“Google Marketing Live” is usually the moment for Google to announce all its most important updates for the coming year. We’ve summarized them for you in a few key highlights:
Ads in Google Discover
Has Google looked over the wall at Facebook? No idea, but the carousel ads that are so popular on Facebook will soon also be coming to Google. They will appear on “Google Discover” which is only 6 months old, but already has 800 million users worldwide. In addition to Google Discover, they can also appear in the “promotion” and “socials” tab of Gmail and on the YouTube home page.
All you need to create such an advertisement is a URL, at least 1 image and a logo. You can also add up to 5 headlines and descriptions. Just as with the responsive search ads, Google will test which ones work best and show them the most.
Discovery ads will also become a separate campaign type, just as there is now search and display. Unfortunately, you will not be able to target keywords, but only target groups. The purpose of such a campaign is primarily to increase your brand awareness.
Gallery ads
Images in search ads are no longer a distant dream. Next time, if you are looking for a wonderful restaurant to impress your date, you will see on your mobile as a first result a photo of that delicious pasta or the romantic interior. If you click on this further, you will see different photos so that you can scroll. You can add 4 to 8 images with a maximum description of 70 characters.
The earliest tests give 25% more engagement (clicks and swipes) than standard advertisements. They are only visible on mobile and are always in the first position.
Google shopping
For the moment, Google Shopping is only used for specific searches. In the future, it will also be used for broad commercial searches showing that a user may be interested in a certain product. It will not only be shown in the Shopping results, but also with “Google Images”. It has already been launched in 18 countries, so Belgium is likely to follow soon.
In addition, there will also be a separate page for Google Shopping per user. This page is completely personalized with products that this person might be interested in.
In the future you will also be able to buy products directly in Google Search, Google Images, through speech technology and in YouTube videos.
The bumper machine
You can advertise in various ways on YouTube. An ad type that is popular is the 6-second bumper ad. Now Google can create these bumper ads based on a longer video. Why does Google choose this? Different shorter videos ensure better results than 1 long video. The chance that they remember your brand is 107% higher and the purchase intention is 134% higher.
The bumper machine will automatically create 3 to 4 different advertisements based on a longer video. After this, just adjust the light and you have a brand new bumper ad.
Smart Bidding
What is still on the menu in 2019? Improvement based on “smart bidding”! Google announced these 3 improvements:
- Conversion at the campaign level! You can now set a separate conversion for each campaign. A situation where this could be useful is, for example, with a hairdresser. A campaign can then be created for his webshop where he sells products. Here you set “sales” as the goal, which allows Google to optimize for this. With a second campaign for keywords focused on ‘hairdresser’, you can make an appointment online as a goal. As a result, each campaign works towards its specific goal.
- Google will allow you to set rules that have an effect on how the algorithm measures the value of a conversion. This allows them to optimize automatically even better. For example, you can assign more value to someone who belongs to a certain target group, if you know that they usually earn more.
- In addition, Google also introduced seasonal adjustments. For example, if you expect more customers during sales or during the summer or winter, you can set this in Google Ads. They will then optimize your bid for this time period, and then bring it back to the old one.
Local search ads
Local search ads are ads that you can only create by adding a location extension. For example, if someone is looking for “hairdresser in the area”, this person will see your advertisement.
Due to its enormous success, the possibilities of these local search ads are expanded. The company Dunkin Donuts saw for instance a 400% increase in the number of store visits by local advertisements.
These advertisements will be shown in Search, Maps (both in the list and on the map), Display, Youtube and even on the Google company profile of a competitor. If you can see your competitor’s profile, you can easily emphasize why the customer should choose you.
Deep Linking and in-App conversion tracking
Ads can now link to a specific page in an app. With an “early adopter” who was already allowed to test it, this led to a 40% increase in mobile purchases. In addition, Google Analytics will become available for Firebase. The biggest advantage of this is that you can now more easily measure conversion data in apps and feed it back to Google Ads. With this data you will be able to optimize your campaign more easily.
Smart bidding is becoming increasingly important for Google. Automation is an important topic and the algorithms are also getting smarter. Everything indicates that Google will continue to automate: the introduction of the bumper machine (see above), the responsive advertisements that were introduced last year, the discovery ads automated, …
Youtube is also becoming more important and the results are getting better. Soon it will also be possible to focus Youtube campaigns on conversions, an important step in the development of advertising on Youtube.
Finally, we increasingly see the focus on target groups rather than on keywords. Keywords will become less and less important in the future and advertisements will be more focused on different ‘audiences’. For example, for Discovery and YouTube ads, you can only target groups. Keywords are becoming increasingly unnecessary.
Do you also want to advertise on Google Ads and use these new options? Do you want to hire a specialized agency for this? Contact our experts to see what we can do for your company.