing a more enhanced automatic targeting function in their display advertising and will publish it as a new tool on the audience side.
Rather than just being able to choose between conservative and aggressive, Audience Expansion allows you to select degrees of specificity. There is even a special forecasting mechanism that predicts the change in ad spend, clicks, and conversions.
“This allows brands to focus on audience segments that work for the brand and incrementally increase the reach while still being able to control campaign performance.”
6. Google Shopping has several new features
Google Shopping will no longer only concentrate on search but will start with a personalised page based on your interests, purchases, and recent commercial searches.
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One of the biggest changes made to Google Shopping Ads is that brands can now share budgets. You will shortly be able to support local retailers’ campaigns for your products.
This functionality enables much closer cooperation in digital advertising, without having to plan out and agree months in advance.
What does this mean for brands? Craig stated that consumers can now purchase directly from their search results.
“When consumers click on Purchases On Google-enabled ads, they’ll be taken to a page hosted by Google where they can make a purchase using payment criteria stored with Google. The orders are then passed through to the retailer for fulfillment and any customer service follow up. This ultimately removes one step in the customer journey and eliminates the potential of another drop-off point,” he concluded.
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