At Scale Marketing, we keep a close eye on innovation within our industry that can drive better performance for our clients. The annual Google Marketing Live conference is an opportunity to dive into new rollouts and updates to existing features in the Google Ads ecosystem.
This year’s main headline was the continued fervor on AI developments, particularly in the shopping and visual ad ecosystems. But additionally, there were a handful of features announced that are relevant to lead generation advertisers in all industries.
Several standout updates promised to improve targeting, measurement, and efficiency across the funnel. As a performance-driven agency, these changes are an opportunity to test smarter, optimize faster, and find incremental gains.
Below, we’ve broken down the five most relevant Google Marketing Live takeaways, plus how they can help advertisers increase their Google Ads performance.
AI Max for Search Campaigns
AI Max for search campaigns is a one-click opt-in feature that uses keyword-less targeting technology to find new queries that are likely to convert. Similar to DSA campaigns, this feature creates a dynamically-generated headline for each search query and landing page to send the traffic to.
This is one Scale Marketing is really excited about. It will be extremely useful for advertisers who’ve maxed out their current search efforts and are looking for additional areas of growth, while still shooting for their performance targets. Access for clients will be available July 1 in beta.
Attributed Branded Searches
Google is rolling out a solution for measuring YouTube’s impact on branded search interest. It re-emphasized the blurring of the marketing funnel, focusing on how users are seamlessly moving between “searching, streaming, scrolling, and shopping” actions.
Because of this, Google is providing in-platform reporting that shows how often YouTube Ads trigger searches for a brand. This is huge. Many lead gen advertisers already use branded search as a proxy for mid and upper funnel media impact, but there isn’t a 1:1 tieback or a perfect way to do this. However, with the new feature, we can expect more concrete data to support investment in the YouTube channel.
Prospecting Controls
To make sure you’re targeting the right people, additional Google prospecting controls are coming. These new settings allow you to easily exclude the following:
- Existing customers
- People searching for your brands
- People who’ve clicked on your ads or content on Google or YouTube
- Website visitors
- App users
Currently, through audience creation, you can already exclude existing customers and website/app users. However, excluding people searching for your brand or people who’ve previously clicked your ads/content is not available. These are huge updates for those looking to make their ad campaigns as incremental as possible, with the emphasis being on prospects who’ve interacted with the brand before but may or may not have converted.
Easier and Faster Incrementality Testing
Incrementality testing is being rolled out to advertisers who have as little as $5,000 to spend. Historically, incrementality testing through Google Ads takes a lot of budget and data to get any results, much less statistically significant ones.
The lowering of the budgetary threshold (assuming while maintaining accuracy) is a huge step forward for smaller or market-level advertisers who don’t have unlimited budgets.
Expanding Ads in AI Overviews
Google AI overviews have been very successful already. Now Google is taking big steps to monetize it through increasing the amount of ads here. One way of doing this: including ads within searches that don’t have an obvious commercial intent.
They will also be including ads in the “AI Mode” section of Google search, which is a completely AI-focused search experience. While Google’s examples for this were e-commerce related, it’s assumed that this feature will start expanding out to lead gen advertisers, as well.
Conclusion
From improved visibility into YouTube’s impact, to more controls to who sees your ads, Google announced multiple features that will help lead gen advertisers. They’ll be able to improve their measurement and performance within the Google Ads ecosystem.
Scale Marketing plans to test and learn from each one of these features in the coming months. And we’ll be better able to leverage Google’s technology for our clients business results.
Get in touch today to learn how Scale Marketing can help you achieve your business goals and stay ahead in the competitive marketing landscape.
