What's Happened?
After unveiling its AI-powered Search Generative Experience during the keynote at Google I/O 2023, Google continued pulling back the curtain on its plans for AI at this year’s edition of Google Marketing Live (GML).
At GML, the search leader detailed several significant changes coming to Google Ads, including some that are already available. Catch all the highlights—and understand the impact—with the recap below.
Create Google Ads Campaigns from Scratch with the Help of Generative AI-Powered Chat
Image source: Google
One of the biggest changes coming to the Ads platform is a conversational AI chat interface designed to help businesses streamline campaign creation.
Through this new experience, advertisers will be able to simply add a preferred landing page in order to generate relevant keywords, headlines, descriptions, images, and assets for a campaign. Then, by conversing with Google AI, they will be able to review the output, make suggestions, and even ask the AI for its own ideas.
Crucially, however, this feature will be an optional, additional experience, not a required one.
Performance Max Campaigns get Generative AI, Too
Although Google’s Performance Max (PMax) campaigns already rely heavily on AI to automate targeting and placement, advertisers will now be able to use generative AI to set up campaigns and generate text assets and images.
Image source: Google
Similar to the campaign setup experience described above, PMax users can enter information about their destination page, products or services, and brand personality, which Google AI will use to quickly develop suggested ad designs, including unique images.
Google AI will Soon Supercharge Automatically Created Assets (ACAs)
Of course, these won’t be the first advertising assets Google’s capable of creating. Since the start of its rollout in October 2022, the ACAs feature has enabled users to automatically generate headers and descriptions using existing ad text or web page copy as a guide.
Image source: Google
Now, the ACAs creation process will rely on generative AI to create more relevant ads based on the context of a given search query. Using the example of a search for “skin care for dry sensitive skin,” Google showed how its AI can create a highly relevant ad headline, such as “Soothe Your Dry, Sensitive Skin,” along with ad copy to go with it.
The upshot: ads will be more relevant to the searches they target while sticking more closely to the established brand tone and voice of advertisers’ existing content.
Google Details how Ads will be Integrated Within the New Search Generative Experience
During the I/O keynote, Google VP of Search Liz Reid, demonstrated the new Search Generative Experience (SGE) that is bringing AI into the front end of organic search. Although Reid made clear that ads would continue to be shown prominently within this new search experience, exactly how and where they would be displayed remained something of an open question.
Now, Google has provided more details on just how its currently experimenting with search and shopping ad placement within SGE.
Image source: Search Engine Land
In the examples revealed during GML, search and shopping ads are integrated directly within the SGE snapshot and conversational chat experience. Compared with previous visuals from Google I/O, these updated placements gave significantly more real estate to sponsored placements than organic results.
What Does This Mean for Advertisers?
The AI-backed updates to both the front and back ends of the Google Ads environment clearly mark the beginning of a new era in search advertising. Although the campaign creation capabilities remain optional, all the tools previewed by Google appear as though they will greatly improve advertisers’ ability to craft new campaigns from scratch and increase the speed at which they can deploy relevant ads in support of new products, offers, and more. Meanwhile, the incorporation of generative AI into PMax campaigns and ACAs should only improve the relevance of AI-generated ads and assets.
Precision’s Thoughts
It is an exciting time in advertising, that’s for sure. The AI updates seem to be unlocking new ways to efficiently activate campaigns, and helping to increase the relevance and effectiveness of ads.
Probably the most exciting news for brands is the updated ad integrations within the SGE’s snapshot and chat experiences. These look as though they will open up new possibilities for advertisers, by providing new ad placements and attracting more users (net new and repeat) to Google for assistance.
Of course, it’s still early days—the current SGE design remains, for now, an experiment. We’ll have our eyes peeled for any further updates and evolutions in search as Google continues to test the waters in AI.