Google Marketing Live 2019 has now been wrapped up, leaving us with a whole range of new advertising features to get excited about, including Discovery Feed Ads; Gallery Ads and easy to create YouTube Bumper Ads.
Some of the new ad features and functionality draw on machine learning, while many others focussed on mobile. All of the new features, however, are designed to allow advertisers to deliver high quality ad experiences to their target audiences, while respecting their right to privacy online.
Here are some of our personal highlights of #GoogleMarketingLive 2019:
Discovery Feed Ads
The first announcement at this year’s keynote was Discovery Ads, designed to reach users who are open to ‘discovering’ new products and services.
Google unveiled the Google Discover news need in September 2018, and now for the first time it’s open to advertisers.
Discovery Ads appear in a swipeable carousel format, and can also be delivered in the YouTube homepage feed and Gmail promotions tab.
In one of Google’s case studies, fashion retailer TechStyle experienced a 25% lower cost-per lead using Discovery Ads compared to other channels.
Read more about Google’s Discovery Ads here.
Gallery Ads
Gallery Ads are set to bring imagery to search advertising for the first time. Similar to Discovery Ads, Gallery Ads will be delivered in the form of a swipeable carousel, but, unlike Discovery Ads, they will appear in the search result page in response to a relevant keyword search.
This presents advertisers with even greater opportunities to increase CTR by delivering immersive imagery to their target audience based on keyword search intent.
When a user taps on a Gallery Ad, a text headline provides more information on the product in question. A further tap will take the user through to the ad’s landing page.
Read more about Google’s Gallery Ads here.
Easy to Create YouTube Bumper Ads
With billions of videos being watched each day, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine, making it an extremely powerful platform for advertisers.
The 6-second bumper video is one of the most effective YouTube ad formats, but few businesses have the resources to create impactful videos to this specification.
Now, Google Ads’ Bumper Machine will render any video shorter than 90 seconds into a series of YouTube ready bumper ads.
Launching with a suite of editing tools to give advertisers full creative control over the final product, Bumper Machine is slated to roll out later this year.
Check out some great examples of a bumper ads below:
Read more about Google’s YouTube Bumper Machine here.
Checkout within Shopping Ads
Instagram recently rolled out Checkout on Instagram, a new feature that allows users to checkout directly within the app, and now Google has followed suit with shoppable Shopping Ads.
The new Shopping ad format aims to reduce friction in the checkout process, and ultimately to increase conversion rates and revenue for advertisers. Users will now be able to complete a transaction within the Shopping interface, without having to leave the ad itself.
Users will still have the option to visit the advertiser’s website if they prefer, but any reduction of the steps it takes for a user to complete a transaction is great news for advertisers and online shoppers alike.
Read more about shoppable Shopping Ads here.
Smart Bidding
Smart bidding is a core feature of Google’s Search and Display advertising, and that functionality just got more powerful. Harnessing the power of machine learning, advertisers will have even greater opportunity to deliver the right ad to the right user at the right time.
At this year’s keynote, Google announced three major improvements to smart bidding:
Campaign-level conversion goals – This enables advertisers to optimise all bids at campaign level, if that campaign is dedicated to a single conversion goal.
Conversion action sets – With conversion action sets, advertisers can optimise bids across several campaigns by creating a list of desired conversion actions.
Seasonality adjustments – If your business has seasonal peaks and troughs, Google Ads will now be able to optimise bids for the seasonal time-period to increase conversions and/or reduce wasted spend.
Read more about Smart Bidding on Google Ads here.
Local Campaigns
With evidence showing that users often check out a store online before visiting in person, Google is now bringing a form of responsive search to local advertising. Local Campaigns will enable store owners to advertise across the Google Network by inputting just a few details, such as store location, ad copy, images, budget and bids.
With this, advertisers will be able to promote their store on Google Search, Display, Maps and YouTube, with Google optimising ad delivery to maximise real world visits to your store.
In one of Google’s case studies involving a group of advertisers in several different industries, Local Campaign ads resulted in a fivefold increase in median incremental ROAS!
Read more about the new Local Campaigns here.
That’s all for #GoogleMarketingLive 2019. The end result is Google providing advertisers with new and powerful ways to connect with their audience online, reinforcing their “Be there. Be helpful. Be responsible” mantra.
At Clark St. James, we’re already looking into ways we can leverage the new features and functionality announced at #GoogleMarketingLive 2019 to increase ROAS for our ever growing list of clients.
If you have any questions about #GoogleMarketingLive or online advertising in general, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the team on 01603 343477 or info@clarkstjames.com.