Google Marketing Live: Summary

If you haven't heard already, Google has announced some interesting changes during their marketing live event. There were lots of new and upcoming features from all of the Google marketing tools, so let's dive in and see what happened.

Part 1: Advertising that works for everyone

After a very creative countdown shown on the enormous screen, the Senior Vice President of Ads; Sridhar Ramaswamy walked to a packed audience waiting to find out the latest treats Google had to offer.

Shridhar looked very calm and collective, as he presented some very interesting stats:

• There are 1 billion more people on the internet today compared to 5 years ago
• There are twice as many people on smartphones

For me, to see such an increase in just 5 years is incredible. I wonder what they are searching for or where they come from? The stats about smartphones is not surprising because they are small, easy to use, super addictive, and have access to the internet.

Userbility

The presentation continues, as Shrindhar talks about how personal marketing should be to users.

"Whether it's consumers, advertisers or publishers, we are committed to ads that are valuable, transparent and trustworthy"

I have to admit, coming from an SEO background, I really enjoyed how Shrindhar talked about ads and how they should be more relevant to the user. 

A particular highlight of the event, was Shrindhar showing the audience how users use the internet. He explained how people are more curious, demanding and impatient and how it's even more important for marketers to be useful and answer their needs. It was also interesting to see how users are becoming more research obsessed, by searching more about subjects around the product to navigate to what they need. (I knew that SEO wasn't dead!)

Machine Learning

As technology continues to change at an incredibly fast pace, mobile and machine learning are working together to improve user experience on the internet. As more users are becoming more demanding of their needs machine learning can help by showing the most relevant ads to their users. Sridhar also showed a real passion for how people are more aware of the protection of their data and how they have full control over what they can see.

Another point that I was curious about was seeing how the user's intent was not about typing in a question and getting a result but more about how the results are showing, demonstrate meaningful assistance to answer of that query and the next steps.

Adwords changing to Google Ads

If you've been living under a rock lately, Google Adwords announced (weeks ago) that they are going to change to Google Ads. Shrindhar was really excited to announce this and how the tool will be able to create more integrated and personalised ads for users. Marketers will be able to easily buy ads across all networks (search, YouTube, Google Maps, Google Play etc), which sounds pretty cool if you are into PPC advertising.

The Google Marketing Platform

I have to admit that I got a little bit excited about this. Having a tool to integrate all of Google's marketing tools into one, is an absolute relief. The amount of time used looking at various tools such as like Adwords, Analytics and Search Console is a lot, so it's great to see that marketers will be able to see the whole scale of a project in one go.

Shrindhar finished with how all of these tools can bring marketing to the next level and then introduced Group Product Manager; Nicky Rettke to the stage.

Part 2: Being relevant to users for the entire journey

Nicky started by echoing Shrindhar's comments about how users are more demanding and impatient but also had the stats to prove it:

• 91% of smartphone owners bought or plan to buy something after seeing an ad they described as relevant
• People spend 3 times more attention to relevant video ads

Advertising on YouTube

With over 1.9 billion users and over 1 billion hours of video content watched daily, Google Ads are improving the way marketers advertise on YouTube.

Youtube isn't just for entertainment, the channel is also used by users to look at particular products and how they work. Last year there was a 150% growth in ad conversions with 70% of YouTube campaigns driving more sales in-store and online.

To help marketers improve conversions and relevancy for these types of ads, Google will be introducing:

• TrueView For Reach - helps you to raise awareness on a broad set of customers.
• TrueView For Action - optimized to drive conversions on your website with a call to action.
• Maximize Lift Bidding - A tool which uses Google's machine learning, to help you reach people who are more likely to use your brand after seeing an ad.

Nicky then showed some examples of where companies have benefited from using these tools and passed the mic to the product management director of Google Ads; Anthony Chavev.

Part 3: Innovating Ads with Machine Learning

That's right, the topic of machine learning has crept up again and it's easy to see why. As a marketer we are always busy looking at stats, so using an advanced tool to do the market research for you is a massive time saver. Currently, on Google Adwords, you can use Ad Rotation and Smart Bidding to try and identify the best results for your users' intent, but Google Ads offers something more exciting:

Responsive Search Ads

These are more flexible ads, which simplify the ad creation and testing process, while delivering better results.

How does it work you ask? All you need to do is send Google 15 headlines and 4 description lines. With the power of machine learning, these ads are jumbled around to find the best possible combinations, making it easier for marketers to deliver unique and tailored messages to potential customers. This gives PPC experts more flexibility to create more compelling ads, with an increase of 90% of text. This new feature is going to be launched in the next couple of months.

Landing Page Speed Score

Ranging from very slow to extremely fast, this 10 point scale will tell you how fast your landing pages load on mobile devices. It's great to see that Google is creating tools to the best of their efforts to make sure that marketers and users are getting the best experience when clicking on an ad. This data is updated daily, which is also brilliant!

Anthony also plugged Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), which helps improve the page speed on mobile. For SEO, this is still a grey area as it's really only used on news and sports related sites.

Cross device reporting and remarketing

Now things have gotten interesting! Cross device reports on analytics, combine data from people who visit your site multiple times across different devices...now that's cool!

This gives marketers the opportunity to see how users behave on your site, no matter the device they are using. Although this sounds great the data is only displayed from users who have agreed to share it on Google...(*cough* GDPR *cough*)

Next up on the stage, we have GM and product Management Director; Kim Spalding.

