Google Marketing Live 2024: What Now?

Updated July 2024.

At Google Marketing Live 2024, Google unveiled a host of AI-powered solutions set to revolutionize its advertising platform over the coming year. 

These changes promise to enhance every ad type on its platform and integrate AI to streamline and optimize the entire advertising process, from AI-driven search ads to immersive shopping experiences.

In this recap, we’ll go over the highlights of Google Marketing Live 2024 and explore the new AI features and their potential impact on the future of digital marketing. 

Recap of 2024 Google Marketing Live: 12 Key Takeaways and Highlights

Google Marketing Live is an annual event where Google unveils its latest innovations and updates in digital marketing. This event is a must-watch for marketers, advertisers, and businesses looking to stay ahead of the curve with cutting-edge tools and strategies.

Compared to Google Marketing Live 2023, this year’s event was packed with AI-powered solutions designed to enhance advertising effectiveness across its platform.

One of the key themes was the integration of AI to better understand both the query and the user intent, ensuring that ads are not only relevant but also highly targeted to help users make complex purchase decisions.

Google introduced a range of new features aimed at streamlining the advertising process, improving ad relevance, and driving better campaign results. 

These updates promise to revolutionize how marketers create, manage, and optimize their Google ads, offering advanced tools to meet the evolving demands of the digital landscape.

Let’s jump into 12 key takeaways and look at how they can impact your marketing efforts. 

1. AI Overviews with Ads: A New Era in Search

Google AI Overviews, which have started rolling out over the past few weeks, are expected to become a part of the Google advertising ecosystem over the next few months:

Starting in the US, these generative AI overviews will begin incorporating search and shopping ads to offer AI-powered recommendations. This integration aims to streamline the search experience and provide users with highly relevant ad content seamlessly interwoven with Google search results. 

For marketers, this means keeping the user’s path to purchase top of mind and ensuring the best creative content is in place to stand out even in standard shopping campaigns. 

By integrating AI-powered ads in AI overview, Google is enhancing the visibility and relevance of ads appearing in search, potentially increasing engagement and conversions. 

2. The Evolution of Google Lens in Visual Search

Google Lens continues to evolve, positioning itself as the “new search.” Visual search has become increasingly important, especially with platforms like TikTok where Gen Z starts many of their searches. 

Google is leveraging Lens to compete in this space, making it a vital tool for marketers:

Available on both Google Chrome and Android, Google Lens now incorporates shopping ads into visual searches. We encourage you to use it to scan some of your top products. Start testing search; what comes up? Is it what you want your customers to see?

If the results don’t showcase relevant products or what you want customers to see, now is the time to optimize your product listings, visual storytelling, and font and color guidelines to ensure they align with your brand guidelines and marketing goals. 

3. AI-Powered Search Ads

Google announced AI-Powered Search Ads, a feature that uses AI to create dynamically adjusting ads to deliver highly relevant messages, optimize bids, and target the right searches:

This new feature means Google search will analyze your site and recommend ad copy, ensuring that your ads align closely with your landing pages. This alignment will be crucial, as mismatched ads and landing pages can lower your quality score ranking and affect your ad performance in Google’s search results page. 

For marketers, this underscores the importance of your site’s content for high-performing ads. High-quality, relevant content is now more critical than ever, not just for SEO but for your paid ad performance as well. 

Ensuring that your website content is optimized and consistent with your ad messaging will be key to maintaining and improving retailer advertising quality scores. 

4. Google’s “Power Pair” Strategy: Performance Max and Search

Google has reclassified their “Power Pair” to be Performance Max (PMax) and Search ads, whereas in previous years Google has referred to broad match keywords and smart bidding as their “Power Pair.” 

This reclassification did come with the caveat that broad match keywords and smart bidding are still important, but that PMax is equally as important. 

This AI-driven strategy has shown a 10% performance improvement for advertisers: 

The renamed “Power Pair” places significant control into Google’s hands, optimizing ad delivery to maximize results. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s important for marketers to balance this automation with strategic oversight. 

At Single Grain, we believe in testing and knowing when to hand the reins to Google and when to steer it ourselves. It seems like Google is again pushing toward taking over full control. 

Although Google is pushing towards more automated control, there are ad scripts and optimization techniques marketers can use to maintain some control and ensure the best outcomes for their campaigns. 

5. Profit Optimization for Retail: Boosting Ecommerce Performance

Google is rolling out a Profit Optimization option for retailers. This is HUGE news for ecommerce clients. 

This feature combines data from cart-level conversions and cost of goods sold to optimize for profit, promising a 15% uplift in performance based on Google’s initial studies.

This is great news when you consider how profitable ecommerce is projected to be in the coming years: 

Retailers can set flexible goals for revenue and profit without disrupting their bidding strategies. This means you won’t lose all your campaign history and throw your account into a long learning period for ads if you dive in and test this. 

As this option rolls out in Google Merchant Center feeds, we expect to start testing it with our clients to see if the 15% uplift is the same across different verticals. 

6. Enhancing Ad Creative with AI: Balancing Automation and Strategy

Google is pushing forward with AI-powered creative solutions, reporting a potential 6% boost in ad performance if you use their AI-powered creatives based on Google internal data. 

While some clients might find value here, there’s still a large amount of creative strategy that needs to be done even when using AI-powered image editing for ad creative:

From what we’ve seen, Google AI creatives often resemble stock images rather than user-generated content (UGC), and that ad format might not resonate well with all audiences.

If 6% is the highest uplift Google is able to pull from its study, we’d say that for now, relying solely on generative AI for ad creation might not be ideal, especially if your target audience prefers more personalized content. 

Instead, consider using tools that focus on high-quality visuals and creative assets to complement your marketing strategy. 

