Last week, I attended Google Marketing Live. Only the first 90 minutes were livestreamed, yet combined with presentations and meetings, you can see the big picture direction of where Google Ads is heading over the next year.

We won’t dive into every new feature, as they’re already covered on sites like Search Engine Land. Instead, we’ll focus on the bigger picture and what it signals for the year ahead.

Shopping, shopping, and more shopping

I heard ‘lead gen’ mentioned once. There was a single nod to local business marketing, which was almost an afterthought. Most of the new features heavily focused on shopping, especially fashion.

Google is introducing new features to enhance the shopping experience. Many reminded me of Smart Mirror and Microsoft HoloLens marketing decks, mixed with AI image and video creation. 

• Bulk image creation for your products in different seasons and models
• Bulk image editing in a new centralized media center within Google Ads
• Being able to see yourself in different outfits
• Assistants watching price drops

The new ‘Try it on’ feature is likely to be very popular. It allows you to upload an image and see yourself in different outfits to determine how you like the look.

YouTube also featured heavily in the Shopping theme. Google started targeting TV advertisers to move ad spend to YouTube several years ago. Recent stats suggest they’ve succeeded.

Many of these changes are possible due to AI and influencer marketing, which leads us to our second biggest theme.

AI

I can count pretty high. I can count very fast. I’m not sure anyone could have kept up with the sheer mentions of AI over a single day. However, most AI mentions were related to shopping, especially fashion.

Google did mention the new AI Max for Search feature, but spent little time on it. We also got a marketing change from the Power Pair (search campaigns combined with PMax) to the Power Pack:

The Power Pair marketing from last year fell flat, and many advertisers aren’t happy with how PMax steals search impressions. I have a feeling the same will be said for the Power Pack next year. However, be prepared to hear from your reps how you need to use these three campaigns together.

AI for image & video creation

Google Veo is an AI video generator with fantastic results, if you have the time and resources needed. Google shared a story of a large company that went from planning and storyboarding to a full commercial in about four weeks. While this is fast, most Google advertisers don’t have the resources (or need) to create videos with these methods yet. 

The output is so impressive that I think by this time next year, we’ll likely see AI video creation tools promising easy personalization. Even average advertisers will be able to produce YouTube content and video ads this way. We’ll be watching closely, as it could be an excellent shift for many brands.

In my view, ChatGPT, Midjourney, and others are far ahead of Google Gemini in terms of image creation. They can understand prompt refinement and follow instructions more closely than Gemini. That said, Gemini is significantly faster than many of its competitors.

If Google can improve its image refinement for product images, models, and backgrounds, we should see a rise in AI image creation and manipulation within Google Ads in the coming months. That would be a real boon to e-commerce companies.

Agentic support and advice

Agentic support and advice are arguably the most useful AI announcements for advertisers. They’re essentially AI chats tied directly to your Google Ads data and account. Here’s an example shared at Google Marketing Live:

These agents also pull in Google recommendations, set up experiments, and handle other routine tasks. Their effectiveness remains to be seen. However, from a reporting standpoint, they could save you a lot of time by eliminating spreadsheet comparisons. 

I have high hopes that they’re not just glorified Google recommendations. They could become powerful tools, providing information for new Google Ads components and reports. Overall, I think this will be the most useful new feature for all advertisers.

Influencers

Every year, Google hypes YouTube. This year, the focus was on creator and influencer marketing.

YouTube is often considered the second-largest search engine, after Google.com. Google shared stats showing that 45% of their audience isn’t on TikTok, and 65% don’t use Reels. They discussed that YouTube creators are more trusted than influencers on other platforms.

To capitalize on this, Google is launching a system to pair up marketers and creators so you can create influencer campaigns on YouTube. This might be useful for smaller brands that don’t have much time to manage influencer partnerships.

We can interpret this as Google trying to keep up with Meta and TikTok, as Google is often behind in social tools. However, Google has rarely played the parity game for the sake of offering what other platforms are doing. There’s often a business reason for changes.

From a business perspective, YouTube is trying to entice creators and businesses away from its social competitors. It also wants to grow its share of video advertising dollars, which comes not only from its social media but also from streaming and traditional TV commercials. Expect to see new disclaimer labels and ad formats to support this system.

An interesting moment came in the last session as Katie Couric interviewed Emma Grede (fashion designer and Shark Tank guest). When asked about influencer marketing, Emma said she thought it was useful for launching new brands and products. She believes that after the launch, influencers shouldn’t be necessary for ongoing sales.

