Google Marketing Live 2023: the future is built on AI

What’s new from Google for marketers? New campaigns, updated targeting and new types of ads, all driven by AI.

There are 3 keywords of the Google Marketing Live which was held on May 24, 2023 at Google’s EMEA Headquarters in Dublin:

1. Creativity
2. Performance
3. Privacy

Let’s add to the list the keyword that caps all 3: artificial intelligence. We can summarize the future of Google as “the best combination of AI and humans”.
What’s new, specifically? To explain them better we have to take a step back.

Google and AI have been good friends for quite a few years but going into the specifics of digital advertising and the Google Ads platform, we recall a few steps:

• Early 2018: launch of RSA campaigns, Responsive Search Ads, where Google’s artificial intelligence delights in creating ads by scanning the topics of a given site or a section of it. The ads created are published on keywords in line with the content, to better respond to the needs of the person who is carrying out the search.
• End of 2018: launch of Responsive Display Ads campaigns, in which artificial intelligence combines the two assets loaded on the platform (texts and creativity) to be present on as many advertising spaces as possible. In illustrated display campaigns, which we can define as “classic”, it is necessary to upload creatives with specific dimensions to cover only a limited part of the advertising spaces on the Google display network.
• 2021: the new type of Performance Max campaign is launched, with which it is only possible to enter elements such as copy, creativity and a suggestion of the target audience. In this case, AI decides where to convey the ad, intercepting the user at the right time with the aim of increasing the performance of the campaigns. Over the years, this new type of campaign has helped various advertising accounts increase their ROI by an average of 18%.
• 2022: Google AI is used to automatically adjust videos uploaded to Google Ads to all formats (portrait, landscape, square).

So let’s get to 2023 and the news that Google will release during the year:

• Search campaigns: it will be possible to use new text ads suggested by AI. On the Google Ads panel there will be a chatbot with which we could relate and share a sort of brief on the activity/product/brand to be communicated. In response, we would get suggestions of titles, descriptions and keywords. Below is a preview of the interface.

• Performance Max campaigns: the chatbot will also be present for this campaign, but it will not stop at just suggesting a text. Stock images will also be recommended or, depending on the brief being shared, images created ad hoc for the specific campaign:

• New Demand Gen Campaigns: given the importance of social media in the last decade, Google has created a type of campaign that places its ads on the most social formats of its network, namely Gmail, YouTube and Discover. New qualified audiences will also be available and it will be possible to select a lookalike audience, with a deviation percentage ranging from 2% to 10%.
• New Google Ads interface: a modernization is also planned for the advertising platform, with a style very similar to GA4 and with the aim of making it easier to identify the most important settings.
• New audiences: it will be easier and safer to use first-party data in campaigns thanks to automatic links between offline and online first-party data with the Google Tag. The use of GA4 will also allow the sharing of audiences between the advertising and analytics platforms. Thanks to AI, predictable audiences will also be integrated based on the data of the two tools.

Will it be artificial intelligence, therefore, to guide the campaigns? AI will certainly help us with the creation of new texts and creativity, but a large number of information must be shared in order to create assets that are consistent with the product or brand we are promoting. It will therefore be important to proceed, also through listening, with the identification and writing of any detail that can make a difference and that can help artificial intelligence help us in turn in optimizing campaigns.