The advertising world has been buzzing ever since the Google Marketing Live event showcased how Google plans to use AI to improve its marketing platform for businesses of all sizes. The event is broadcast every year to a worldwide audience of marketing professionals who are eager to hear about the future of Google Ads and Search. This year’s topics focused on AI, future improvements to Performance Max campaigns, and how to multiply the success of your Google advertising moving forward. It’s been almost one month since the 10th annual event was held and we’ve prepared our top 5 insights on the future of search marketing and what it means for SMBs and advertisers.
AI Helps Advertisers Compete
There is a great need for AI in search marketing in today’s digital landscape. The average consumer journey has grown more complex in recent years where it is common for a customer to have 5 different touchpoints during the buying process. Google Ads AI tools are developed with three concepts in mind: to help marketers keep up-to-speed with competitors, reach customers at the right time, and drive better results.
In addition, privacy has become more important to users. This is the reason why Google has developed its new analytics platform, GA4. It will use AI to collect and report on website analytics that will help drive ad performance in a new privacy-centric environment.
Build a Solid Foundation
During the Marketing Live event, Google refers to “AI Essentials” which are the basic requirements needed to succeed with AI and Google Ads. These are divided into three categories, the first of which is “Foundation”. The foundational aspect strengthens measurement strategy with high quality data. This is accomplished with setting up the Google site tag, the setup of enhanced conversions, assigning values to conversions, and upgrading to GA4. By building a solid foundation, you will set yourself up for success in the future of advertising with Google.
Utilize AI-Powered Ad Campaigns
The second AI Essential is the utilization of AI-powered campaigns that automatically optimize performance in real time to get more conversions and value for your budget. This includes the combination of running simultaneous Search and Performance Max campaigns (Pmax), utilizing value-based smart bidding, and using a wide variety of creative inputs. Pmax campaigns utilize AI to combine multiple types of ad assets and optimized targeting to reach the right audience at the right time.
By introducing AI at the campaign level, campaigns can be launched faster as many of the previous manual tasks will shift to AI. However, marketers will still need to guide the AI in order to drive the best results.
Organizations Will Need to Shift Mindsets
The final piece to AI Essentials is the shifting of the mindsets of organizations in order to unlock the full benefits of AI. Brands and Agencies will need to become open to shifting budgets towards the biggest opportunities. Since AI is going to be doing a lot of the tasks that used to be manual, this will free up time for more experimentation in order to test, learn, and scale what works best.
Agility is going to be very important as workflow will become less siloed between data, budget, and channels. There are also going to be new campaign types being released, such as Demand Generation campaigns that utilize YouTube shorts, Discovery ads, and Gmail to reach lookalike segments of your first-party data.
First-Party Data Will Drive Performance
The majority of advertisers understand the importance of first-party data, however, less than 1/3 of them admit to using it. It’s for this reason that Google is going to make it easier to connect data sources, such as CRMs, to ad accounts. One of the final key takeaways from the Google Marketing Live event was that first-party data plus AI equals a winning Google Ads strategy. If brands and agencies don’t fully embrace AI and first-party data, they will most certainly fall behind and won’t achieve their desired results. AI-driven ad campaigns, such as Pmax, use first-party data signals to help supercharge and hyper-target those who are most likely to convert towards your campaign goals.
If you’re looking for a team of experienced marketers to guide you into the future of search engine marketing, Brand Ranch Media is a pioneer in driving successful AI-driven campaigns. We have been using AI marketing technology since its inception and have a strong track record of helping our clients grow. Give us a call at 713-309-6380 or use our contact form to shoot us a quick message!