Google Ads updated

Discovery Ads has been designed to make it easier than ever to push ads to all of Google’s properties and placing them in front of users who are the most likely to be open to discovering your products and services. Through powerful machine learning implementation, Google can understand the intent and anticipate customers need and show users accordingly. This is something that is extremely useful when pushing ads to platforms such as YouTubes home feed and Gmail promotions tab at the optimised time for discovery ensuring that millions of more users will see your ad.

Discovery Ads is able to do this through simplified campaign creator tools. For marketeers, Google machine learning makes the process of delivering the best ads easier. Simply upload your high-quality assets when creating ads and campaigns. Google will then use machine learning to automatically render your ad and assets to natively suit each of Google's properties. So, if you have an image-based ad it will be resized for each individual platform and optimised for each respective platform. If you want to use multiple images within your ad, Google Discovery Ads will display the ad as a swipe carousel which when clicked on can display the ads as a scrollable feed-based ad. With the rapid rise and growth of feed-based styled ads, this ensures that your ads will be ready and optimised to take advantage of the growth. Google announced that Discovery Ads will be rolling out later this year.

Google also announced Gallery Ads as a new format designed to give customer and users all the information they might want or need directly within the ad. The new product means that marketers can showcase their business, products and services using both images and compelling text to engage users.

Gallery Ads are displayed as carousel format that uses 4-8 images each with a 70-character tag line for each image. Creators of the ads can also craft three headlines for the gallery ad which is then supported by machine learning with the most relevant one being displayed to the user. When users click on the carousel the ad transforms into a scrollable feed displaying the image and tagline text. The website link remains at the top of the screen even while the user is scrolling to make it easier for the user to visit your site once they have finished looking at the ad content.

This makes it easier to tell a product's story or showcase a specific range of products in a way that is engaging for users. In testing, Google revealed that Gallery Ads can provide 25% more interactions meaning more paid clicks and swipes at the top of the mobile search results pages. Expect Gallery Ads to be given a wide release later this year.

A much-requested new feature is being added to Google Ads. It is designed to benefit those with apps while encouraging others to develop apps for their business, products and services. Deep linking will be added to Google Ads along with new robust reporting tools for better measurement and analytical insights. What this means is that when a user sees an advert from a brand or company and clicks on it, they are offered an option to purchase the product using said company’s app if they have it installed on their mobile device.

This makes the process of purchasing a product hassle-free. If a user is already using an app to purchase their products and services it will already include their billing information, delivery address etc within the app. So, linking an ad to the business product/service make the direct process of purchasing easier for the user.

For marketers crafting ads, all they will need to do is simply include universal links for iOS or app links on Android directly into the ad creation. This will however only work if you have enabled Google web tracking and have a switch on deep linking in Google Ads settings. There will be new reporting tools available that will be able to measure results and determine the difference between mobile web and app conversions.

Google will be updating the Google Analytics Firebase Software development kit to enhance reporting. The SDK will allow you to produce more in-depth app usage results and set goals in a similar way to web conversion goals. These results can then be sent and viewed in Google Ads. Deep linking and App linking are now available for those creating search, display and shopping ads.

The Google Ads platform will also be getting some direct adjustments. Marketers will soon be able to set up new rules that can be adjusted based on property values that include elements such as whether someone is on your audience list or not. Even better is the ability to have this reflected in your reporting. Conversion reporting with automatically reflect the conversion properties of the rule created helping to deliver a more truthful representation and a better understanding of your Google Ads campaign. This will also take into account the brand-new Smart Bidding functionality.

Smart Bidding is being introduced into Google Ads which will be powered by machine learning and also include new strategies such as the Maximise Conversion Vale for search-based campaigns. This allows you to better deliver the right ads to the right people at the right times. Using your rules, set and audiences, Smart Bidding can give you accurate predictions on different bid amounts, how it affects conversions or conversion values and what the best bid optimisations for you are. As a result, this means you can better craft ads strategies that incorporate the conversion goals that matter most to your business. Seasonality adjustment will also be added as well which means you can let Google know about sales and promotions etc ahead of time. Smart Bidding will then adjust the conversion rate during that time. This won't impact your reporting as Smart Bidding will recognise the performance shifts as temporary and will exclude the data from your ad bids one the sales promotion has ended.

In terms of customising your optimisation for Google Ads, Marketeers soon be able to set conversion actions at the campaign level. This includes creating multiple conversion action set that can be shared across campaigns. This will include the ability to optimise store visit conversions for search campaigns which are perfect for those with real-world stores and locations. This will be powered by both Smart Bidding and the machine learning capabilities of Google Ads.

Marketers should be able to start using Smart Bidding features very shortly as it begins to roll out onto the platform.