3 Announcements from the Google Marketing Live 2024 I am Actually Excited About

White Shark Media? was proud to be invited again to the Google Marketing Live in Mountain View, California.?

There were so many announcements that it is hard to list them all in one blog, so instead, I'll share details about the features I am most excited about as we head into the second half of the year.?

1. Optimize for Profit Goal

Managing campaigns for customers with hundreds (or thousands) of products in their feeds means optimizing for revenue can be deceiving. Some products may bring plenty of revenue but do not contribute as much profit back to the clients.?

This new feature aims to remedy this by optimizing bids in real time to prioritize searches likely to complete the most profitable transactions.

In my opinion, the best thing is that you won't need to alter your tracking code to supply profit data! Instead, it uses the existing cost of goods sold (cogs) attribute in the Google Merchant Center Feed.

Essentially, Gross Profit = Revenue - COGS. ?If you are not already using this attribute in your feed, consider adding it soon. This would be all you need to test this new bidding strategy when it becomes available.?

2. Ads in the Search Generative Experience

We all knew ads would eventually come to the Gen-AI experience; we just didn't know when and how. And here they come!?It was announced at Google IO last week that the AI Overviews are now generally available to the US Market.

As part of the Search Labs, ads would only show above or below this special section.?At the GML, Google said they will begin testing both Search and Shopping Ads within the AI Overview section. For now, ads look the same way you are used to, and - according to Google -? no campaign changes are needed. Search, Shopping, and PMAX campaigns are eligible to show.?

I can't help but have mixed feelings about the release.

On the one hand, I think users expect search engines (and companies in general) to do more with AI. They crave customization, answers to their next question before they ask, and overall helpfulness. If this feature increases search adoption and creates opportunities for capturing additional demand, then our clients (and us as agencies) can benefit from it.?

On the other hand, I think this will help push Google's narrative of wanting more people to adopt broad match, as there's little chance your phrase and exact match keywords will match these conversational, unconventional, 5-plus-worded questions.?

One thing is for certain: these new AI-powered experiences are here to stay; make no mistake about it.?

4. Google Ads Data Manager

If you haven't heard enough yet about how crucial it is to leverage your own (or your client's) first-party data to improve your campaigns' performance, here's yet another reminder.

Google announced the Data Manager in October last year, and it has now become generally available to everyone. This is a helpful tool for automating the process of importing data from trusted sources such as AWS or Google Cloud and activating it either as conversion data or as audience lists.?

The list of supported connectors is somewhat reduced, but the Google Experts at the GML told me that more integrations are coming, including a Hubspot connection, which will be added very soon.?

We have a few clients who did not have access to the Data Manager, so we have been uploading files we manually download from an SFTP weekly for customer match lists. Our team will now be able to set up the SFTP connector and have Google pull it directly.?

Google has also made it more functional by supporting field mapping and transformations. This is a big difference from manual uploads, where the column names must be exactly as the CSV sample states and the values must be pre-formatted to match specifications.?

I still have some more playing around to do with the different sources and transformation options, but I like what I have seen so far. I can tell that it will help us save time when managing data for our key customers.?

What Will You Implement First??

I'll try to do a series on how to implement these new features as soon as they become available to White Shark Media. As an agency, we like test-driving these improvements as they come out. Even if they don't work as well as they are touted, we learn what works and what doesn't.?

What will be the first thing you implement after the GML? Let me know in the comments!?