Google Marketing Live 2025: The Updates

We’re back! Last year, you loved our round-up of Google Marketing Live 2024… so we’re back again for Google Marketing Live 2025. And let’s just say, the focus is still very much on, you guessed it – AI.

Earlier today, and marking it’s 12th year, our Google friends from across the pond brought us the updates we’ve all been anticipating – from AI Max for Search and Smart Bidding Exploration, to more Generative AI and Demand Gen.

The event homed in on how Google products and services are leveraging AI and new technology to create a hyper-personalised search experience, and how advertisers can use this to their advantage, reaching new audiences that are making quicker purchasing decisions.

What is Google Marketing Live?

Google Marketing Live, or GML, is an annual event hosted by Google for advertisers and marketers worldwide. During the event, the company’s latest innovations in digital are shared and promoted, with discussions around popular platforms such as Search, YouTube and the Google Display Network (GDN). The event is highly anticipated and treated as a source of what’s to come from Google over the next year.

For agencies, brands, and freelancers alike, the event isn’t one to be missed – with the updates shared highlighting future online consumer behaviours and providing insight to help advertisers adapt to these changing behaviours.

Google Marketing Live 2025: Our Key Takeaways

Throughout this year’s event, there remained a strong focus on AI, but to the surprise of many, there was an equally as present focus on providing more transparency and control to advertisers.

AI Max for Search

Let’s start with the star of the show, shall we?

AI Max for Search is really tapping into the predictive power of AI and search algorithms, taking the study of online consumer behaviour to an entirely new level that provides users with an experience unique to them.

The new feature promises advertisers that they can reach new audiences and drive conversions from users they might never have reached before through search term matching and keywordless campaigns, learning from landing pages, ads and keyword lists to infer what you sell and when it’s relevant to show your ads.

There’s so much more to AI Max that we’re excited to delve deeper into, but right now, another huge selling point is that it’s a ‘one-click’ enhancement in existing campaigns.

That’s right – no new campaign creation. AI Max for Search can be implemented immediately.

AI Mode

We knew it was coming after its announcement at Google I/O.

AI Mode is transforming search, and making it super-personalised to each and every individual, so that no two people see the same SERP. It was made clear that this new development will absolutely change the way ads worked as part of the SERP, but reassured, this is for the better.

Google has been no stranger to criticism over the preferential treatment of newer SERP features (AI overview, PAA, featured snippets etc.), so it was great to hear that ads would begin showing up in AI overviews.

In the post-show Q+A, questions around how AI Mode works with paid ads were raised. Global Product Lead, Cecilia Wong, said:

“Users are able to explore more complex topics or questions, and our AI isn’t only able to understand the ‘what,’ but the ‘why’ behind every single search they’re making. By understanding both the user’s query as well as the content of the AI response, we’re able to generate the most relevant ad alongside that experience, and make sure that ad might be the best next step for a user’s journey.”

Smart Bidding Exploration

Last year, we complained about the lack of insight around Lead Gen.

This year, the focus remained in favour of Retail and eCommerce, but the announcement of Smart Bidding Exploration opened a new chapter in AI for lead generation.

Built to work alongside other AI features such as AI Max for Search, Smart Bidding Exploration will allow advertisers to use flexible ROAS targets and leverage AI to bid on ‘less obvious, but potentially highly valuable queries more often.’

This means that advertisers can capture high-intent, quality leads that they otherwise may never have even come across. It was also Ginny Marvin’s second top feature announcement of the day… so that means it must be pretty cool!

Agentic Action

VP of Advertising & Commerce, Vidhya Srinivasan, spoke about Agentic Action and how, despite it being in its early days, can help customers take action and make decisions faster.

She demonstrated how this could work using a natural, long-tail keyword and showing how relevant ads appear. However, this comes with the ability to dive further into specific needs, with Agentic AI assisting in the buying journey – asking the right questions, tracking product prices changes, and even completing the purchase.

It felt like a chatbot, but much more advanced, and much more zoned in on the needs of the specific user – a built in Gemini (or ChatGPT 👀), if you like.

Channel Performance Reporting

Hurrah! We finally have a confirmed plan for additional visibility across Performance Max campaigns.

One of the biggest surprises during this year’s Google Marketing Live was the commitment from Google to give advertisers what they’ve been asking for – better reporting for PMax.

Back for Google Marketing Live 2025 was Global Product Manager, Sylvanus Bent, who explained the new and improved reporting capabilities:

“Last year alone, we made over 90 improvements in PMax that boosted conversions by more than 10% – and this was without you having to do anything at all. But you asked for more visibility, so we built it. We recently announced Channel Performance Reporting in PMax, and soon, you’ll be able to see exactly how Pmax is performing across formats and channels.”

Channel Performance Reporting entered Open Beta today, so it might still be a while until many advertisers see the benefits, but the announcement alone was enough cause for celebration.

Asset Studio

This was impressive.

Asset Studio is Google’s improved Generative AI experience, sitting within Google Ads to seamlessly integrate professional and relevant AI-generated assets into ad campaigns.

By uploading a product image, or pulling it directly from the Merchant Centre, advertisers can then tell AI how they want their images to look, and an entire bank of images are produced. For example, an image of a dress could be uploaded, and with a prompt such as:

‘woman wearing dress walking through european city and smiling’

The next thing you know, you have your images, and you’re ready to go.

Adding to the spectacle is the ability to turn images into video, have AI analyse new and relevant campaign trends to inspire asset creation, and image resizing for platform variation.

What’s Next?

Google Marketing Live 2025 ended, as usual, with some food for thought that reemphasised the importance of harnessing new technologies and products to stay ahead of the curve and tap into ever-changing user behaviour.

Like last year, amongst AI, there were discussions of leveraging YouTube and Demand Gen to serve the full funnel and appear at every stage of the customer journey, leading them from discovery to decision.

But there was nothing that could overshadow the biggest takeaway from the event, which was of course, AI Max for Search. No matter whether we like it or not, search is changing, and we have to change with it.

We’ll leave you with our favourite quote from the event (which Sylvanus’ ‘Let’s Rock N ROAS’ came a very close second to):

“You’re not competing against AI, you’re competing against those already using it.”