Google Marketing Live 2023: The Future of AI Advertising

Wondering about new ad innovations from Google Marketing Live 2023? It’ll come as no surprise that AI was the shiny star of the show. If you missed it or are looking for the highlights, we’ve summarised the key updates for 2023 and the future of AI advertising. You don’t want to miss this.

 

• The three Cs
• Using AI to improve campaign performance
• Google Ads conversational experience 
• Product Studio 
• Google Merchant Center Next 
• New Campaign Types
• Video View
• Demand Gen
• Performance Max features

The three Cs

Leading Google experts spoke about the three critical C’s. If you take nothing else away, be driven by these:

1. Customer Connection
2. Creative
3. Confidence

Using AI to improve performance

Keeping up with today’s highly saturated market, and finding the time to continually optimise ads is becoming increasingly difficult. Now more than ever, businesses strive to obtain a strong brand identity.

Using AI can: 

• strengthen customer engagement (connection)
• create perfectly timed messaging (confidence)
• present personalised campaigns (creative)

Google Ads conversational experience 

One of the first key updates to be announced by Google, was the new conversational interface incorporated into Google Ads. Testing is due to commence in July 2023.

What’s new?

Similar to ChatGPT, marketers can have natural language conversions with Google Ads throughout the campaign build process. You can input company or product descriptions directly or simply add a link to your site. You can edit it as many times as you like by clicking the ‘help create my ad’ button. Google AI will then generate headlines, descriptions, images and even other assets like sitelinks and call ads - all tailored to what you offer.

What’s so special?

It limits the challenges and time spent of creating high-quality ads and keywords. Ad relevance is enhanced, and specific audiences can be targeted more easily.

Product Studio 

Google stated that product listings with multiple images generate, on average, a 76% increase in impressions in comparison to listings with only one allocated image.

What’s new?

Introducing Product Studio - this new feature will enable you to enhance product imagery through enlarging objects and removing backgrounds. You can add prompts for an AI generated backdrop to take the place of the original one. This quick and easy step will generate four photo options. 

Example

Google used a peach scrub as the product and in the description of the scene, wrote that they wanted it to be placed on a stone platform surrounded by peaches and tropical plants. Sure enough, Google AI generated the image just as the description detailed.

What’s so special?

Visual representations are increasingly popular, so Google is now seeking easier ways to create and upload product imagery directly from the Shopping Feed. These images can be added straight to the Merchant Center and will also be automatically saved across Google.

Google Merchant Center Next 

Expected to launch in 2024, Google has announced the replacement of Merchant Center with Google Merchant Center Next.

What’s new?

Some of the new features will allow automatic updates to the product feed sourcing information directly from your website. They will allow you to have control over how your products appear on Google. You will also be able to gain insights within the Merchant Center Performance Tab about top-selling products, pricing and competition.

What’s so special?

It combats the struggles you might have had with the more technical tasks. It’s focussed on making the platform more user friendly.

New Campaign Types

Another exciting addition to Paid Search that came out of Google Marketing Live 2023 was the announcement of two new video-first campaign types: Video View and Demand Gen.

Video View

Aptly named as it’s designed to maximise views. It has an array of formats all designed to get the most out of the allocated budget and drive a higher number of video views:

• in-feed ads
• skippable in-stream ads
• shorts ads

Demand Gen

The second campaign type is a display ad which centres around conversions. It is designed to present itself across many platforms including Gmail, Discover and YouTube - incorporating into shorts, in-stream and in-feed.

What’s so special?

It focuses on audiences. You can create lookalike segments based on ‘seed lists’ that are obtained from YouTube users and first-party data, subsequently targeting individuals similar to your existing customers.

Performance Max Features

Similar to that of the conversational experience above, Google Marketing Live 2023 showed how Performance Max is also incorporating generative AI into the campaign set up process.

What’s new?

Creating campaigns will take on a new approach, with the AI using brand data and vision to present relevant headlines, descriptions and other assets as well.

What’s so special?

Performance Max is known for its impressive conversion rate, and this new feature will ensure that growth is achieved and pushed to the max - excuse the pun.

Summary 

We know that for many of you, these updates can conjure up a host of mixed emotions. The world is setting its sights on an AI-focused horizon, and embracing the new can be both daunting and exciting at the same time. And it’s not stopping anytime soon. There are also many other new updates and features in the pipeline.

As marketers and business owners, we’re more equipped than ever to dive into new opportunities and conquer goals. First the GA4 transition and now the heavy involvement of AI.

The digital marketing landscape is evolving at a rapid pace, and we’re embracing its potential.

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