While Google Marketing Live 2022 was held in Zurich recently, many entrepreneurs may not have noticed this significant event and overlooked some noteworthy Google Ads updates. Our team did not get to experience the conference live, however, we carefully reviewed and analyzed it to tell you about the most significant upcoming updates.
Privacy progress
While talking about new APIs and modeling, Google used a lot of confusing technical terms. But in essence, the company wanted to tell us about several key updates:
Enhanced conversions improvements
At this stage, the company talked about the upcoming integrations of Google Ads with CRMs like HubSpot and many others. In addition, it emphasized that the service will receive support for more browsers. As for the so-called “enhanced conversions”, Google has used this term to describe its cookie-free conversion tracking solution across all devices.
The idea is that users provide you with information through your website. Google takes this data in a hashed form and matches it against the Google account database to find even more important information about site visitors. Essentially, Google associates conversions with ads that users have already interacted with. And it works for any device. After that, Google sends the collected data back anonymously and in hashed form. And as a result, you get a better idea of the conversion while complying with all relevant privacy guidelines.
Privacy Sandbox APIs
During the conference, Google also noted that they spent a lot of time developing several APIs. These solutions will allow the Ads users to advertise and target potential customers while not relying on third-party cookies. The company claims to start testing these APIs in the near future in 2022.
What about Google Shopping?
Google has been talking a lot about the intuitiveness and immersiveness of its Google Shopping service. When it comes to improvements that are significant for the e-Commerce segment, you should be aware of the following updates.
Search and YouTube Shorts will receive product feeds
To make the shopping experience even more convenient and exciting for consumers, Google intends to combine it with the browsing experience. With this idea in mind, the company decided to add product feeds not only to Search but also to Shorts videos, which are becoming an incredibly popular YouTube format.
Instant checkout
The company wants customers to be able to get to the checkout process as quickly as possible, and they will be able to experience this pretty soon. In the coming months, Google will introduce a checkout option into search listings. Walmart and Shopify will be pioneering this feature, with other serious retailers joining them in the foreseeable future.
The more visual buying process
Clothing ads are getting a major update in the form of a visual feed that users can swipe. It means that the ads will be accompanied by quality images along with other SERP results. And if users want to learn more about a particular product, they just need to swipe up on the relevant ad.
3D Artificial Reality
This technology will take our interaction with search results to the next level as it will allow us to view any products in 3D right on the SERPs.
Connected TV ads with Google Audiences
Given the growing popularity of OTT advertising around the world, Google has indicated that we will be able to use Google Audiences for connected TV advertising campaigns in the future.
The Performance Max updates
If you want to advertise your products across all the available properties in one campaign, there is nothing better than Google’s Performance Max (PM) solution.
Experiment tools
When it comes to PM campaigns that do not provide you with product feeds, this feature is one of the more vital, and it has reached the beta testing stage. It will allow you to track how well your ads are performing when you combine your PM campaigns with other types of campaigns you use. Google claims that the feature will be fully functional by the end of 2022.
Reports for store sales
This feature’s beta version is already available for all users in Local campaigns. Besides your traffic, it will help you analyze the sales of your store. Google plans to implement it in PM campaigns this fall.
Burst campaigns
According to Google guidelines, you need to run your store campaigns for at least 30 days to reach as many potential buyers as possible. Burst campaigns will allow you to achieve a similar reach much faster, in about 14 days.
Optimization and recommendations
The Performance Max campaign will also receive an update in terms of Google Ads recommendations. The service will help you optimize your targeting and campaign budgets, and these recommendations will be dictated not only by your chosen settings but also by other crucial criteria like trends.
YouTube Shorts ads
It was pretty obvious that the Shorts trend is becoming more and more popular across the globe. However, Google’s statements showed that even the most optimistic prognoses in this area were wrong. According to the company, YouTube Shorts has more than quadrupled its number of daily views this year compared to 2021. With 30 billion views every day, it means that ads made available for this video format will provide you with even more sales.
More effective asset creation
In regard to asset creation, the company also told us about some useful upcoming updates.
New asset library
Thanks to this library, advertisers will be able to interact with each other and exchange their assets in a more convenient way. Google claims that users will be able to create ads much faster here, by using text assets, a logo, and 5 images. The company also said that the library will have all the features needed to create and publish YouTube video content. Moreover, you will be able to produce such videos in about one minute.
Auto-generated assets for responsive search ads
While Google plans to release this feature before the end of this year, the company has already explained to us that it is designed for creating RSA assets. It will parse ads from your current ad campaigns and your landing page content to generate assets automatically.
Messaging through ads
In the near future, users will be able to send text messages to businesses through Search ads. This improvement is surely another significant step towards a more effortless shopping experience.
Improved reporting
Conversion Lift testing
This update will please all who are into Discovery and Video Action campaigns. When you launch these companies, Google will split them between two separate groups. The first one will include the audience that will view your ad, while the other group will view the next ad from your competitors instead of your ad. After that, Google will analyze your site in terms of conversions and show you how much more effective the ad from your campaign was compared to the competitor’s one.
Search Lift testing
If you want to get more information about the organic traffic generated by your YouTube campaigns, this feature will undoubtedly come in handy. It will filter your users who have not seen your YT ads into a separate group so you can better understand the effectiveness of your campaigns on this video hosting platform.
GA4 update
Considering that Google has replaced Universal Analytics with G4, this update really plays a significant role. Thanks to the new Home dashboard, you will be able to get even more useful information about your potential customers. The dashboard will analyze what stage of the buying journey your audience is at and provide you with valuable insights based on that.
The Insights page improvements
The Insight page available in Google Ads will allow advertisers to get better campaign results through daily insights. Google generates this data by analyzing various trends and your account from the performance perspective. The company wanted to give Google Ads users a better understanding of automated decisions and said the Insights page will be updated with three new data categories.
Budget information
This feature will help you understand how effectively your campaign is performing in regard to budget spending. Thanks to this, you will be able to replenish your account faster to support the most effective campaigns. And if Google predicts that you will have more money than you expected at the end of the month, you can quickly distribute these funds among other initiatives.
Attribution data
The beauty of this enhancement is that it will allow you to track how exactly your prospects are behaving across all of your campaigns. You will be able to see the paths users prefer to choose and measure the effectiveness of campaigns that drive conversions.
First-party insights about your audience
This feature is useful for those who want to see which audience segments are generating more conversions based on your first-party information. On top of that, this feature will provide hints to the machine-learning algorithm about potentially profitable optimizations for your campaigns.
Mobile-centric layouts for display ads
Google noted that they have put a lot of effort into mobile advertising and introduced video / scrollable ads designed for this platform. As for the other mobile updates, advertisers will also be able to create full-screen portrait ads.
Conclusion
The conference pleased us with numerous upcoming and already implemented updates. These improvements emphasize automation features, cross-platform interactions, and of course, visual advertising. Google has offered advertisers even more ways to track the behavior of their target audience and make their shopping experience smoother and more unobtrusive. The company has also made a clear focus on YouTube Shorts’ growth. And given the skyrocketing popularity of video content, it comes as no surprise that Google decided to capitalize on this global trend.
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