Google Marketing Live: 2023
The main focus for this year’s Google Marketing Live (GML) event can be summarised with just two letters: AI.
Overall, Google envisions AI as a technological sea change comparable to the one brought on by the advent of smartphones over a decade ago.
So, what’s new?
Google is layering a conversational experience into Google Ads that promises a faster way to launch paid search campaigns. Marketers can submit a link to their website into the program, which Google AI scrapes and summarises. The takeaways can be edited by human hand, with Google then surfacing keywords that align with a brand’s desired value proposition, which can be further evaluated for accuracy. Finally, the feature generates suggested text headline descriptions and images pulled from the marketer’s website and a stock library. It also has an ad strength metre to help marketers assess potential effectiveness.
The tech giant is also leveraging generative AI to try and make paid search ads more relevant to queries. Last year, they introduced automatically created assets (ACA) that analyse a marketer’s landing pages and existing ads to produce fresh headlines and descriptors for search. ACA will receive enhancements this year from generative AI so that it can better mould to specific searches.
Additionally, Google is testing a host of new uses for generative artificial intelligence (AI) in its campaign creation tools, a move it says should ease the workflow of digital marketers, the company shared at its Marketing Live summit on May 23rd. The tech giant wants to shore up a dominant role in search advertising following several months of rapid progress from competitors integrating AI, with the latest updates centering on products that can quickly produce advertising assets and surface more tailored sponsored links.
For Google, AI has now become a central part of its response, including a slowdown in search growth and sharper competition from platforms like TikTok and Microsoft’s Bing. The company has also said it views AI as a way for marketers to navigate changes such as the death of third-party cookies in its Chrome browser.
Dan Taylor, vice president of global ads at Google, said, “Shifting privacy and regulatory changes mean that digital advertisers have to be more nimble and adaptive than ever before. This is where we feel AI-powered solutions really come in.”
Furthermore, Google Marketing Live’s focus on generative AI is unsurprising, following an I/O developer conference that teased major changes to search, including an experimental Search Generative Experience (SGE) that is Google’s answer to software like ChatGPT.
Meta Platforms earlier in May showcased an AI Sandbox tool that lets advertisers create multiple versions of text copy, generate backgrounds based on text inputs and automatically crop images to best suit different surfaces on its apps, as well as additions to its Meta Advantage automated advertising suite. Microsoft has also been aggressively promoting a revamped Bing search engine and chat interface that is supported by OpenAI, which has given it an early mover lead on Google.
Google’s SGE therefore, is beginning to run search and shopping ads to see how users react, with placements that appear similarly to traditional search, including with a bolded sponsored label. But given SGE’s limited availability, it may be hard to measure results against traditional search, executives suggested.
Lot’s of big changes, all tying back into the opportunities AI provides. By embedding AI into its practices, Google is committing to, and showing the rest of the world that AI is a technology that is here to stay, and should be used.