Google Marketing Live 2023: AI, Automation, Privacy, and More News

Since this profession chose me back in 2011, I never thought it would be a roller coaster of constant evolutions. The truth is that this edition of Google Marketing Live for EMEA has once again announced changes in the sector. No surprises there, though. The innovations presented at this #GML2023 on May 24 mark the fourth or fifth wave of significant changes we have faced at Runroom, changes such as: the emergence of mobile devices in campaigns, the automation of the purchasing system, the breakdown of cookies, machine learning in creativity or segmentation.

We once again experienced a perfectly executed presentation by the Google team in Dublin. You always leave with the feeling that you don't know how much you have already implemented and how much is left to implement. My intuition tells me that there is a lot of work ahead, that the journey will be exciting, and that, obviously, organizations that adopt these changes will have a clear competitive advantage in the short and medium term. Here's a brief summary of what we experienced.

The presentation was divided into three major pillars:

• The Future of AI
• Coming Soon in Google Ads
• Measurement & Privacy

Coming Soon in Google Ads

The most anticipated part of the day was delivered by Suzanne Pellican, VP Ads User Research & Experience. They had already announced changes in Search with Generative Search AI, so we were eager to know how these new products would impact search advertising. It did not disappoint.

Although it may seem very recent, artificial intelligence has been worked on within Google Ads for many years, the most impactful launch was the adaptable Search ads back in 2018. The advancement of AI has been one of the major headaches for advertisers in the last decade. How do I control what the machine says about me, what can I do to ensure what appears is brand safe, what is it understanding about my business, how can I better adjust my custom intent. It's not going to stop, in 2023 they are working on developing more AI in Google Ads highlighting changes that were unimaginable just a year ago.

The goal remains to deliver the best message, at the right time, to the target user and the idea is to use AI to do it faster and more efficiently.

The Future of AI

Vanessa Hartley, VP Large Customer Solutions EMEA, was responsible for putting into context the great impact that Artificial Intelligence will have in the sector, which she defined as: “the era of extraordinary opportunities for marketing leaders and the sector in general”.

People's searches around AI are moving away from basic curiosity to more practical implications. Google Search interest for "how to ai"' has grown 70% more and is growing at a much faster rate than questions like "what is ai"

AI is experiencing one of its best moments and has hit the hype this year, yes. However, marketers and advertisers have been working with a high degree of AI in our Google campaigns since 2016, changing industries bottom-up. Marketing has been one of the major drivers of disruption in many sectors, and it will do so again. In the coming months, we will see Google upgrade its strategy with artificial intelligence with the aim that no other medium spoils their share of the pie. It will not only impact marketing but all aspects of our lives.

Google Search interest in the topic of "artificial intelligence" has increased by 3X year-over-year in key markets across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Artificial intelligence will provide us with many opportunities to improve our profession, synthesize very complex data, generate content with a single click, or perform any online activity in a conversational way. It will be generative AI that allows Google to take its core products to the next level. Although we are in an initial phase, this week the first ads with this technology have started to be tested in the USA, we can assume that in the coming months it will be a game-changer in the sector.

It will not only have an impact on Google Ads, we are also talking about new organic functionalities for the search engine. The company's goal is to simplify complexity for people in general, communities, and their businesses. For example, they have presented a new product to try to fight forest fires, which have started to proliferate in many states and cities due to climate change. This new product will use satellite images to train an AI-powered early detection model and predict its spread, providing information to the population that could save lives at critical moments.

Innovations will also come to Google Maps and even businesses, helping to improve decision-making, solving problems by being more productive and creative with the new workspace (Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Meets). There is nothing new announced beyond the launch of Bard, which is not yet available in Spain.

Vanessa Hartley highlighted three fundamental pillars of how all these AI advances will impact in 2023: Creativity, Performance & Privacy. You can review this Google Ads checklist that will help you evaluate your campaigns and their use with AI.

Search campaigns with real-time collaboration from Google's AI.

