Google Marketing Live 2019 Recap

Google Marketing Live 2019 reminded advertisers of the responsibility that they have to searchers. Google emphasized the importance that advertisers be responsible, be there, and be useful. They also unveiled a number of new features that will be available to advertisers later this fall. Here are six features that we can't wait to use.

1. Gallery Ads‍

These creative focused ads have us questioning which platform are we on, Facebook or Google? These ads allow advertisers to combine images and copy in a carousel format. Advertisers will be able to add between 4-8 images, up to 3 headlines, and a 70 character tagline for each image. As you can imagine images have a higher probability of increasing interaction. On average campaigns that utilized gallery ads increased interactions up to 25%.

2. YouTube Bumper Ads‍

Bumper ads are six-second videos that play before the video starts. These ads cannot be skipped. Google is helping advertisers utilize Bumper ads by their new bumper machine. This machine takes any youtube video less than one and a half minutes long and separates it into 5-6 different bumper ads. The tool comes at no additional costs and is expected to release later this year.

3. Audience Expansion Tool‍

Google's audience expansion tool is a mimic of Facebook's lookalike audiences. This tool takes an existing audience and enlarges it by adding people who look like and behave similarly to your existing audience. The greater the original audience quality the more qualified the prospects are.

4. Smart Bidding Updates‍

The buzz of the keynote address was 'machine learning' which refers to computers analyzing/interpreting data to create patterns and then implement changes based on those patterns. Google released three new smart bidding tools and reminded advertisers that machine learning is not disappearing any time soon.

• Campaign-Level Conversion Goals - Now we can optimize campaigns individually based on conversions, like campaigns created to drive appointment booking.
• Conversion Action Sets - Optimize bids across multiple campaigns with conversion action sets.
• Seasonality Adjustments - Have a reason to expect higher conversions during a certain time period such as sales, registration periods, or exam periods? Now Google will optimize bids for that time period and revert back to normal once the period has passed.

5. Discovery Ads

Discovery ads are a swipe-able carousel of images. These ads can be placed in the Gmail promotions tab, YouTube home feed, and the news feed in Google Discover. The idea is to allow advertisers to show ads when the user is most likely to try something new.

6. Frictionless Google Shopping ‍

Google is updating their shopping network to allow prospects to become consumers directly from the shopping interface. This announcement comes after Instagram introduced Checkout which allows users to purchase directly from the app. Prospects will still be able to click through to the website from shopping ads but no longer will have to in order to complete a purchase.

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