7. Performance Max: New Reporting and Control Features

Performance Max (PMax) campaigns are getting a significant update with new reporting and control features. 

These enhancements provide better insights and greater control over your campaigns, including placement reporting, YouTube exclusions, and asset-level reporting:

For marketers, these new tools are a welcome change that offer more transparency into where ads are appearing and how different assets are performing.  

These updates are particularly exciting for those who have been navigating the “black box” nature of PMax campaigns. When this was announced, there were literal fist pumps from all of us working on Performance Max campaigns. 

8. Expanding Engagement with Demand Generation Lookalike Audiences

Google’s Demand Gen, which encompasses YouTube, Discover, and Gmail and reaches 3 billion monthly users, is the only place in Google where you can use lookalike audiences:

New updates include lower audience segment thresholds (from 1,000 to only 100). This will make those lookalike segments more accessible to smaller businesses and more strategic lists, like the top 100 highest-value customers.  

This change is particularly beneficial for lead gen advertisers, who can now target more precise segments to generate higher-quality leads.

Additionally, Demand Gen campaigns will start rolling out more AI-produced creative features, such as animated image ads for YouTube Shorts ad campaigns and clickable stickers on YouTube Shorts to boost engagement.

9. YouTube Shopping and Product Studio

YouTube Shopping, in partnership with Shopify, will now allow detailed insights into product tagging by creators. This feature enables creators to tag products in their YouTube videos, making it easier than ever for customers to find and purchase items directly through YouTube:

In addition, YouTube Product Studio will offer tools to create videos from a few product images, aligning with your brand’s aesthetic and increasing your presence across different placements on the web.

These tools make it simpler for businesses to produce engaging video content and facilitate a more interactive shopping experience that could drive higher conversions. 

10. Immersive Shopping Ads: The Future of Online Retail Experiences

Get ready for the next level of immersive shopping experiences. Google is introducing 3D shopping ad formats, starting with shoes, that will show the product from every angle:

I have a feeling this will be a slower roll out but definitely one to keep an eye on. 

Google is also slowly rolling out a virtual try-on feature for apparel and beauty products. This allows users to see items on different body shapes and sizes, helping them make more informed purchase decisions. 

Although these features may take time to become widely available, they are indicative of where the platform is heading — imagery and customization at the forefront. 

11. Data and Analytics in Google Ads Data Manager

Google again emphasizes the importance of first-party data for robust AI performance. The new Google Ads Data Manager and updated measurement diagnostics tools aim to help marketers manage and fix data issues efficiently. These tools will offer deeper insights and streamline campaign analysis and optimization:

With these changes, marketers can expect more accurate reporting and the ability to fine-tune their Google ads campaigns based on real-time data. By using first-party data effectively, businesses can enhance their targeting strategies and improve overall campaign performance. 

This shift underscores the growing need for businesses to prioritize data collection and management in their marketing efforts. 

12. Marketing Mix Models: Introducing Google’s Meridian Tool

Google is introducing Meridian, an open-source Marketing Mix Model available to all marketers. Meridian provides advanced tools for analyzing and optimizing marketing strategies: 

Hopefully, Meridian will help marketers more easily track marketing efficiency, but until it’s rolled out and we see what the impacts are, it’s important to keep in mind overall marketing spend versus overall revenue generated in Google Analytics. As long as that’s improving, then your advertising is working.

Whether or not Meridian will favor Google placements, whether organic or paid, remains to be seen, but I have a feeling it will give more value to the Google ecosystem, such as YouTube ads, over Meta ads.

Potential Impacts of Google’s Acquisition of HubSpot

While Google’s rumored acquisition of HubSpot wasn’t covered at Google Marketing Live 2024, it’s an important variable to consider, especially for HubSpot users and shareholders.

Google’s parent company Alphabet is reportedly making moves to acquire HubSpot, which is valued at $30 billion. If the deal goes through, Google would overnight become a powerful competitor for Microsoft in the customer relationship management sector.

Here are some ways this deal could impact marketers: 

• Enhancing Google’s marketing ecosystem: Integrating HubSpot with Google can enhance the capabilities of Google Analytics, Google Ads, and other Google marketing tools by providing a seamless, all-in-one solution for businesses.
• Boosting AI and automation in marketing: A key theme at Google Marketing Live 2024 was the increasing role of AI and automation in digital marketing. HubSpot’s advanced automation features, combined with Google’s AI prowess, promise to revolutionize how businesses approach marketing.
• A new era of digital marketing: Google acquiring HubSpot would mark a new era in digital marketing with greater integration, automation, and data-driven decision-making.

If successful, this would be the biggest acquisition by Google since it acquired Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in 2011. Nothing is officially confirmed yet, but the synergies of HubSpot’s inbound marketing tools and Google’s search capabilities would be an incredible boon for businesses of all sizes.

Learn more: What A Potential HubSpot Acquisition By Google Could Imply

Final Thoughts on Google Marketing Live 2024

Google Marketing Live 2024 unveiled a plethora of AI-powered tools and updates designed to revolutionize digital marketing. 

Google stated that 40% of all shopping campaigns started with a brand or retailer name. This means that the person has ALREADY decided to purchase the product before they even type into the search bar. 

Top of funnel campaigns that might not look like they generate the most ROI will be more critical than ever in this AI-driven ecosphere, especially as the world gets used to searching via images or video. 

The only way to scale, especially in this new digital world, is to get people to want your product, and to search for you either by name or by function. How do you do that? You have to be able to get in front of the right person at the right time. 

Google Marketing Live promises to help businesses to be able to do just that, but only time will tell if all of these new touchpoints are truly good for your business or only good for Google. 

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