January 2025 Google Ads Updates: Key Changes and Strategic Insights for Campaign Success

1) Google Ads Brand Report Now Available in Europe

Google Ads recently launched its Brand Report in Europe. This new tool offers valuable insights into your ad performance by providing data on how many unique people viewed your ads and how often, excluding duplicate views. You can also break this data down by specific demographics, such as age and gender.

The Brand Report consolidates information from various tools, simplifying performance tracking and enabling you to optimize your advertising budget. Currently, it’s available to a limited number of accounts, but it will be rolled out to more in the coming days.

2) New Promo Code Options for Google Ads

Google Ads has introduced additional Promo Code Options within the Promotion Assets feature. Advertisers can now choose from two new options:

• Promo Code (Barcode): You can enter your barcode number and select the barcode type, such as Aztec, Data Matrix, or EAN-8, among others.
• Promo Code (QR Code): You can encode your text directly into a QR code. Note that there’s a character limit of 720 and no links are allowed.

These new options give advertisers more flexibility in offering promotions directly to their customers.

3) Demand Gen's New Learning Phase Estimates

Google Ads has introduced a new Learning Phase Estimates feature for Demand Gen campaigns. This beta feature provides a forecast of how many days your campaign will be in the learning phase. This is important as you want to make significant adjustments to your campaign settings only after the system has learned and optimized for best performance.

Once you set your campaign budget, you’ll see a “Learning Phase Estimates” card in the campaign dashboard, helping you better understand how long it might take for your campaign to reach optimal performance.

4) First Look at Negative Keywords for Performance Max Campaigns

A major milestone has been reached for Performance Max campaigns—Google Ads has started rolling out the ability to add negative keywords at the campaign level. This feature, which was announced a few months ago, is now visible in a US-based account. Currently, you can add up to 100 negative keywords per campaign.

This update should provide more control over which searches trigger your ads, allowing you to refine your targeting further.

5) Major Updates to Performance Max (PMax) Campaigns

Google Ads has rolled out several updates for Performance Max campaigns, bringing more control and better reporting features. Here's a summary of the most significant updates:

1. Search Themes:
2. Search Term Insights:
3. Targeting Enhancements:
4. Asset Group Reporting:
5. Campaign-Level Negative Keywords:
6. High-Value New Customer Acquisition Goals:
7. Brand Exclusions Update:

These updates should help advertisers better understand their campaigns, improve targeting, and optimize their performance across Google Ads.