Google Marketing Live: An Advertiser’s Take on the Highlight

Google Marketing Live is a great platform to know what Google has in store for the customers and what you should look forward to.

In the presentation, Google discussed the new products and its take on the latest marketing trends, improving user privacy, and plans around online advertising.

Below, I have jotted down the essential highlights from the event and elaborated on the features we should be excited about.

Google’s 3 Marketing Force of Online Marketing

Before looking into the new product launches, Google’s Senior VP and Chief Business Officer set the stage by discussing Google's three vital areas of digital marketing – Mobile devices, Machine Learning, and Privacy.

• Mobile devices:

It's no surprise that mobile is now the leading platform for most customers to engage with different brands online. Out of the trillions of Google searches, more than half is from mobile devices. Google promises to improve engagement using the latest technology.

• Machine Learning:

Google's language translation feature uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. It was not long ago when you would have to type words into Google Translate to get results. But now, thanks to AI, you can point your camera to the text to translate it into your language.

• Privacy

Throughout the event, Google emphasized data privacy and how the company is heavily investing in Analytics and Ads Data Hub to provide complete privacy to the users.

What’s New For Digital Marketers?

Google has made improvements in Google Ads and launched new features and marketing products that will help marketers:

• Gain more insights

• Provide more ways to test using existing assets

• Plan by customers and not by channel

• Measure impact without any breach of privacy

Google Marketing Live: New & Improved Products & Features

Google has announced a couple of new products and features to help marketers determine how they can be:

• More responsible with user data

• Improves customer journey

• Beneficial to the customers through all stages

Let's dive deeper into selecting highlights of some of the newest Google products and features announced at the event.

DISCOVERY ADS

Google discovery is a native app that keeps you updated with the latest news of your interests – be it your favorite football team or hobbies. By introducing Discovery ads, Google is helping marketers and businesses to reach more of their target audience across all Google properties at the right time when they are looking for products similar to theirs.

These ads will show on YouTube, Google discovery feed, and the Gmail social and promotional tabs. With Discovery Ads, marketers reach over 800 million global users and create brand awareness.

Machine learning has a pivotal role in this ad format. While advertisers provide high-quality images, Google's machine learning does the trick. Some of the key features include:

• Swipeable image carousel on different Google properties customized to individual’s search results

• Since 85% of online buyers take swift product-related actions, these ads can help in anticipating customer’s interests and needs and deliver results.

• Unmatched reach capacity across all Google properties using a single campaign to build brand awareness.

GALLERY ADS

Gallery Ads are new ad formats that showcase a brand's value and reduce the time and effort to find relevant information. Gallery ads are right on top of the SERP and convey text and image-based information. When you tap on the ad, you can swipe different images from the interactive image gallery.

Marketers can use this ad format with 2/3 text headlines along with 70-character taglines for each image to provide quick information about the brand and targeted products, and create a visual impact as well.

With deep linking capabilities, marketers can optimize the impact of different campaigns. App links directly guide customers to the app for further information, channeling the buying process. These ads are perfect for building initial awareness and grabbing people's attention. Some case study campaigns have noted an increase of 25% in interactions using these ads.

SHOWCASE SHOPPING ADS

The original Google Shopping Ads only showed a particular ad when people searched for a specific product. For instance, if you are a seller of bedding, your ad would appear if someone searched by your brand name or product "bedding."

However, Google noticed many high intent searches didn’t have product names or any particular specifications. Like someone may search for "sweatshirts" instead of a specific product name like “Sweatshirt 456 Summer Collection.” And that's where Showcase Shopping ads come into play.

Shopping ads use images and descriptions from the merchant center and set up product lists for more general use. Even though such searches are not new, these ads provide more targeted shopping for a broader intent search, including places like YouTube or the Google Discover Feed.

GOOGLE SHOPPING

Many significant changes were announced regarding Google Shopping to help shoppers discover millions of products of different brands and compare. If users want to make a purchase, they can do it online, offline, or directly on Google. It is an excellent opportunity for retailers and brands to connect with their consumers and bring them together in one place.

Every shopper will have a personalized homepage on the shopping tab to filter different features and look for products and reviews from brands they love. You will also find videos and additional filter options to enhance the shopping experience.

The small, blue-colored shopping cart shows the items you want to purchase with user-friendly features and customer support. With Google's guarantee, shoppers like you will be more confident to buy, as you can turn to Google if a product is delayed or isn't up to the expected standard.

Google also announced a long-term plan to allow merchants to sell directly in Google Search results through other Google properties like YouTube Videos and Google Assistant voice technology.

BUMPER AD MACHINE

YouTube Bumper Ads are a 6-second non-skippable video ad format used since 2016 to drive brand reach and frequency. But with the latest update, Google's bumper machine can turn any ninety-second videos into a six-second bumper ad for use across the YouTube network.

The bumper machine uses machine learning to identify various vital elements from videos such as brand logo, motion, or human faces to create a short video ad. Despite being of such short length, Google insists on its long-term impact. In more than 250 bumper campaigns, Google found that such ads had 107% higher ad recall and 134% more purchase intent.

AUDIENCE TARGETING TOOLS

The custom audiences tool builds a solid audience base by merging custom affinity with customer-intended audiences and using different keywords, apps, and websites across other formats such as Gmail and YouTube. This tool will help the marketers reach the target customers across other campaigns.

With the new Audience Expansion tool, Google is improving the automatic targeting feature. It will now become more accessible for a marketer to find more people similar to the existing audiences. You can broaden your reach or narrow it down to custom your audience. Marketers using its display campaigns have seen an increase in conversions by 50% within the same budget.

LOCAL CAMPAIGNS

Previously Google introduced local campaigns to enable marketers to reach the target customers when looking for a nearby product seller or service provider. Dunkin' doughnut gained almost 4X more monthly customers with local campaigns. Not just that, several study reports show that various other companies have gained 5X more return on the amount spent.

Google has announced that it will expand local campaigns and include new options, like:

• Displaying multiple products lines for users to explore

• Promoted pins in maps to help users plan the route.

• Promoted locations in Maps

Google is also looking to upgrade Google Trips so users can plan their trips with ease. With the upgraded feature, the users will explore more options, destinations and get a sample day plan created explicitly for them. Furthermore, the Flight and Hotel tabs will allow users to browse through different travel and accommodation options directly from Google.

Okay, many of you may wonder how this will help marketers? It will allow the advertisers to locate the high intent consumers, actively looking for different services, and influence their decisions, thus, bringing more qualified leads.

INCREASING USER PRIVACY

More and more users are losing trust in how online service providers handle user data. Google's Senior Product Manager emphasized the importance of data transparency and how marketers should take concrete steps to safeguard user data.

Google is determined to build trust and ensured the following to ensure data security:

• Updating features in Chrome browser to enable users to block third-party cookies

• New fingerprinting norms

• New tools to personalize ads and maintain data transparency

At the same time, Google has advised marketers to:

• Be sure what data is collected from the customers and why

• Build a direct relationship with the consumers

• Respect users’ privacy

Conclusion

The entire event proves that Google still aims to cut the edge with its Ad products and features. Google is determined to make the most of the latest tech, such as automation and machine learning to enhance customer experience through Google Ad campaigns. Now only time will tell how these features and tools helped marketers reach their campaigning goals.

Author Bio

Ethan Taylor is a digital marketer and a part-time tutor who teaches at Assignment Help. He is also a subject matter expert at MyAssignmenthelp.com, a popular website primarily known for quality academic aid, cheap assignment help, and free theoretical tools such as an essay maker, fraction calculator, and plagiarism checker.