Part 4: Marketing for Small Businesses

Kim outlines how her team are trying to improve Google Ads to help small businesses spend less time tweaking their ads and focusing more on their craft.

The solution for this (which was announced 2 weeks ago), is called Smart Campaigns. The tool (that is rolling out to advertisers this year), is a simple way to create ads, which are relevant to targeted audiences within minutes.

 So how does it work? Google crawls your website, looking for the right content and keywords to automate specific ads for search and display campaigns via machine learning. What's important here is that as a webmaster or SEO, you need to make sure that you are using the right keywords on your website for Google to identify and crawl them.

Auto optimised landing pages

Kim also explains how half of the businesses in the US don't have a website. With the new version of Google Ads, this tool will be able to create landing pages, which are automatically optimised for the user's intent. It will be interesting to see if this type of landing page converts better than the custom built ones. 

According to Kim, Smart Campaigns will be 3 times better at getting ads in front of the right audience. She showed some examples of how businesses have already benefitted with this and I have to admit, it looks impressive.

Grow with Google

To help small business owners learn how to promote their products online, Kim announced Grow with Google. This education platform is already live, so I suggest that all marketers should have a browse: 

https://grow.google/

Google My Business

GMB is one of my favourite tools at the moment. There have been so many updates recently and I've been impressed with every single one. To have tools like direct messaging can help users contact businesses straight away through the Google My Business profile. What wasn't mentioned was how businesses can post news, product and event cards on their GMB profiles, which I was really surprised about...anyway, next up is Philip McDonnell.

Part 5: Getting your products online

The very enthusiastic group product manager explains how it's getting more difficult for marketers to advertise their products because users are researching more about the product itself.

Automated feeds for shopping ads

Later this year, automated feeds for shopping ads will be launched. The tool will make it quicker for retailers to create their product feeds. The tool once again crawls your website and generates automated feeds, which targets the relevant audience at the right time.

Smart Shopping Campaigns

To reduce the complexity of managing a shopping campaign, this tool was introduced in May to fix this issue. This tool automatically optimises the ads to the goals that you select, and machine learning does the rest.

• 20% increase in conversion value at a similar cost when using Smart Shopping campaigns

eCommerce platform integrations

Do you have Shopify? Philip seemed to plug this software a lot as you can now integrate Google Ads it. I'm sure that more tools and platforms will hop on board the Google train in the future.

Philip also explained how they are introducing new business goals:

• Driving store visits
• Acquiring new customers

I would be very curious about how Google will be able to track store visits as this would be offline. It would be interesting to see though!

Local Campaigns

Need to drive more people to your store? Philip has just announced Local Campaigns, an easy to use tool that can help promote your business across search, Google maps, Place Pages, Display ads and Youtube in one go!

Hotel Campaigns

As more and more users continue using their smartphones to book flights and hotels. Google has been introducing hotel ads. Last year the ads grew leads to partners by 65%, which is pretty staggering! 

If you are a hotel or travel agency, I would recommend using this ASAP.

Well there you go, four new marketing campaigns on Google Ads, nice!

Part 6: Creating a Stronger Collaboration with Marketing

When it comes to understanding customer insights, collaboration is vital. Payam Shodjai explains how the new Google Marketing Platform can help improve the collaboration for marketers by combining advertising and analytics platforms into a single solution.

This solution will help marketers plan, buy, measure and optimise media and consumer experiences. Imagine having analytics, data studio, optimize, surveys and tag manager in one platform! *heavy breathing of excitement*

Payam, then decided to talk about his love about Nsync, which was kind of weird...

Search Ads 360

Wait what? another new platform? ok Payam, what's Search Ads 360? This new tool helps you plan, buy and measure search ads on Google and other search engines (I'm guessing that this would be YouTube and not Bing!)

Display & Video 360

Hold on! another tool? Display & Video tool was also announced, which brings together features from double click bid manager, campaign manager, studio and the audience centre. With this tool, marketers will be able to manage their display, video, TV, audio and other advertising channels all in one place! 

More features on the Google Marketing Platform

What I found particularly interesting is that an integration centre will be launched along with the Google Marketing Platform. This tool can view insights from various tools so that marketers will be able to understand their audiences. As a marketer, I can't wait to see Analytics and Ads statistics combined, and analyse my ads to be more relevant to my customers. 

Payam, also announced that both Google Marketing Platform and Display & Video 360 will be launched in a couple of weeks!

Google Measurement Partners

There was also another announcement near the end of the event, where Payam introduced Google Measurement Partners. The programme brings together 23 new and existing partnerships across critical areas, to provide measurement solutions for Google's media that marketers can trust.

Summary

I feel that it's going to be an exciting future for SEO and PPC experts. Google is always looking to help businesses improve the performance of their ads and it's great to hear that new tools will be able to help marketers improve them by relevancy and their users intent. 

The technology of machine learning is improving faster than ever before, making it easier for marketers to make quick decisions when creating ads.

It was interesting to see how the search dialogue from users has changed when searching for products. As an SEO marketer, it was a relief to hear that users are also searching for related topics around the product.

The only thing that I was surprised about was that there was nothing about voice search. It's clear that voice search is getting used more often, and it will be interesting to see how Google can adapt to this.

I cannot wait for Google to launch these tools, so I can observe how I can improve ads for my client's audiences. The Google Marketing Platform and Display & Video 360 in particular, look very exciting!

Thanks for reading this article, I hope that you have found this helpful and enjoy the new tools that Google has to offer. 

Here is the full event below:

David Baker - SEO & PPC Executive - Avatar Creative