Marketing Live showcases machine learning and mobile-first innovations for advertisers
While public sentiment sours against invasive online tracking practices, the underlying data suggests that the digital advertising industry itself is booming. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, digital ad revenue reached $107.5 billion last year, up 22 percent from the previous year.
In response to these countervailing forces, the industry’s major players are scrambling to update their practices and roll out new advertising tools that both address privacy concerns and make advertisers smarter in terms of where, when, and to whom they target their ad spend. Google unveiled a number of such updates at last week’s Google Marketing Live Conference, and trumpeted advances in machine learning that have made many of these new tools possible.
Machine Learning: The A.I. Behind Your Ads
Bumper Machine
Previously, advertisers needed to create their own 6-second video cut-downs in order to run bumper ads across YouTube. Google’s new “Bumper Machine” can create multiple 6-second cuts from a brand’s existing 90-second or less videos already on YouTube. This automation allows brands and advertisers to lower production costs and the turnaround time needed to create 6-second video assets. Using machine learning, key moments are pulled from the longer form video and turned into bumper ads. Advertisers can then adjust the new videos before they go to market.
Smart Bidding
Google introduced a new ‘Maximize Conversion Value’ bid strategy, which enables brands to optimize toward conversions that hold the most value for a business. Advertisers can now set conversions at the campaign level, apply conversion value rules to audience lists, and optimize campaigns to online sales and store visits. Smart Bidding will feature seasonality adjustments,
which will optimize bids during designated dates to support seasonal sales. Through machine learning, Smart Bidding will help maximize an ad’s impact against larger business goals.
New Experiences, New Ad Placement Opportunities
Discovery Ads
A new, easy-to-use native ad unit that utilizes rich images such as carousel formats to display additional information in a high-quality presentation. This ad format, previously only available within the Discover Feed, is now available in the YouTube feed and Gmail in order to be discoverable in the multiple platforms in which a user may be scrolling. Google leverages a number of signals based on browsing & online behaviors to help personalize the right message to the right user at the right time.
Gallery Ads
Google’s new mobile search ad format now allows advertisers to feature up to eight swipe-able carousel-style images in the search results. The ad format will also consist of text assets to couple with the images. Gallery ads will boost engagement as a clickable asset, as well as giving brands a chance to show appealing images from the site directly in their ads.
The Commerce Crawl: Shopping and Local Enhancements
Google Shopping Homepage
Google is improving the consumer shopping experience. Today’s shoppers have the option to purchase in-store, online, and now through Google. Users will be able to compare millions of products from thousands of stores, purchase directly from retailers, read reviews, and manage returns in a simple user interface. The focus of this update is about positive user experiences, helping consumers find the products they need quickly and all in one place, backed by a Google guarantee.
Showcase Shopping Ads
Consumers enter shopping-related search queries on Google each day looking for ideas and inspiration. Because of this behavior, Google is providing new inventory on Showcase shopping ads. Showcase shopping ads are a highly visual ad format that incorporates images into your shopping ads and offers retailers the opportunity to “Showcase” their products. Google announced today that Showcase shopping ads will launch in the coming months on Google Images, YouTube, and the Discover feed.
Shopping Campaigns with Partners
Retailers can now accept additional budgets from their brand partners to support their shopping campaigns. Shopping campaigns with partners improves performance by increasing traffic to e-commerce sites, as well as increasing scale by extending digital ad partnerships to all brand partners. Brands will also be able to choose which products or categories of products they would like to support with additional budget.
