Hi there,
This is a summary of the Google Marketing Live (GML) event for the Americas, which happened earlier this week.
For those who are not familiar with GML, this is the most important annual event for the Google Advertising platform where they share the latest product announcements, and updates to advertisers, agencies, and other partners.
GML event was after the Google I/O event, which is about the latest updates/improvements to key Google products.
Advertising continues to contribute the lion share of Google revenue (about 80% for the most recent quarter, or $54B out of $68B) so we know how important it is.
You can watch the keynote and other sessions here. There are so many new updates so I will only include the biggest ones here.
Automation and machine learning
This theme has been consistent over many years for Google ad products and this year is no exception.
Let’s start with Google Search, which contributes about 75% of the advertising revenue
Google continues to advocate for the combination of Broad match (for keyword) + responsive search ads (for creative) + smart bidding (for bid).
Beyond search, Performance Max is mentioned again as advertisers can leverage multiple inventory sources from Youtube, Discovery, Display, Gmail, Maps and Search. More importantly, advertisers can now run A/B test (using Experiments) to understand the impact of Performance Max.
Optiscore (aka auto-generated optimization suggestions specific to your campaign) will be expanded to cover all campaign types (including Performance Max).
The Insights page is getting even more helpful. For example, audience insights will soon support first–party data like Customer Match to help you understand which customer lists drive performance for campaigns.
Privacy safe measurement
Later this year, Google will launch My Ad Center for consumers. This is a one-stop shop for people to have control over their ad experience.
The three core principles for privacy safe measurement according to Google are:
- Consented
- First party
- Modeled
Regarding first-party data, Google introduces a new solution for tagging that combines google ads and google analytics.
Enhanced conversion continues to be advocated as a long-term solution. Enhanced conversion will soon be available for lead. This is important for B2B clients.
For app marketers (especially for iOS), in Apr 2022, Google announced “on-device conversion measurement”. This solution was mentioned again during the GML breakout session.
Conversion modeling will be expanded to compensate for the loss of signals. So enhanced conversion is becoming more important.
The conversion lift study (including CLS for Search and others) will be self-served later this year.
The importance of commerce
Commerce is a major focus this year. However, if you watched GML last year, you might notice that last year, commerce was even a bigger deal.
There are a number of announcements this year:
- Loyalty program integration to Google Ads
- Swipable shopping ads in search
- Shoppable video ads on Youtube Shorts
- AR in Search
- A faster check out experience
- Reach new potential loyalty program customers with Performance Max
Other announcements
- Connected TV ads: Google audiences for connected TV via Display and Video 360. This will work across Hulu, Peacock, Youtube, and others. “In a few months, you’ll be able to power your CTV campaigns with the same affinity, in-market and demographic audiences you’ve been using for your digital ads for years.” For more information, click here.
- Your video action campaigns and app campaigns will automatically scale to YouTube Shorts.
- Video ads will be included in Discovery.
- Consolidated asset library across multiple ad formats.