Last week Google hosted their annual Google Marketing Live 2019 event to showcase some of the up-coming changes to Google Ads.
Here are some of the main changes to Google Ads:
Google Ads Mobile App
As of last week, Google Ads administrators can now create and edit ads directly from the ‘Google Ads’ handy app to manage accounts whilst they’re on-the-go. There’s really no excuse to avoid work now!
Google are also going to introduce recommendations and notifications to allow the user to edit keywords and opt in to Smart Bidding strategies.
Increased Accessibility and Effectiveness for Local Campaigns
Specifically designed to assist marketers drive footfall to physical stores/outlets, Local Campaigns will soon expand even further to drive and influence even more actions; such as calls and directions to businesses.
Recent global studies by Google found that Local Campaigns assisted brands in driving a median 5x incremental return-on-ad-spend from their business’s location – a significant amount for any business, particularly small independents.
Discovery Ads
Perhaps the biggest announcement of all was Google’s new Discovery ads, which fits in with this year’s key theme of ‘discovery’ for when users are open to discovering something new.
These are new, native, visually rich and mobile first ads that appear in multiple Google feeds. These will be used through the ‘power of intent’; meaning Google will derive these ads from consumers’ past site visitations, app downloads, videos watched and map searches.
Similarly, to dynamic ad set-up, advertisers will have to specifically create a Discovery campaign and upload ad copy. Google will then optimize the best performing combinations, using machine learning, to place the ads in the Google Discover feed which reaches 800 million users globally on the mobile YouTube feed and in Gmail under the social and promotions tabs.
Discovery ads will become available to advertisers later on this year.
Gallery Ads
It’s not just Discovery ads that will capitalize in on the visual digital revolution, Gallery ads will also be joining with visually compelling sections that will appear at the top of mobile search results. They’ll compromise a scrollable gallery with between 4 and 8 images, and up to 70 characters for each image.
Advertisers will have to pay for these on a CPC basis, either when a user clicks through to a landing page, or when they swipe to the third image in the sequence. On some of the ads there may be no clickthroughs, instead simply image swipes. Both of these methods will cost the same.
Google anticipates these ads will cause increased interaction in comparison to other current ad formats, seeing 25% more ad interaction.
Showcase Shopping Ads Expansion
First introduced in 2016 for Search, Showcase Shopping ads were intended to offer retailers a means of “showcasing” a curated list of their products in response to non-branded searches such as “denim shorts” or “household furniture.”
As well as regular Search, Google announced Showcase Shopping ads will be introduced to Google Images, the Discover feed, along with the YouTube feed at a later date.
The ads are made up of a main image along with smaller images, but expand to ‘showcase’ multiple products that the retailer has selected. These ads also have the ability to carry location information for retailers that want to encourage physical footfall to their outlets.
App Deep Linking
According to Google, deep linked ad experiences drove twice the conversion rates on average in comparison to standard ads. So, they’ll begin to roll this out along with their improved reporting.
This method of advertisement means that if the user searching has the business’s app installed, they’ll be taken straight into that app from wherever they’re searching from; be it Search, Shopping or Display campaigns.
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