Google Marketing Live 2024: What Will Change in PMax, Search, Demand Gen

During the annual presentation of Google Marketing Live 2024, Google introduced more than 30 new features for Performance Max, Search, Demand Gen, and YouTube. 

‍The Promodo team attended the event and would now like to share Google marketing tools and major anticipations for the coming future and how the new features from Google Live will affect advertisers’ work.

What is Google Marketing Live?

Google Marketing Live is an annual event where Google announces its latest updates, new features, and branded innovations. The event serves as a platform for marketers, advertisers, and business professionals to learn about new marketing tools and strategies across the Google ecosystem like Google Ads, Google Search, and YouTube among others.

‍Google Marketing Live Presentation 

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Google Marketing Live

Google’s updates embrace new AI capabilities and changes in result measurement for various Google products. We'll take a look at the key innovations from the Google Live presentation. Some of these features are already available globally, but most are being tested in the United States only and are not yet available in Ukraine. 

On average, it takes up to six months to fully roll out Google Marketing Live updates to all markets. 

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Performance Max

Google claims that on average advertisers who use Performance Max score 27% more conversions or value in terms of CPA/ROAS. With the integration of AI technologies, PMax campaigns will come as an effective tool stack. 

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What will change exactly?

‍New profit optimization goals: From now on, advertisers will customize Performance Max campaigns to optimize revenue. This means that paid campaigns will now be set not just to generate a maximum number of sales or revenue, but rather to achieve the highest possible profit. According to Google, using this feature has increased profits by 15% compared to revenue-only goals. Profit data can be based on conversions at the cart level and the value of items sold.

‍Integration of branded colors and fonts with AI. Later this year, advertisers will be able to integrate their brand book with Google AI, which will use the branded colors and fonts to create ad creatives. Performance Max will also help companies generate AI-supported headlines and descriptions.

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The use of Generative AI: Google will introduce generative AI to create creatives that match your brand’s visual style. Advertisers will be able to upload examples of images that need to be redesigned, and if you have well-performing advertising creatives, you’ll use the “Create more like this” feature. This way, AI will generate creatives similar to those you already use.

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Performance Max Google Ads: marketers and artificial intelligence

‍Image editing with AI: Advertisers will be able to modify ad creatives, including product images from Google Merchant Center. The editor allows you to add and remove objects, expand backgrounds, and adjust images to fit any size and aspect ratio.

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This feature is already in use. It works through the integration of Merchant Center and Google Ads. Now advertisers can connect Merchant Center with Performance Max campaigns.‍

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More reports and analysis tools. Google has announced improved reporting, including enhanced YouTube ad placement reports, allowing advertisers to better understand where and how their ads are reaching audiences.

Google will also add object-level reports to Performance Max that will help analyze key conversion metrics for each creative object. Later this year, advertisers will be able to test and measure conversion rates by using additional images, video, and text in Performance Max campaigns.

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Google Search

Search will have many new features related to artificial intelligence and the integration of AI Overviews, a new feature Google introduced at Marketing Live 2024.

Google marketing company is working to make it faster and easier for users to find information in search, and for businesses to offer solutions to clients with their products or services.

‍What will change exactly?

‍Ads at the top of the search results. Imagine you’re at the airport and you see a suitcase you want to have. But, you don't know the brand name or how to find it on Google. So the fastest and easiest option is to take a picture of it and use Google Search. From now on, when a person uses Google Lens or Circle to Search to search, Google Search will suggest products that best match the photos or screenshots at the top of the search results. This will help brands to better target user requests and help them find the products they want.

‍Circle to Search is a new feature introduced at Google Marketing Live 2024. With it, users can circle a specific element on their screen like images, texts, or other objects with their finger or stylus to launch a search related to that particular element.

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‍Search ads that provide AI-generated recommendations. This update is based on Google's desire to provide users with a new interactive experience, with personalized recommendations and useful ads. At the Live presentation, Google showed how businesses may use this feature as per sample search query “short-term storage.” As a result, users benefit from the new type of dynamic advertising right from the ad. This feature is currently being tested in the United States.

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Integration of ads into AI Overviews. If an ad is relevant to the user’s query, it will be displayed in AI Overviews in the section labeled “Sponsored”. The feature was first tested in the US. This August Google expanded AI Overviews testing to six new countries the UK, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, and Brazil.

AI Overviews is a new Google feature that deploys AI to summarize search results into a short section. 

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Demand Gen

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In October 2023, Google introduced Demand Generation, a new type of advertising campaign based on artificial intelligence. Google showed core updates aimed at improving customer reach, optimizing campaign performance, and creating visually appealing ads. 

Soon Demand Gen will be available for Display & Video 360 and Search Ads 360 with optimization based on Floodlight settings.

‍What will change exactly?

‍Animated ads for Demand Gen campaigns. Retailers using Merchant Center can now show animated graphic ads on YouTube Shorts. They will be created automatically using images from the product feed. 

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Pinning ad videos. This will be possible owing to the new Creative Preferences feature. If you have developed an ad with an author who is very popular on Shorts, you can pin it to YouTube Shorts to appear there as often as possible.

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All About Demand Generation: A New Type of Google Ads Campaign

‍‍Reaching more relevant customers. The lookalike audience setting is now available in Demand Gen campaigns. This lets businesses specify the level of coverage of a new audience whose behavior is similar to the original customer base. Google announced that soon more small businesses will also use this feature while the minimum required size of the customer list was reduced from 1000 to 100 users

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Retail and eCommerce

Google is introducing a set of AI marketing tools and updates to improve customer experience and increase ROI and customer loyalty.

‍What will change exactly?

‍Creation of product videos and images using Google AI. Later in 2024, advertisers will be able to use Product Studio, a new Google tool to edit product images.

‍Video highlights of brands in Shopping ads. At the end of 2024, along with a small group of advertisers Google will test the function of short videos in product ads. Google claims that this will allow users to get to know the product better and gain a fresh interaction experience.

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360° shoe review in Shopping ads. To use the feature, advertisers will need to provide several product images, after which Google's AI will create a 3D view of your shoes.

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YouTube

YouTube has received the least interesting updates. The ones announced at Google Marketing Live 2024 will be available only at the end of the year primarily for the  US advertisers.

‍What will change exactly?

‍‍Interactive stickers in Shorts ads. Google will enable the creation of stickers from existing product feed elements, app listings, or information from ad campaigns. They will be clickable and can be added on top of Shorts ads.

‍Collaboration with the YouTube Shopping affiliate program. This program allows eligible YouTube creators to tag products in their videos, Shorts, and live streams. Now, viewers may purchase while watching. Later in 2024, Shopify Plus and Advanced merchants in the United States will be the first to join the program.

‍The ability to advertise videos created by YouTube creators. The feature will be activated by new affiliate advertising powered by BrandConnect. With that, advertisers will be able to create new audience segments based on the viewers of these videos.

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Conclusions

This year's updates have shown that Google is developing AI functions and will increasingly integrate it into the digital space. This means that it’s high time for more experiments and trials to spot the best-fit mix of paid channel strategies for your business.

The first features presented at Google Marketing Live are already being rolled out to other countries, and some are even available in Ukraine. To be the first to test them, partner with market leaders. 

For over nine years, Promodo has been Google’s Premier Partner. Our marketers are well-trained to test beta tools and gather information from exclusive industry reports, stats, and new trends. 

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