A new era of AI, a new era of ads. This was the tagline of Google Marketing Live – Google’s 2024 Product Roadmap Kick-off. Of course, 2024 is the year of AI, so no wonder this was particularly front and centre this year. Despite Paid Search Marketing already relying on AI (think Bid Strategies, Ad Auctions, RSAs), Google Marketing Live announced a number of exciting new ways AI can be incorporated into the PPC world.
AI & creative
With visual creative becoming ever more important in the world of Paid Search Advertising, Google has developed and released an AI-based Image Generation Tool, which can create visual assets for use across PMAX & Demand Gen campaigns. This is useful for advertisers who, for a variety of reasons, can struggle to create assets. On top of this, there are AI-based tools that can then take the generated image and amend it to the brand’s look and feel. There is a measurable benefit from this, with Google claiming that advertisers who use asset generation are 63% more likely to have a Good or Excellent Ad Strength – a marker of a high-quality ad.
AI search results
Google’s own AI chatbot, Gemini (formerly known as Bard), which has existed since 2023, has now been incorporated into Google’s search results, allowing users to see AI-generated content alongside their search. While this was initially a concern for search marketers – that AI content was hijacking the Search Ad real estate – Search & Shopping ads are now being incorporated into the generative results. This essentially creates a new placement for Search & Shopping Ads and places them in a more natural-language environment. This placement, which works in the same way as current Search & Shopping Ads, has the added benefit of shortening the user journey, providing more relevant and tailored results to users based on their prompt. Moreover, Google Lens search is using AI more and more, allowing users to search for products (i.e. shopping ads) from images.
AI & reporting
Finally, Google is bringing more AI features to reporting. In-Google Ads, reports can now be generated from a natural language prompt, saving time on the existing manual building which can be complex for non-seasoned Google Ads users. Also, though previously in beta, Google Ads has now released its AI-based tool to uncover and present account and performance insights. This should save time in account analysis, allowing advertisers to find and optimise the most pressing points.
Though AI and digital advertising go together like that one song from Grease, it is clear that, in the Google-verse, AI is now becoming much more involved. From improving creatives and creating new ad placements to saving time on reporting, Google (and Google Ads, specifically) are leaning more and more toward AI. From the broadcast era to the precision era, it seems that we are now truly in a new era of ads – the AI era.
