It comes with no surprise that the hot topic during Google Marketing Live 2023 (GML) was AI. AI advancements continue to rapidly change the digital marketing landscape. Throughout 2023, Google will release more AI features to simplify and improve digital marketing strategy. Let’s dive into some of the key announcements and what it means for your brand and role as a digital marketer.
Move To A Conversational Search Engine
The theme throughout GML is the idea that AI initiatives and new innovations will supercharge the search experience. Google’s announcements show that the company is moving more toward directly integrating ads into the Search Generative Experience. The Search Generative Experience is Google’s new frontier in the AI-powered future that takes search to a whole new level as it integrates search and shopping ads.
Search will become increasingly more conversational, as Google unveiled its new concept to allow users to drill further down into their search query. The engine will remember previous search queries to supply context for subsequent queries to deliver a refined and curated result specifically for that user. Your content strategy should include multimedia assets, as the search results will showcase images and videos more seamlessly alongside text for a comprehensive experience delivered right to the user. People’s behavior will change as they ask different questions or prompts to get their answer, which will in turn continue to refine and reshape the search experience.
While AI will generate responses, it has to pull that information from somewhere. A robust content strategy is still important to delivering essential information to prospective customers.
Creating Campaigns Using Conversational AI
Within Google’s new conversational experience, marketers will be able to build more effective search ads more quickly.
Google’s new chat experience can help you create Google Ads campaigns, including keywords, headlines, descriptions, and assets. All you have to do is respond to a prompt for a preferred landing page and describe the product or service you want to advertise. From there, Google AI will help create the necessary assets.
What’s great about this feature is that it’s completely optional. You can still rely on your in-house or agency team to write all necessary content and assets.
Performance Max Continues to Be AI-Driven
When Google first launched Performance Max (PMax) campaigns, they were designed for the AI-powered future. PMax campaigns rely on machine learning to continually showcase the right combination of assets to the right audience at the right moment along their journey. PMax will now leverage even more AI-driven tools, as generative AI will help marketers generate creatives for image and video campaigns for an even greater automated experience.
The refined asset creation process will allow brands to more easily scale their creative potential to maximize revenue and audience reach from PMax campaigns.
Throughout the 2023 holiday season, NetElixir saw that Performance Max campaigns accounted for 48% of paid search orders during Cyber 5. PMax campaigns are set to be the standard campaign structure moving forward, so having more offerings and creative options will allow for better, more personalized ads.
AI-Generated Images
Google’s new Product Studio tool allows marketers to edit, enhance, and sharpen product photos for higher-quality promotional images. Marketers can even add dynamic backgrounds — let’s say a beach or with a pet playing in the back — or remove unappealing backgrounds so the product itself pops more.
When using AI-generated image tools, it is important to continually test image creation prompts to ensure brands are getting and using ownable imagery; as NetElixir’s Director of Marketing Keith Levitt reminds us that you don’t want the same generic backgrounds as your competition.
“Pay attention to consistency: once you find background imagery you like and that is on brand, try to capture these prompts and continue to use the same prompts so you get consistent images moving forward,” Keith continues.
To capture these brand-specific images, experiment with prompts that include your specific brand colors and use language from your brand guidelines document to align with your brand tone, look, and feel.
New Campaign Types
Google announced two new campaign types, video views and demand generation, to drive more results on YouTube.
Video view campaigns, as the name suggests, will drive the most views for your videos by combining skippable in-stream ads, in-feed ads, and Shorts ads. Video content is an increasingly vital component of your overall content marketing strategy, so more options to drive results across video campaigns is important.
Demand gen campaigns will be available across YouTube Shorts, YouTube in-stream, YouTube in-feed, Discover, and GMail to drive more conversations and expand the brand’s reach.
Key Takeaway: The Role Of AI Continues To Expand
A crucial takeaway from GML 2023 is that the role of AI will only continue to expand. AI innovations will help digital marketers scale and grow more effectively by reaching audiences with personalized and curated content.
However, AI is only as good as the foundation of data on which it’s built — better data means more optimized assets and insights. Continue to test and experiment with AI generation and prompts to train the algorithm as well as learn for yourself what works and what doesn’t.
Use Google’s AI Essentials checklist to supercharge your Google Ads strategy. Talk with a NetElixir expert today on how to redefine your AI-first strategy.
