Google Marketing Live 2019 Announcements

Last week Google hosted Google Marketing Live. Of course, Google pushed the importance of privacy and smart bidding strategies, however, there were many other announcements that got advertisers excited for the changes ahead. Here are the top 8 announcements that everyone at Clicks and Clients is the most excited for.

  1. Discovery Ads: These will be image ads that will appear within a searchers discovery feed on mobile devices, as well as on your YouTube’s homepage and in the Gmail promotions tab. Creative will be at the heart of these new image ads as these new ads will feature a swipeable image carousel.

    2. Why we’re excited: This new image format finally gives PPC an opportunity to create demand and be there more steps along the customer journey. As we live in a multi-touchpoint world, the ability to automatically hit customers across a variety of Google channels is very exciting.

  2. Custom Audiences:  Google is combining affinity audiences with in-market audiences and calling this new audience type: custom audiences.

    3. Why we’re excited: This new audience targeting will allow advertisers to narrow or broaden their audiences depending on campaign objectives.

  3. Gallery Ads: Images are coming to mobile search results. They will feature a gallery of images users can swipe through. Gallery ads will take up almost the entire screen on mobile, making this a prime spot for advertisers to be.

    4. Why we’re excited: With mobile users making up 58% of searches of Google, this new ad format will allow advertisers to provide deep meaningful interactions on mobile. In early testing, this new ad format drove 25% more engagement.

  4. App Deep Linking: Google is allowing for a seamless cross-platform experience with new deep linking in apps. Users will no longer be forced to convert on mobile sites. If a user has the app download the ad will automatically redirect the user and open the page in the app.

    5. Why we’re excited: This new deep linking capability will decrease the barriers to conversion for mobile users. This should greatly improve conversion rates for advertisers with an app. We expect the greatest impact to be for e-commerce advertisers.

  5. Google Shopping Experience: Say goodbye to Google Express. Google is becoming more like Amazon and will now give users the chance to complete purchases from multiple advertisers through one unified shopping cart. Products from shopping action merchants on Google will automatically be added to the new checkout process.

    6. Why we’re excited: This new user experience will hopefully increase conversion rates. With a streamlined easy checkout process, users will be able to convert easily. Google will also automatically fill out any information stored such as credit card or shipping address. This should greatly improve the mobile experience for many shopping users.

  6. Conversion Actions at the Campaign Level: Google will now allow advertisers to set conversion action goals at the campaign level rather than just at the account level. This will allow the campaign to optimize to more specific goals and create more granularity for advertisers.

    7. Why we’re excited: Since often campaigns have different goals, being able to set those conversion goals at the campaign level will allow us to better track and optimize towards those conversion actions.

  7. Bumper Machine: Forgive the name, but this tool will make it incredibly simple for advertisers to create bumper ads. An advertiser can upload a long YouTube video and the machine will automatically create 4 – 6 second bumper ads for an advertiser to choose from.

    8. Why we’re excited: Showing short 6 second ads throughout a video had better ad recall that one long pre-roll or post-roll ad. By allowing many short 6 second ads to be easily created, better engagement and recall is accessible to more advertisers.

  8. Bidding Strategies: Google is giving advertisers more control with smart bidding strategies. With the introduction of seasonality adjustments, value rules, and the maximize conversion value bidding strategy, advertisers will be able to get more bang for their buck with smart bidding. Value rules will allow advertisers to differentiate conversion value based on factors such as location, device, and audience.

    9. Why we’re excited: As Google pushes more and more for smart bidding, advertisers are pushing for more control. The introduction of value rules and seasonality adjustments give advertisers more control over reporting that they desire.

    Most of these big updates will be rolling out later this year and we can’t wait to get our hands on them. If you are curious about how some of these new changes can be applied to your PPC strategy, contact Clicks and Clients for a consultation.