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Google Marketing Live 2019: 3Q’s Take on the Updates

Published: May 14, 2019

Author: Will Cozart

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Key Takeaways

Discovery Campaigns

• Today’s users are discovering new brands while browsing for something different, and Discovery campaigns are Google’s new solution for reaching these users. Discovery campaigns convey personalized ad experiences across Google’s properties, including the YouTube Home Feed, Gmail, and the Discover feed, all served via a single campaign. The campaigns will allow a ton of reach for advertisers looking to scale across the Google ecosystem. The product is geared toward performance advertisers, with both tCPA and tROAS automated bidding available.

• Despite the relatively underwhelming response to Image Extensions, Google remains committed to providing ad creative outside of lines of text. Gallery ads, rich ads in search consisting of 4-8 images, have been in Beta for a year now, but will be rolling out to all verticals in the coming months. The ad format is currently shown in the first ad slot on mobile devices, with plans to expand into desktop and bottom of the SERP inventory as Google attempts to better monetize these spots.

App Deep-Linking

• As an increasing number of businesses build apps, and users continue to rely on these apps, Google plans to further integrate advertisers’ search ads with their applications, and create as seamless a user experience as possible.
  • Upon clicking an advertiser’s search ad, users will have the option to open the relevant page within their app or continuing to the web. In-app conversions will be linked back to the search ad either via Google Analytics or the Firebase SDK.

Smart Bidding Updates

• Campaign-Level Conversion Settings
  • Advertisers with multiple conversion events, or goals for specific products or services, have been waiting for the ability to customize the conversion events Smart Bidding uses for a particular campaign. Google now allows marketers to choose a specific conversion for individual campaigns, rather than rely on everything in the “Include in ‘Conversions’” column. The option is currently available for Search and Display campaigns, and will be coming soon to YouTube.
• Seasonality Adjustments
  • Historically, Google’s Smart Bidding has struggled to adapt to short-lived changes in Conversion Rate and competition. Soon, advertisers will be able to support events like promotions and seasonality by telling the system to expect a different CVR for a certain amount of time before returning to normal. The update should do wonders for advertisers with somewhat predictable, if volatile, conversion rates.
• Maximize Conversion Value
  • Google continues to use Smart Bidding as a mechanism for aiding smaller businesses with their digital marketing efforts. Advertisers looking for revenue, that maybe don’t yet know what kind of ROAS they can or should be aiming toward, will be able to get their program off the ground with the Maximize Conversion Value strategy. The strategy is available now for Search and Smart Shopping campaigns.
• Linear and Connected TV
  • As Google looks to move more up-funnel with tactics that entice brand advertisers, they are announcing new inventory availability with Linear and Connected TV available through DV360. We’ll be doing a deeper dive into this ad product in a future post.

Shopping

• Shopping will be getting a whole new, personalized experience; fully integrated with Google Express, where users will be able to pay directly on the Shopping tab, a retailer’s site, or physical store. As Google attempts to win back share from the one-stop-shop that is Amazon, the ability for users to find and buy products online to pick up in store has great potential.
  • Shopping Actions (Google’s pay-per-sale answer to Amazon), which already sells retailers’ products across multiple platforms, complete with universal shopping cart, instant checkout, and profile-linked payments, will be expanding into YouTube and Image search. The program will be vital for retailers moving forward as Google changes up its Shopping experience as a whole.

• Later in the year, Showcase Shopping Ads will be eligible to show on more placements, like Google Images and the Discover feed.
• Google will also be providing a new tool allowing manufacturers to put additional co-op budget behind their products sold through retailers. The details of the new sales model have yet to be released, so we’ll provide an update as we learn more.

Local Campaigns

• As retail traffic continues to move online with no plans of slowing down, it’s more important than ever for local businesses to capitalize on relevant queries in their area. Brick and mortar advertisers will be pleased with Google’s plan to revamp Local Campaigns. Advertisers will begin showing ads on Google maps, have the option to set product-specific promotions, and optimize beyond store visits, toward events like phone calls and a user getting directions to a store.

Audience Enhancements

• Custom Affinity and Custom Intent audiences have been effective tools for marketers to advertise to users actively interested in or looking to purchase goods or services. These will be merging into “Custom Audiences” with a slider tool (available for a few months now) to either grow audience reach or restrict to the most relevant users.
  • 3Q YouTube Subject Matter Expert, Tom Leonard, covers the audience updates in more detail here.
• Similar Audiences have been an excellent tool for advertisers to get in front of users that have similar characteristics to their known customers. Now, they’re about to become more customizable, with a slider functionality to determine how similar to make the new audience to the seed list. This one probably sounds similar to something else in the digital marketing world….
• Customer Match was a huge announcement on Google’s part several years ago, as it allows marketers to segment out their known customers or prospects based on a few different identifiers. Until now (with Beta advertisers the exception), Customer Match has been limited to Search, Gmail, and YouTube campaigns. In the near future, marketers will be able to expand their targeting into Display as well.

Chrome Privacy

• Probably one of the more needed things to come to Google around 3rd party cookie tracking. First announced last week at Google I/O- Chrome now will treat 1st and 3rd party cookies differently. Google sees that what Apple and Mozilla has done is problematic for publishers. New labeling of cookies can help that and Chrome will block 3rd party cookies who don’t specify what they collect and why. This won’t happen overnight and this month’s early announcement will help them to get feedback first. We’ll be following up with a more in depth post about this topic specifically.

YouTube Bumper Machine

• 3Q’s resident YouTube expert, Tom Leonard, covers the new Bumper Machine feature in depth here. Check it out!

Keep an eye out for future blog posts where we will be expanding upon some of these announcements. We look forward to working with our clients on these new solutions! If you have any follow-up questions, reach out to your Account Director or our 3Q SME teams.