This week, I attended Google Marketing Live, an event which showcased Google’s newest Ads innovations.
Google Marketing Live 2024 saw over 30 new products and feature announcements across the Google Product Stack – Performance Max, Search, Demand Gen, YouTube and Measurement.
Here is a quick summary of everything you need to know:
Performance Max
Google’s flagship AI advertising format saw many upgrades this year with features designed to add transparency, insight, control and scale. Key features announced include:
AI powered asset generation based on Google AI, enabling advertisers to generate high quality images, animations and videos within the Google Ads interface.
Enhanced brand safety including the ability to upload brand guidelines to ensure automated assets are always ‘on-brand’ with matching colours and fonts.
3rd party integrations including creative partnerships with Canva and Smartly.io, making it easier for creative teams to work in partnership with Google.
Enhanced Asset, Placement and Conversion Reports will give advertisers clarity on where ads show on YouTube, the top performing creative assets and make it easier to perform conversion lift studies from within the Google Ads interface.
Search
Search Ads are also changing because of Generative AI. Here are a few of the key takeaways from Google Marketing Live 2024:
Google Shopping Ads will start serving when consumers use Google Lens or Circle to Search showcase products when they are most relevant to the user.
AI Overviews [Launched May 2024, US Only] will soon include paid search listings, allowing advertisers to showcase relevant products and services for informational search results.
Conversational Search Campaigns will be rolled out for all advertisers, speeding up the process of creating search campaigns using the interface chatbot.
Demand Gen
Google upgraded Demand Gen campaigns to promote visual storytelling across YouTube, Shorts, Discover and Gmail. Key announcements here included:
Integration with Google Marketing Platform. Demand Gen campaigns will soon be supported by the Google Marketing Platform (SA360 and DV360).
Animated Image Ads. Retailers with a Merchant Center account will now be able to generate animated image formats to showcase products across all Demand Gen platforms.
Pinned Video Assets will soon be available, allowing advertisers to promote specific assets for different platforms and give them more creative control.
Lookalike Segments will now work from a minimum list of 100 users, making it easier for smaller companies to optimise based on audiences.
YouTube
Google announced some major updates to YouTube at Google Marketing Live 2024:
Shorts Stickers are rolling out over the next few months, adding a new clickable native element to the YouTube Shorts experience.
New Engagement Gestures like the ability to swipe left to get to a landing page within YouTube or double tap to like will integrate shorts and longform video.
YouTube Shopping Affiliates will see an upgrade allowing YouTube creators to tag products in their videos, Shorts and live streams, making it possible for viewers to shop while they watch.
Partnership Ads powered by BrandConnect will let advertisers promote influencer created content directly within Google Ads.
Measurement
GML2024 also saw a renewed focus on privacy and measurement initiatives. Key announcements included:
Google Data Manager is now available to all advertisers and integrates with partners like Salesforce and Hubspot to provide dynamic data inputs for Customer Match and Enhanced Conversions.
New Customer Acquisition updates with GA4 data automatically added to improve the models that powers this feature in Google Ads.
Simple Prompt Reports in Google Ads and Search Ads 360 will allow advertisers to build visual reports effortlessly.
Measurement Diagnostics is a new hub launching in the next few months where you can validate and troubleshoot your measurement setup directly in Google Ads and Campaign Manager 360.
Meridian MMM will roll out globally later this year to help advertisers measure the impact of their marketing spend across channels.
Top Articles
Our Senior Account Director, Stephen
A Day in the Life of Stephen Moore: Balancing Parenthood and a Senior Account Director Role Stephen Moore’s...
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
