Last month was the 2018 Google Marketing Live Keynote event and we learned a lot about the direction of advertising and marketing with Google. One of the most notable changes was Google's rebrand; AdWords is now simply "Google Ads," since the platform does much more than search advertising. DoubleClick and Google Analytics 360 have also been unified into "Google Marketing Platform."
What changes will have the most impact on your business? We highlight three topics that will positively impact small and medium businesses: new YouTube advertising options, Responsive Search Ads, and smart campaigns. Spoiler alert: the common denominator is Machine Learning. And it's clear Google is making a big push in this direction.
New YouTube Advertising Options
In other exciting news, Google also announced new TrueView YouTube advertising types. There will be two new types of TrueView campaigns rolling out this year:
1. TrueView for Reach
These videos will play before or during the video a user is watching. Users can choose to skip the ad after five seconds. The videos can be six to under 30 seconds. They are sold on a cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM) basis and are optimized for efficient reach. These ads would be great for awareness or brand consideration campaigns.
2. TrueView for Action
These videos will help drive leads and conversions by overlaying calls-to-action (CTAs), banners, or headlines to your video. You can encourage users to learn more about your product, share their information, or take additional actions. This is the first "lead-type" ad Google has released on this channel and is exciting as previously YouTube was best used for brand awareness rather than conversion-driving.
YouTube Smart Bidding Strategies with Machine Learning
They also announced new smart bidding strategies, like Maximize Brand Lift Bidding. This bid strategy uses Google's Machine Learning to help you reach people who are more likely to consider your product after seeing your ad. Look for more smart bidding strategies to roll out across all Google ad platforms. Machine learning is a big push for the company.
Responsive Search Ads
Speaking of machine learning, there were some updates announced for Google paid search as well. Google started rolling out Responsive Search Ads to accounts. This ad type will rely on machine learning to determine the best mix of headlines, descriptions, and CTA. Advertisers will be able to input up to 15 headlines and four descriptions. Google will mix and match the three best headlines and two best descriptions for optimal performance. This will help save you time creating and testing individual ads as well as, hopefully, increase your ROI on search ads.
Google is also giving advertisers more real estate in search ads. A third headline option has been added, up to 30 characters and a second description option, up to 90 characters, respectively. This gives your business more real estate on the search engine results page and a better opportunity to more clearly define your product, offer, or differentiate your business from competitors.
Smart Campaigns for Small or Local Businesses
Smart campaigns have existed for a while now but Google is putting additional time and energy in to making them effective as possible for small business owners.
The Smart Campaigns for Small Businesses will focus on delivering results like phone calls, website actions, and in-store visits. Google will automatically create sample ads (for local search, Google search, and Google display) for owners. This will help take some of the hesitancy away from small business owners investing money into advertising due to lack of understanding or nervousness of using the platform.
Those were the big takeaways from this year's Google Marketing Live. It's an exciting time for AI and machine learning opportunities and we can only look forward to Google working to help us create the most efficient campaigns possible as the technology continues to grow.
You can watch the keynote to learn about Google's latest ads, analytics, and platforms announcements directly from Google's teams on innovations below.
Need help applying these new strategies for your business? Get in touch.
