Google Marketing Live 2022 – Key Takeaways

1. Introduction
2. Future of Ads
3. Leveraging Insights and Tools for Effective Marketing
4. Privacy First
5. Google Analytics 4 and new products from Google
6. And here we end

Welcome to the Oscars of Digital Marketing! Here are a few valuable takeaways for marketers.

It was Google Marketing Live 2022 on the 24th of May, and every digital marketing professional’s eyes and ears are glued to this event to check the latest updates from Google on the marketing frontier.

The audience was welcomed virtually to the session by Philipp Schindler, Senior Vice President, Chief Business Officer, Google. The viewers got a virtual tour of the state-of-the-art Google Bayview Campus, California, which stressed the sustainability front Google has promoted over the years. He also implied how neural rendering elevated the viewership experience. 

Hosted by Jerry Dischler, Vice President/General Manager, Ads, Google, the session explained how Google Ads are leveraged to build businesses. He took the example of how Ayurbox- an online grocery platform that helped the local farmers sell their produce directly to customers, utilized Google Ads to expand their as well as the farmers’ business. 

He unveiled Google’s vision for the future of search- Search Anywhere and Anything. Utilizing AI concepts like Natural Language Understanding and Computer Vision, Google has been transforming the search environment. Google has also launched one of the biggest search updates this year called Multi-Search, where you can use multiple search queries by typing a keyword and using an image together to bring out the most relevant information.

Google has paid more attention to making the search results visually appealing (more consideration to Visual Ads) to help audience viewership. Jerry also stressed that online video watching per day has risen over 34% and how short-form videos like Youtube Shorts garnered over 30 Billion plus average daily views, which is 4X times compared to a year back. Due to this, from this year onwards, Google has made it possible for advertisers to run campaigns on Youtube Shorts and reap maximum benefits from it.

Also, Google has started rolling out Video Ads for Discovery campaigns. He also stressed the future of AI-driven advertising and highlighted how the usage of Performance Max helped advertisers increment conversions of a similar CPA by over 13%.

Looking to learn how to create effective discovery campaigns? Look no further than this Google discovery campaign course! In just a few short weeks, you’ll be able to create campaigns that reach your target audience and generate results.

Deeper insights and more transparency are what the audience wanted, and that is what was on focus for Google. They introduced experiment tools for Performance Max, which can help determine what’s working for the campaigns and why. An optimization score is also given to understand how good your ads are.

And here is a preview of what you can expect from the Google Marketing Team to scale up your marketing efforts.

And then, the session was taken over by Vidhya Srinivasan, VP/GM, Ads on Google Properties. She highlighted how advanced the Machine Learning of Google has gotten by stressing the point that you can find a song by just humming the tune into the Google Voice Search module. 

And the same has applied to Google Ads, as with the help of automation and machine learning, Google has been optimizing ads for the relevant audience. And since last year, Google has accelerated the machine learning speed of up to 10X times. 

Also, Google is currently testing a feature where customers can message and interact with businesses directly from Google Ads. HDFC has been testing the same, which led to 1300 new leads and 40,000 plus questions answered

Future of Ads

John Nicoletti was the speaker for the session where he stressed how automation has taken over the Ads Universe. He highlighted the numbers where 80% of the advertisers use automated bidding in Google Ads to drive better performance and save time.

He also answered the query on finding the right digital marketing mix – it keeps changing all the time. And here is what they can do.

• Automate your Search Performance as much as possible

Search has always been the most powerful medium to reach consumers. He also stressed the term: Trifecta of Search Automation (Broad Match + Smart Bidding + Responsive Search Ads). 

John gave an example where a dating site used Broad Match with target CPA Smart bidding and Responsive Search Ads. With this, the site brought a 70% increase in conversion at a stable CPA.

• Leverage all available channels for marketing growth

Diversifying the presence of the business in multiple channels. Also, users can run search ads on channels like Display, Gmail, Discover, YouTube, and even maps under a single platform using Performance Max.

Advertisers achieved a 13% increase in the total incremental conversion at the same cost-per-action plan using Performance Max. 

John again came up with an example of a co-working space provider who wanted to grow beyond just Google Search. They leveraged Performance Max and attained the following results.

Leveraging Insights and Tools for Effective Marketing

Google is rolling out new features in the Ads platform for gathering insights. One of the key features is the accessibility to data on how the term or keyword has performed over time. 

• Attribution insights have been rolled out to determine how your ads across Google have collaboratively contributed to conversions.
• There have also been additions of competitive insights on the insights page that can help you effectively with extensive competitor analysis. 
• As a business owner, you can access the Google Merchant Center to gain insights into competitors ‘ performance in the marketplace. 

It’s been 22 years since Google Ads was launched. And now is the time for the release of a new look and feel to the new generation of Google Ads with more features and insights. 

Privacy First

There was also an extensive discussion about privacy. Users are now in complete control of the data shared with the search engine. There have been a lot of changes in the search and data ecosystem due to effective privacy changes.

Google Analytics 4 and new products from Google

A warm welcome to Google Analytics 4 – turning insights into action. There has been a personalization touch added to GA4. You will get to customize the way you see and analyze data. The tool gives you alerts about any drastic changes in the data on a real-time basis. 

And that’s not it. There is a feature called predictive analysis to forecast user behavior. Know what your audience is searching for and place your ads effectively.

And here we end

While these were some of the few key points discussed during the Marketing event, there were more discussed on the privacy and E-commerce front. Do take a look at the Google Marketing Live homepage to access the information regarding the same.