Google Marketing Live 2024: An Overview
Yesterday evening, marketers all over the globe gathered to tune into the highly anticipated Google Marketing Live 2024. And it’ll be no surprise to anyone that there was a huge focus on… AI.
Now in its 11th year, Google Marketing Live’s first ever focus back in 2013 was the ‘shift to mobile,’ whilst now, we’re faced with the ‘most transformative moment yet’ – the new era of AI and the possibilities that come along with it.
The conference focused on the ways in which different Google products and services are harnessing the power of AI to help consumers, businesses and agencies alike, and how we can make sure we’re ahead of the curve by utilising these new technologies.
Google Marketing Live 2024: Our Top Takeaways
We’ve condensed the event to bring you 5 of our biggest takeaways, and provided our thoughts on how each of the products could help both brands, and advertisers, going forward.
Profit Optimisation
The new ‘Profit Optimisation’ goal for PMax and Shopping campaigns was introduced, with claims that it will help enhance the effects of Smart Bidding to maximise profit, and according to Google, ‘advertisers who use this see a 15% uplift in campaigns compared to revenue-only bidding.’
“Profit Optimisation is something Google have been pushing for a while in terms of understanding which areas companies make most profit, so it’s been a long time coming that profit based goals are now at the forefront of PMax optimisation. It’ll be interesting to see how Google facilitate fleshing out profit margins for individual products to help companies achieve their business goals in the current economic climate. With users researching at the same rate but taking longer to convert, it’s costing companies more to bring users back to site, so focusing only on higher profit products is a great way to combat this.”
Chloe Tetmajeris, PPC Manager
Google Ads Data Manager
Self proclaimed ‘data guy’ at Google, Gaurav Bhaya, spoke about – you guessed it – data, and the importance of good first-party data in order to maximise AI performance. He also announced the rollout of Google Ads Data Manager worldwide, which simplifies the process of bringing first-party data together in one place, redacting the need for manual data cleansing, organising, and uploading.
“The Google Data Manager dashboard will be a huge benefit to us to collect our data in one place quicker than ever. Google’s dashboard is always evolving, making it harder to find what you’re looking for with every update. The slight increase in visibility to PMax performance alongside this this will also be beneficial, and having quicker generated insights will help with all areas of management. However, as with any AI tool, I believe the prompts and requests will need to be finetuned, which is where we’d come in to make it work.”
Ru Watt, PPC Analyst
Brand Profiles
Going back to the constant evolution of the way consumers search, it was revealed during GML that ‘60% of search queries include the brand name.’ Brand Profiles focus on a higher level of customer engagement during the shopping process, allowing brands to showcase their ethos through images, videos, reviews, deals, shipping and more, with ads continuing to appear alongside these profiles.
“Brand Profiles are an interesting new feature, and are slightly reminiscent of Amazon Storefront. Brands will be able to highlight key merchant information on Search, featuring brand imagery, videos, customer reviews, deals, and more. Advertisers who take the time to curate their Brand Profile will hopefully build more trust with their customers and create a better online shopping experience.”
Meg Wilson-Taylor, Operations Manager
Shopping Ads
The way Shopping ads work have been further revolutionised, with features such as ‘3D spin’ and ‘virtual try-on’ introduced to drive engagement, as well as ads highlighting key attributes from descriptions and reviews.
“New advances in Shopping ad functionality means that companies are going to need to provide more interactive video assets to ensure they’re not left behind. Users want to see products and even try them on virtually before they buy – mistakes could be made if companies underestimate the power of creative assets that could be pivotal for the future of Shopping ads.”
Chloe Tetmajeris, PPC Manager
YouTube Shopping
Google stated that ‘in 2023, people watched over 30bn hours of shopping-related videos on YouTube, a growth of 25% year-on-year.’ Now, YouTube has made it possible for creators to tag products in their videos, shorts and live steams, and alongside this, have partnered with Shopify to eventually allow Shopify merchants to connect their product catalogue to YouTube shopping. This will provide better insights into the creators and products that are driving sales.
“The video content market is huge as evidenced by stats given by Google, so to enable shopping feed integration is massive. Having this as a tool to offer clients generative feed placements, reverse image search and video snippets will be a boost to sales and platforms with deliverables on quick to purchase ecommerce products. Combined with higher quality first-party data captured across the board, online shopping will change drastically.”
Ru Watt, PPC Analyst
What’s next?
Towards the end of the conference, we heard some final thoughts, with the core message that AI isn’t going anywhere, and that there still needs to be a mindset shift when it comes to the way we work alongside AI.
Whilst it’s no surprise that this year’s event was heavily focussed on AI and its capabilities, we were waiting and left wanting for a little more around the daily issues we’re facing as advertisers, such as high CPCs. The event was also honing in on solutions for travel and ecommerce businesses, and limited in terms of lead generation updates.
Despite not getting everything we wanted from this year’s conference, the deep-dive into both AI and data painted a clear picture of the direction that Google continues to move in, and it’s time for advertisers and brands to strap in and utilise the technologies available to see the best possible results.
We’ll leave you with a final quote from Google Marketing Live 2024, which I’m sure will resonate with many as we go forward and put everything we’ve heard into practice.
‘The secret to getting ahead, is getting started.’
