Yesterday evening (10/07/18), here at Bigwave media we held a live screening of Google Marketing Live in San Jose. Exciting times ahead: this is the only way we’d be able to describe it – Google has been very busy over the past few months.
We already knew about the rebranding of Google AdWords (to Google Ads) and the new Google Marketing Platform, but it seems like we had only scratched the surface. Here’s what we learned from the event.
Cross-device reports & remarketing in Google Analytics
Very deservedly, after Anthony Chavez, Google’s Product Management Director for Google Ads, announced that we now have cross-device reporting, we heard a very positive response from the audience in San Jose.
This will be the first time that us marketers will be able to benefit from these new features, allowing us to make more informed decisions based on comprehensive audience data.
This, together with the new integration centre, will ensure that our campaigns will be running more smoothly, the message we’re trying to get across will be more impactful and users will get a better and more personalised experience.
Responsive search ads
Another exciting new development is the responsive search ads, that we’ll start to see being rolled out in the next few months. Google has been testing these for a while, but they will now become widely available.
This announcement will bring an automation in A/B testing for marketers – we’ll be able to provide 15 headlines and 4 descriptions and Google will choose 3 headlines and 2 description lines that work best for your campaign and audience. As an incentive to start using this type of ads, we can now have up to 90 characters in the descriptions, as opposed to the 80 allowed now.
We very much believe these new ads will be super helpful for both marketers and consumers –certainly those at entry level or with limited Ads knowledge. On one hand, automated A/B testing will solve a lot of the issues you can currently have and ones that we deal with manually. Better ads will, in turn, mean optimised bids and therefore the best possible ROI for each campaign.
On the other hand, consumers will see tailored and highly relevant offers for them which saves them time and frustration. Win-win really! For us, we find manual optimisation still provides greater results for those that know how to interpret the data and act accordingly, but for the wider user base this is a great new trick up the sleeve.
YouTube Advertising
A new bidding strategy was announced for advertisers on YouTube – Maximise Lift – to drive online and in-store conversions.
In its essence, it’s a smart bidding strategy to target consumers that will be most likely to consider your brand after seeing the ad. We’ll start seeing new offerings like TrueView for Action later this year.
Local Campaigns
Google’s one main purpose is to stay as relevant as possible.
In today’s mobile-first everything, local search is more relevant than ever before – and not just your standard ‘pharmacy near me’ but rather people willing to explore their local area a lot more and searching for very specific things.
Therefore, it’s not surprising that Google is launching something called Local Campaigns that are targeting store visits.
Smart Shopping Campaigns
Google is releasing two new goal types for their Smart Shopping Campaigns – store visits and new customer acquisition. Again, this ties in with their drive in Local Campaigns.
Google’s integration with Shopify will soon include setting up shopping ads straight from Shopify’s interface. It is all to benefit small business owners who will now be able to set up shopping ads a lot easier than ever before. Yay!
Google Marketing Platform and Integration Platform
Happy days – all the products we use daily as marketers will be integrated seamlessly through the new integration platform. It is deemed to make the experience of using the 360 Suite a lot easier.
We bid (hehe!) goodbye to DoubleClick and, under the hood of Google Marketing Platform, we will see Analytics, Surveys, Tag Manager, Data Studio, Optimize, Display & Video and Search Ads all working together. We can only see better results in the future and easier workflow for everybody.
Hotel Ads
We will see Google’s Hotel Campaigns joining Google Ads very soon. Watch this space!
Summary
In short, Google offered a host of new tools and a more integrated approach to marketing data collection and use. Bringing together popular marketing products into one place will certainly help surface new opportunities and create a more cohesive approach. We are super excited to try some of the tools once they hit our portals.
There was nothing around AI and voice search, which we thought would feature, but this sure to be just around the corner. Google has set a high benchmark for the future of its own search and display advertising offerings, they look set to have staked a longer-term place in this space.
As a Google Partner, we are here to help support your business to get the best out of Google’s suite of marketing tools and products. Please get in touch to see how we can help you maximise your online presence, and drive sales.