Google Marketing Live 2023 recap

In May, Google held its annual marketing event and announced what new features and products marketers should expect to see and use. As predicted, Google placed a major focus on AI development across a range of their products and deep-dived into great alternatives that we can implement to continue reaching valuable audiences and meeting our set business goals after 3^rd party cookie deprecation in the second half of 2024.

Below is a summary of the most interesting topics that were discussed at this year’s Google Marketing Live event.

Search updates

Generative AI

Google is eager to build AI into more aspects of Google Ads, thus we were presented with a new update affecting Google Search specifically. So far, Google has provided assistance with generating headline suggestions, which, from experience were usually of poorer quality, and our team continue to create headlines manually. However, now marketers can engage with Google’s AI by providing a website URL. This URL will help the AI to understand the product/service advertised and generate keywords, headlines, and even ad extensions and images. You will be able to chat with the AI and provide additional information or ask for more headlines to ensure ads are relevant to your target audience.

This is a completely new approach to how the campaigns will be set up going forward, but it will also be interesting to know how accurate Google’s AI will be in generating assets.

Broad Match Keywords

We are finally seeing changes being introduced to the broad match keyword type that Google has been heavily promoting for some time now. Because we are able to reach a wider audience with this specific keyword match type, it is challenging to control the search queries that are triggered by our Search campaigns. Thus, Google is introducing a ‘Brand Controls’ section which helps to exclude brand terms that marketers do not want their ads to appear for.

Even though we are taking back only a slight portion of the control, the new exclusion feature will definitely help to ensure less budget is spent on irrelevant terms.

Performance Max updates

More AI Support

Similarly to the Google Search update, the Performance Max campaigns will also be getting more help from Google’s AI with generating images. Also, Google will be introducing new goals for re-engaging existing customers to increase retention or acquire new valuable customers. This should help the AI to better understand your business objectives.

New Reporting & Insights

It was definitely one of the most needed updates for the Performance Max campaigns as those, who have run this type of campaign before know that the performance insights are not as detailed as we would like them to be, and we have less control over targeting.

Google has heard our concerns and now is providing us with more insights into our creative and search term performance. We will be able to identify which creatives resonate well with certain audiences and which perform poorly as well as access more search term categories.

First-party data strategies

As we are all aware, 3^rd party cookies are going away next year, and marketers continue to test and learn about alternative methods of reaching valuable customers without breaching data privacy laws.

It will become much easier to onboard and manage the first-party data with Google, reach the audience, measure conversions, and drive revenue while protecting consumer privacy data.

For example, in the Autumn Google introduced PAIR, a solution on DV360 that helps engage more valuable customers without relying on 3^rd party cookies. It works by creating an audience list that is based on a common set of customers who have visited your website and publisher’s site. During this process user data is not being shared between both sites.

Chrome is also working on developing an alternative to 3^rd party cookies. The team has introduced Topics API, which enables interest-based advertising (IBA) and does not require you to track the different sites a user visits. Topics API matches ads with people based on what they search for online. Users have full control over what topics they want to be associated with and which they would prefer to remove. In return, this should help with finding an in-market audience that can be targeted through paid activity.

Google Marketing Live 2023 verdict

In summary, Google Marketing Live 2023 has provided some valuable insights on what is to come. With the integration of AI it’s looking like advertising on Google will become much easier. It’s also useful to know that Google is working hard on finding new ways to help businesses continue providing relevant advertising after 3^rd party cookie deprecation.

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