Some interesting points:

• The campaign will automatically extract keywords, titles, and descriptions from our website, which traffickers can edit and improve with our business knowledge.
• We will be able to collaborate with Google's AI, as if it were a Chat GPT, where it will ask us to complement the initial information guiding us through the process and interacting with the machine.
• After this teamwork with AI, we can keep the best descriptive versions for our campaign.
• It will also provide us with recommended images from our website.
• After selecting all the assets we want to incorporate, it will give us an ad relevance score and from there we can work on the ad in greater depth.
• Although the exact date is not yet confirmed, they are considering launching these campaigns at the end of summer for the English language
• They have not yet shown how, nor do we know how brand safe it will be, but by the end of this year, they will also present a new product in search that will adapt titles to the user's query, like an advanced dynamic title. They did mention that we will have the option to review those assets and exclude any we do not want to show again.

Some questions remain unresolved in my head: How will AI changes affect data volume? How much investment do I need to make to have relevant recommendations from this new technology? How will all these changes affect the measurement of long decision-making processes? Is the market ready considering the micromanagement done today of keywords or ads? Can AI generate a textbook clickbait that does not meet user expectations? How will it affect campaign pricing? Will advertisers create very similar copies and focus all on ultra-competitive words?

In short, 2023 is going to be a year of high complexity. As always, complexity brings great opportunities. Experiment, experiment, and experiment, now is the time.

Measurement & Privacy

Finally, the turn for privacy where there were not too many surprises. They emphasized Google's commitment to ending the old marketing methodology of tracking users and presented some new features, for example:

• In Google Ads, we will have changes in the integration of first-party data with other applications, although it is still to be seen what it implies and how we can exploit it.
• We will be able to generate GA4 audiences directly in Google Ads, making the creation process simpler.
• We will be able to generate Customer Match lists if we have already implemented Enhanced Conversions.
• We will have new reporting in DV360 for connected TV campaigns, for the first time allowing us to understand user deduplication between linear and digital TV (we'll see at what price :D).

At this point, they again emphasized the importance of:

• Investing in our own data and its collection, we will be better positioned to drive our business results the better we do it.
• Having all our conversions well-tracked, both online and offline. Are you up to date with best practices in conversion measurement? Check it again!
• What they have maintained, after postponing it several times already, is that third-party cookies will disappear from Chrome next year, although they still do not specify when.
• Make sure you have migrated to GA4 before July 1 (“please, please, please”, as they have requested).
• 86% of people believe we are more loyal to a brand when it is completely transparent about data collection.

Create ads in an instant

That is the goal Google has set, to give us maximum efficiency in creating our ads through campaigns focused on achieving business objectives by marketing our products at the speed of consumers, no matter how unpredictable their journeys. And it is proven that those advertisers who adapt more ad formats on the Google advertising network achieve better results. They presented 3 new products that will leverage the power of AI, two campaign improvements, and one entirely new campaign.

Demand Gen Campaigns:

They also presented the new Demand Generation Campaigns, very focused on social marketers. Entertainment on YouTube (including Shorts), Discover & Gmail will be used for the increasingly difficult challenge of capturing user attention.

We will be able to access new qualified audiences with AI-powered lookalike segments. Even better, we can further adapt creatives to specific audience segments to deliver the best message at each moment. And not only that, but we will also have tools to demonstrate how demand momentum is increasing through data-driven attribution and search/brand/conversion lifts. It will be launched globally in a couple of months.

In short, AI will allow us to go one step further in getting things done. Just like with the emergence of mobile devices in advertising, in the coming months we will be learning and measuring the impact of all these changes in our campaigns, preparing the environment for the transition to be as smooth as possible, and testing multiple tools to make the most of these advances.

Performance Max campaigns with an asset upgrade.

Knowledge points:

• We will be able to provide our organization's URL and it will automatically select images to propose, we will have to have very controlled rights to our sites.
• From these assets, Google Ads will generate entirely new images with AI, including assets aligned with our brand based on Google's knowledge of our business.
• We will be able to interact with this AI generating entirely new images in seconds

Which leads us to think: are you training your dragon in Midjourney? Well, get ready because you're up! We will have to learn to be more creative, understand the complex environment of image campaigns where these assets appear, know how to talk and make the most of AI.

And why is it important to adapt so many ads? Because users consume a large amount of information across different channels, quickly and simultaneously, when making purchasing decisions. It is more important than ever to diversify, understand the complex advertising market, and attribute correctly.