There are many reports on how influencers raise sales, but only mixed stats on how prolonged the rise is or how long-term the customers become.

Given that fashion and beauty brands use influencer marketing the most, it’s no surprise that Google is paying attention to this space. With Google’s focus on YouTube and shopping, it’s logical that they’d want to foster relationships between brands and creators.

If you’ve thought about influencer marketing, but haven’t had the time or resources, you’ll want to keep an eye on this new marketplace when it launches. 

Focus on Gen Z

Google focused on Gen Z at this year’s event. According to the presentation, Gen Z searches more than any other group, trusts influencers more than their friends and family, and is the long-term future of many businesses.

Millennials and all other age groups trust businesses and friends more than influencers. So it’s no surprise Google is catering to Gen Z.

However, I wonder if this will ultimately be to Google’s detriment in the long term. 

Google Assistant, Gemini, and Lens only have dark themes, even if light mode is your phone’s default. Almost every instance of AI on a phone during Google’s presentations used a dark mode screenshot. These design elements lock many users out of using Android’s most advanced features.

It’s well known that iPhone users earn more and spend more on apps than Android users. While Android leads globally in market share, in the US, Gen Z prefers iPhones. Apple also has a reputation for stronger security, which may be a contributing factor.

Source: https://explodingtopics.com/blog/iphone-android-users

If Android continues prioritizing Gen Z through its design choices and overlooks other age groups, we may see a shift in marketing tactics towards older demographics. While Google search and YouTube video hours remain unparalleled, things can always change. This is a trend I’ll be watching, as I can see Google losing market share for demographics other than Gen Z and younger millennials.

Attribution and incrementality 

When it came to measurement, Google emphasized incrementality over total returns.

Since most companies already allocate budget to Google Ads, Google doesn’t need to focus on winning your business. Instead, it aims to increase its share of your overall advertising spend. If you had an extra $10,000 this month, which platform would you use?

That’s why measurement took center stage. One stat surprised me: only 44% of ‘senior marketing analytics professionals’ use a combination of marketing mix models (MMM), attribution solutions, and incrementality testing. 

Frankly, I was surprised it was this high. It suggests cherry-picking, as the professionals’ title was part of the caveat. When you look across all of Google’s millions of advertisers, most are too small to employ someone in that role, so they’re excluded from the analysis.

Google has tried to make attribution data more accessible to everyone with Meridian, their open-source MMM and incrementality testing tool.

One of the most celebrated announcements during the entire presentation: Google is lowering the budget needed for incrementality testing to $5k. I believe the previous number was around $50k. This could be a game-changer and enable many more advertisers to finally start incrementality testing. However, there are still unanswered questions around accuracy at this spend level.

In parallel, Google Ads Data Manager is receiving updates to simplify how advertisers can ensure accurate data and gain valuable insights.

For the non-ecommerce companies, the data section was by far the most welcome announcement. Measurement remains essential to running profitable Google Ads campaigns, and Google is upping its support in this area. 

Wrap-up

Last year, Google focused heavily on PMax, AI overviews, recommendations, Demand Gen, Optimization Score, YouTube, and shopping.

Many of the themes remain, and Google has once again largely overlooked B2B, lead generation, and local marketing (outside of Demand Gen campaigns). If you’re involved with shopping, it was yet another fantastic Google Marketing Live with a preview of all the new features coming your way.

However, last year, there was a heavy focus on Google telling you what to do, which came via PMax, the Power Pair, recommendations, and Optimization Score via AI Essentials.

This year felt different. Rather than trying to sell AI, Google showed what it can do and how you could use it. It was a welcome shift that was more respectful towards their attendees as there were many brilliant marketers in attendance. 

While we’re looking forward to many of the features coming to Google Ads, I think three will be the most impactful for all advertisers.

1. Agentic support and advice could save hours of work through reporting, insights, and experiment launches. I have high hopes here. I think we’ll see growing pains, and it will take time to trust the output. However, this feature could function as a built-in assistant for your more tedious tasks.
2. Incrementality testing: If Google can provide accurate insights for only $5k, sophisticated testing will be available to far more companies.
3. AI-created video: Google Veo could be the future of video creation for many advertisers. Let’s just hope we don’t get a lot of low-quality AI videos cluttering up our feeds.

We’ll be testing and bringing the most relevant new features into Adalysis, so you can focus on actionable data and streamlining your daily workflow with the latest tools from Google.