Google announced more than 10 major updates during their annual Marketing Live event. A lot of the updates focused on making improvements on the automation of Google Ads, Performance Max and advertising on YouTube Shorts.
To elevate your marketing performance with Google ads, it is time to go through all these new changes and get a better idea to plan your upcoming digital marketing strategies in Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
Here are the updates you should know:
Table of Content
Google Search Ads and Shopping Ads
Google Shopping Ads’ Loyalty Program Feature, from Google Official Website
1. Products in 3D Model
Google will introduce several new features to their search engine results. One of them will see the combination of Augmented Reality (AR) technology and product displays in Google search results by presenting products in 3D models for the shoppers, further raising shoppers’ experiences in search.
2. New Shopping Ads
A brand new look of ad display for all apparel brands will be available for businesses, this type of ad display is swipeable and placed alongside the organic search results.
3. Features for Loyalty Programs
Google is looking to help merchants showcase their loyalty program benefits. Merchants can either incorporate their programs with their free products listing, or they can create a Google Ads Performance Max (PMax) campaign to advertise their product feed, which is integrated with loyalty programs, to attract new loyalty members. Such a decision is intended to help businesses boost their sign-up rates through Google Ads.
4. Assets for Responsive Search Ads
Starting from the latter half of this year, creative assets will be generated for responsive search ads automatically according to the content of the search results page they land on. This feature aims to increase the relevance of the responsive search ad to match the users’ search queries.
Shoppable Ads on Youtube Shorts, from Google Official Website
Video Advertising
Google is making effort to get video campaigns seen across a wider range of platforms.
1. Video Ads on Youtube Shorts
Advertisers will later be able to run their video action campaigns and app campaigns on Youtube Shorts. The ads will be scaled automatically, and need to be no more than 1-minute long to fit on the platform.
2. Shoppable Ads on Youtube Shorts
Google seeks to connect the functionality of product feeds to the advertising on Youtube Shorts with a new form of shoppable ad, which is expected to be rolled out this year as well.
3. Asset Library
For advertisers who don’t have enough assets to create a video ad, Google has set up an asset library to solve this problem. The asset library supplies materials and templates, allowing advertisers to produce a video ad within a short time by utilizing the assets.
4. Video Ads in Discover
Expanding beyond just Youtube, Google is bringing video ads to Google Discover. Discover feed is currently only viewable on mobile devices, showing images and videos for users to explore. It can serve as a highly efficient way to entice users’ interest in your content or products etc.
5. Connected TV Ads
To attract new audiences and demographics, advertisers will soon be able to launch connected TV ads through Display & Video 360 marketing platform, promoting their campaigns throughout all the connected TV apps.
Performance Max Campaign Experiments, from Google Official Website
Performance Max (PMax)
As one of the highlights from the annual live, Google put extensive emphasis on PMax. One of the latest additions to Google Ads campaign types, PMax is goal-oriented; it optimizes the result of the advertisers’ campaign and drives its performance to reach towards the grand goal. With a single campaign, PMax grants advertisers access to all of the Google Ads inventory. To expand its capabilities, Google is launching several major updates to PMax:
1. Optimize for In-Store Goals
PMax will soon offer in-store goals options specifically for advertisers with physical stores to choose from, shall they see fit. It focuses on improving store visits and sales performance of local stores.
2. Optimization Score
To make the optimization more effective, Google will improve the optimization score function by including tips and recommendations for the advertisers.
3. Burst Campaign for In-Store Goals
To complement in-store goals to drive sales and actions, PMax will roll out the burst campaign feature to help advertisers reach their sales goal within a designated time frame, which is ideal for seasonal promotions or short-term campaigns.
4. Google Ads App and Search Ads 360
Google will expand the access to allow advertisers to manage their PMax campaign on Google Ads app and Search Ads 360, providing much needed support to improve the accessibility of PMax.
5. A/B Testing with Experimentation Tools
Experimentation tools will be added for advertisers to A/B test how PMax will be able to drive incremental conversions from the existing campaigns. It is important to note that while this A/B testing feature is available for advertisers around the world, it is however not built for retail campaigns.
6. More Insights in Google Ads Campaign
Advertisers will be able to see more information about their PMax campaigns from the insights, as more sophisticated data will be featured, such as the attribution, audience and auction insights, giving a thorough analysis to know what’s the driving force behind the advertising performance.
Google Ads Campaign Insights, from Google Official Website
Insight Page Reports
As mentioned above, Google is implementing some new updates to the Google Ads insights page as part of a powered up move for PMax campaigns. In more particular detail, three new insights will be included on the page.
1. Attribution Insights
The new attribution insights will let advertisers see how well their Google Ads campaigns are doing over all the Google platforms, giving them a better understanding of what is leading to all the conversions.
2. Budget Insights
Budget insights provide opportunities to work on budget optimization, you can see how far your spending is from your budget goals.
3. Audience insights
Audience insights enable you to see which and how your certain customer segments impact the campaign performances.
The Breakdown of Enhanced Conversions for Leads, from Google Official Website
Enhanced Conversions
There will be a new Enhanced Conversions for advertisers in Google Ads Manager, they can track the performance or the progress of all their leads through the lead funnel report. And the beta version of Enhanced Conversions will be available for Search 360 to check website conversions.
The Breakdown of Enhanced Conversions for Leads, from Google Official Website
Checkout on Merchant
Google looks to smooth the transaction process between the customers and merchants. With Checkout on Merchant, users will be able to purchase the items they want in search results by directly clicking on the product feeds, so they don’t have to go through extra steps or a difficult process for a simple shopping experience.
If you have any questions about using these new features for advertising on Google platforms, feel free to contact us for professional advice.
