Big Google Announcements From Marketing Live 2023

Over the past year, Google announcements came thick and fast as the digital giant made a host of changes to its advertising platform, Google Ads. The company has never been one to sit idle, putting a strong emphasis on innovation.

Rapid advancements in technology, particularly in the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), have heralded an exciting new age in marketing and advertising. These technologies were a big part of the changes in 2021, with Smart Bidding and Responsive Search Ads just two examples of its use in paid advertising.

Recently, the world learned of further developments at the Google Marketing Live conference. Let’s find out about those Google announcements, and see just what changes lie ahead for Google Ads.

9 Changes to Google Ads

The world’s biggest advertising platform was known as Google AdWords until mid-way through last year. Now, almost a year after the rebranding, Google announcements continue to flow.

Here are the major changes what you need to know about.

1. New Discovery Ads

Discovery Ads were introduced at the Google Marketing Live conference in Jan 2023. This new ad format is due to be released later in the year, and it will be displayed on mobile devices, on Google’s search engine home page.

The key benefits of Discovery Ads include:

• Predictive Advertising — Google predicts what ads are relevant to users before they enter a search query, and displays those on the home page.
• Massive Reach — You can use a single ad campaign on multiple platforms to reach a wider, more relevant audience.
• Engagement — You can showcase product images carousels that boost brand exposure and user engagement.

People are more open to suggestion when they arrive on Google’s home page before they have typed in a specific query. Therefore, Discovery Ads are a revolutionary step that could drive greater traffic for pay-per-click (PPC) advertisers.

2. New Gallery Ads (Product Carousels)

The new Gallery Ads comprise:

• Your headline.
• The display URL.
• An image carousel that has between 4 and 8 product images.
• Taglines for each individual image with a limit of 70 characters.

The addition of a carousel and taglines allows advertisers to add more persuasive power to their ads, which makes these new Gallery Ads great for reaching out to audiences on the Google Search Network, as they are more likely to elicit clicks compared to textual ads.

Also, the format provides fully-customizable ad styling options and free basic ad templates, making it a cost-effective method of advertising.

3. Improvements in Smart Bidding

Among the big Google announcements was the news that the company will continue developing its AI technology to improve the Smart Bidding feature. This strategy uses advanced algorithms to optimize your keyword bids for increased conversions — always a good thing in PPC advertising!

Here are a few changes to Smart Bidding that you can look forward to:

• Specific conversion goals — Imagine your campaign is specified for a single conversion goal. Now, with Smart Bidding, you can optimize all your bids in the campaign for that goal.
• Conversion action sets — You are able to create a set of desired conversion actions. This allows you to optimize bids across several PPC campaigns.
• Seasonality adjustments — Advertisers can consider seasonal trends in the market to schedule bid adjustments in line with demand. This improves your budget allocation during periods when conversion rates are likely to spike or dip.

4. Custom Audiences (The Union of Custom Affinity and Custom Intent)

One of the biggest Google announcements at Marketing Live 2023 was the revelation that the platform would be merging Custom Affinity and Custom Intent audiences.

Before now, advertisers could create Custom Affinity audiences to target groups of people with a shared interest, and Custom Intent audiences to target groups of people with an interest in a specific product or service.

Now that Google is rolling out the merger, Custom Audiences, you can target prospects depending on interests and intents.

5. Audience Expansion

The new Audience expansion tool from Google will effectively expand your audience reach so you can drive more conversions – at the same cost.

Typically, this tool targets prospects with similar browsing behavior patterns to those people listed in your Custom Audience group.

6. Direct Shopping from Google Search, Images, and YouTube

As you may expect, Google Shopping will continue to change as Google strives to deliver an enhanced online shopping experience that encompasses more of their services. Users will soon be able to add items to a universal shopping cart. This means you can buy items directly through:

• Google Search.
• Google Image search.
• YouTube.

Furthermore, we can expect to see Showcase Shopping Ads appearing on all three of these services in the near future.

7. Google Smart Shopping Campaigns

Google introduced Smart Shopping campaigns in 2018. Soon, advertisers will be able to optimize these AI-led campaigns to display local inventory information and to drive in-store visits.

To use these campaigns, you need to have a product feed, a remarketing list, and have conversion tracking enabled. As developments continue, Google aims to create a click-and-collect service for Shopping Ads, enabling advertisers to bring their online and offline marketing channels together.

8. Bumper Ads

Online consumers don’t always have a lot of time for lengthy ads. Brevity is the name of the game, and so YouTube and AI are coming together to offer advertisers another innovative tool, known as Bumper Machine.

The idea is that the tool can analyze a longer video ad, typically around 60-90 seconds long, and then cut it down to a 6-second “bumper ad”.

The Bumper Machine will create four variations of this, giving advertisers some choice. This is still under development and may need considerable tweaking and testing before it becomes a potent tool. However, the prospect is certainly an exciting one.

9. Small Businesses Can Now Use Local Campaigns

Local Campaign is a semi-automated campaign option, which promotes your physical business store across Google Search, Google Display, Google Maps, and YouTube, effectively helping to drive people to your store.

Before these latest Google announcements at Marketing Live, it wasn’t possible for smaller businesses to avail of this powerful asset. But now, things have changed.

Local Campaign works in a similar way to responsive ads. You provide:

• Store locations.
• Ad copy.
• Images.
• Budget limit.
• Bids.

After that, Google Ads optimizes your ad for each of its individual properties so that your ad has the maximum impact. Done right, it can drive lots of foot traffic to your store.

Google Announcements Will Keep On Coming

While not everything in advertising is easily predictable, we can be sure that digital giants like Google will continue evolving.

The intensely competitive nature of paid advertising and the modern marketing age makes agility and constant innovation essential.

This is not only true for companies like Google, but it also applies to advertisers.

By keeping your ear close to the ground for major developments, you can learn cutting-edge advertising strategies to keep your company at the forefront of your industry.