Here’s our recap of the latest update from Google Marketing Live 2022, featuring YouTube Short ads, Performance Max updates and more.
This week, we were lucky enough to visit the Google Marketing Live Conference 2022 in Zurich, where Google unveiled a veritable feast of updates and additions to Google Ads. Here’s everything you need to know about the search engine giant’s latest updates.
Video Ads
YouTube Short Ads
Google will gradually start to roll out ads in YouTube Shorts, a short-length video platform similar to TikTok. Video action campaigns and app campaigns will automatically scale to YouTube Shorts, in a move that’s symptomatic of social platforms’ trend towards short, snappy video content.
Video Ads in Discovery Feed
Google is looking at ways to introduce short video ads in discovery ads that could seamlessly fit in with organic content, a move that will help connect users with certain topics and trends.
Connected TV Campaigns
Google is updating Display & Video 360 ad options. As a result, advertisers will soon be able to add Connected TV campaigns to reach affinity, in-market, and demographic audiences across YouTube and other ad-supported TV apps.
Templates
Users will soon be able to use YouTube-optimised templates to quickly create video ads.
Search & Shopping Ads
Interspersed Ads in Organic Feed
In a bid to make Google more visual, the search engine provider will be interspersing visual ads into users’ organic feeds. As Dischler said in his keynote speech, “For those moments when you’re looking to explore a topic or find inspiration, we’re transforming the search results page into an endless stream of visual ideas. In our new experience, we’ll have immersive and visual ads, clearly labelled as always, interspersed with the organic results when people are looking for ideas.”
3D AR
With augmented reality (AR), users will be able to view accurate 3D models of products right in the search results and see how they would look in their own space. This will provide a fully immersive shopping experience for users.
Enhanced Conversions
Google will introduce a new, enhanced conversion for leads – a connection between leads and funnel progression through offline conversion imports. Later in the year, Google Ads will launch a new lead funnel report to help advertisers visualise lead progression.
Broad Match and Smart Bidding One-Click Experiment
A newly introduced one-click experiment will allow advertisers to test whether or not broad match together with Smart Bidding will work for your campaign.
Improvements to RSAs
Google will be rolling out automatically created assets, designed to improve ad relevance.
Opti-Score Expands
Google Ads’ optimisation score will expand to cover every campaign type for advertisers.
Google Business Messages Expands
The latest Google Business Messages update will allow consumers to chat with businesses directly in Search ads.
Performance Max Campaigns
Performance Max achieves 13% more total incremental conversions, according to Google
A series of Performance Max updates will be rolling out throughout the year, including in-store goals, burst campaigns for seasonal foot traffic, more insights, optimisation scores, and recommendations. Performance Max will introduce ‘experimental tools’ such as A/B testing to help test potential lift.
Search Trends in Insights Tab to Draw Correlations for Performance Max
The Insights page is getting a major overhaul, with a focus on attribution and first-party data. A new attribution section will show advertisers a better view of what drove conversions within accounts, which can then inform advertisers’ future marketing strategy.
Performance Max in Search Ads 360 and Google Ads Mobile App
Advertisers will enjoy increased campaign management support across Search Ads 360 and the Google Ads mobile app.
New customer acquisition in Performance Max will be rolled out across other campaigns and advertisers will be able to optimise and set different target ROAs for new customers or choose to only bid on new customers. This goal will allow you to either bid more for new customers compared to existing customers or to focus your optimisations on new customers only while maintaining your cost efficiency.
Performance Max Loyalty Integration
In the coming months, advertisers using Performance Max along with a product feed will be able to promote loyalty benefits to consumers based in the U.S, across YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail and Maps.
Mobile Optimised Layouts for Display Ads
Brand new layouts will allow advertisers to showcase their campaign on full-screen vertical ad inventory. Plus, Google is launching scrollable ads and videos based on product feeds.
Product Feed
Expanded Product Feeds
Product feeds will appear in other places on YouTube, in search and shorts, making video ads shoppable.
Merchant Centre
Checkout On Merchant
In the US, Google is piloting a streamlined checkout service to save time for customers. Customers won’t need to go through as many stages before checking out, instead, they’ll be sent to the merchant’s existing buy-flow.
All-New Asset Library
Users will enjoy a brand new account-level asset library that syncs with Google Drive, where you can store creative assets.
Introduction of ‘My Ad Centre’
This feature will help users customise their ad experience. Google will allow users to select the types of ads they want to see more or less of.
Google Analytics Update
Analytics Updates
GA4 to Help You Understand Users’ Behaviour in a Complex Landscape
GA4 will be replacing Universal Analytics, and with this comes a new dashboard that automatically uncovers insights and predictions based on where your audience members are in their journey.
Google Tag to Replace Gtag
The global site tag will become the Google tag and get updated with new capabilities.
Reporting Updates
Conversion Lift and Search Lift Tests and Geo Experiments
Advertisers will be able to measure incremental conversions based on users and their geographical locations. What’s more, advertisers will be able to measure the effectiveness of their YouTube ad campaigns on driving up organic Google and YouTube user searches.
Update to Insights Page
Google will be rolling out new reports, including budget insights which may help may help identify opportunities to optimize ad spend, audience insights with first-party data and attribution insights to see how your ads work together across Google platforms.
Google Marketing Live 2022: Our Verdict
As expected, Google’s updates focused on increasing visual ads, automation, and connectivity across all platforms, whether it’s users seeing ads interspersed in their organic feeds, or the ability to optimise campaigns for in-store sales.
The introduction of ads in YouTube Shorts has no doubt been heavily influenced by the incredible success of TikTok, and the expanded advertiser insights come as a direct response to the growing trend toward using in-depth analytics to drive campaign performance and inform future campaigns.
The addition of My Ad Centre will allow users to control the ads they see, while A/B testing and segmented performance data will allow advertisers to see how well their campaigns are performing, and adjust their approach as necessary.
All in all, Google’s latest ad updates make for a more dynamic marketplace, putting personalisation and visual campaigns at the heart of the platform.
