Recently, Google announced an exciting new rebrand of their suite of Google products for advertisers and marketers, AdWords will now simply be referred to as Google Ads.
On Tuesday, July 10th, Google hosted their annual keynote Google Marketing Innovations Keynote, live from their headquarters in California.
Sridhar Ramaswama, the Senior Vice-President of Ads introduced the new Google Marketing Platform and discussed the purpose behind the exciting changes that Google will be introducing to their marketing services and products.
Google’s new marketing platform aims to emphasize the need for transparent advertising that provides value. Today, customers are demanding, impatient, and curious. They are searching for things on the go, as they need it. Google is making it easier for businesses to connect with the right audience, and for consumers to find just what they’re looking for – when they’re looking for it.
Here are some key takeaways our team gathered from the 2018 Google Marketing Innovations keynote:
Google’s Cross-Device Reporting & Remarketing
Measure. Report. Take an action.
Measurement in today’s mobile-first world can be a challenge as there are more mobile devices than ever before. Most us own multiple devices such as a personal computer, a smartphone, and we move between these devices throughout the day. For businesses to accurately measure the impact of their marketing initiatives across devices, Google has introduced “Cross-Device Reporting & Remarketing” analytics. This will allow analysts to view and analyze a user’s behaviour on the website no matter what device they are using.
For example, if a user buys your product or service on their mobile phone and later on desktop, previously we couldn’t say 100% that these purchases were made by one user and we might undervalue the importance of this customer. But now we can measure, report and take action based on a comprehensive view of your customer’s path to making a purchase.
Responsive Search Ads
A Powerful New Text Ad Format
Among the exciting announcements from this year’s Google Marketing Live is a new ad format for search campaigns. These are called responsive search ads, and they have several advantages compared to the expanded text ads that we’re used to.
Not only do they support 90% more ad copy, they also use Google’s advanced machine learning capabilities to optimize ad delivery. Algorithms identify winning combinations of up to three headlines and two descriptions and automatically serve the best combination for the user’s search. This lets advertisers test ad creatives more efficiently, freeing up valuable time to manage other aspects of a campaign.
Currently in beta, Google will be rolling out responsive search ads to all advertisers over the next few months. Here at Ontario SEO, we have some clients who are participating in the beta trial of this new ad format. We will share our thoughts with you in the coming weeks.
Smart Campaign & Ad Personalization
The constantly changing Google Ecosystem
Google made a couple of announcements this week that at first has us a little wary (actually these features have been available for a little while now, but this was the first big announcement) – Ad Personalization & Smart Campaigns. After some deeper reflection, we think these new options may work out alright for those of you working with a knowledgeable agency (like us!).
Ad Personalization
Ads That Work for Everyone
Likely in response to GDPR and the ongoing issues at Facebook, Google has introduced more controls over ad personalization to all users of Google Products. This means Google users can opt out of personalized advertising entirely. While this option is not great for anyone trying to reach those people through digital marketing (now we can’t target them as easily), there is a silver lining to this announcement; Google users can now modify their ad preferences and choose which category of ad they prefer to have displayed to them.
So, what does that look like? For the people that have not altered their ad settings (we think most people won’t bother), we will still be able to target users as usual. For people who do alter their ad personalization, this is even better! Now we know we are targeting people who want to see ads for businesses & services like ours. As for the users we may no longer be able to reach, I guess one could say “c’est la vie”. These are likely not people who engage with ads in the first place…..and if they are, we can always catch them on the Facebook network 😉
Smart Campaigns
An Easy Approach to Google Ads
Google’s new Smart Campaigns for Google Ads makes it easier than ever to set up a campaign in AdWords. This new campaign option relies heavily on machine learning to run a simple ad campaign targeted for your chosen product or service. Google suggests these campaigns will require minimal management and easily attract new customers to your website OR Google Maps listing.
We are interested to see how this plays out. On one hand, if many business owners take up this offer and start running these mainly-automated campaigns, we fully expect to see average CPCs rise for everybody. On the other hand, here at Ontario SEO, we have run a number of experiments on many of the automated bidding methods that are currently available in AdWords….I mean Google Ads. Despite their ease of use, we have never found an automated campaign that performs better than good old-fashioned manual CPC bidding. We may well just find our business booming in a few months as these new Google ads clients realize that their campaign may still need a human touch.
We’re excited to see these changes roll out across Google’s new marketing platform and look forward to testing out these new offerings. For more information about Google Ads and how to make it work for your business, contact the team at Ontario SEO.
