SEO

Google Marketing Live 2022 – Everything You Need To Know

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Everything you need to know from the Google Marketing Live 2022 event

Every year, marketeers from around the world gather at Google Marketing Live to share best practices and learn about the latest ads and commerce innovations. This year’s event took place on 24th May and Google unveiled a series of innovative updates to its ad products including; Automation, Performance Max and YouTube Shorts.

Our VERB team have summarised some key takeaways and insights below for you to consider when defining your marketing strategies and ensuring optimum functionality online.


Jerry Dischler – Vice President & General Manager of Google Ads

When creating content for your website, you should be looking to create something that provides real use for the reader, from original research and analysis, to comprehensive and insightful information. Content should ultimately be designed to engage the end user and provide benefit. When content is thin or spammed with keywords, it can appear to be designed purely to rank for SEO purposes and therefore may be deemed as low quality by Google, which in turn will be affected by these core algorithm updates.

Google’s official blog post states that the E-A-T model should be taken into consideration too, looking at the expertise, authority and trustworthiness of content created. The continual creation of high quality content will build each of these three over time, which the website should then see performance benefits from.

  • Google says Search is becoming multi-modal (i.e not just keywords but images, video and audio. Multi-search was announced as a Google App feature where you can combine an image search with text to hone your specific search. 
  • They are also working on changes to the results page when the query covers a vast topic. They used the example of the universe. The search results page will become an endless stream of ideas and themes – with text, image and video filling those results slots. 
  • As part of the endless scroll Google will use visual ad assets (images) to serve paid for ads – allowing advertisers to have a share of voice where relevant (With PerformanceMax being the vehicle to do this we assume)
  • Video is incredibly important – with short form video (YouTube Shorts) growing radically (4x YoY and over 30 billion views annually) as well as connected TV. Google will allow us to use video assets and appear across video content more regularly. This will be available as Video Action campaigns. 
  • They will also be launching video ads within the Discover feed
  • Google audiences coming for DV360 to connected TV buys (Works across Hulu, Peacock, YT and other ad supported TV networks. This will draw in affinity, in-market and demographic data)
  • Ads will need to deliver results and Google are doubling down on PerformanceMax being the vehicle to drive that growth. Advertisers on average see +13% more incremental conversions at a similar CPA
  • But they know advertisers want to better understand what automation is doing. 
    • You’ll be able to run A/B experiments to see incrementally of Pmax conversions
    • We’ll also see Insights & Explanations to campaigns to surface the signals Pmax is using
    • Pmax will be included in Opti-Score
    • Pmax will now be integrated within SA360
  • Measurement must change in a privacy safe world
    • By 2023 65% of the world’s population will benefit from GDPR style protections
    • We’ll be able to run search & conversion lfit tests (including geo-split tests) directly in Google Ads & DV360

Vidhya Srinivasan – VP/GM of Ads on Google Properties, Buying & Measurement

  • Machine learning continues to drive development at Google – Ads team remains the biggest consumer of that resource. They use whistling to Google to find a track as an example.
  • State of the art machine learning models for language have increased in size by 5,000 in just 5 years. They are 50% better at understanding human language than before. Broad match benefits from this. 
  • Machine learning processing speed has improved 10x in the last year alone which is powered by automated bidding. They built their own chip to do this. 
  • One-click experiments to test whether Broad match & Smart bidding works for you
  • RSAs will start to use text content directly from landing pages in your account (you can opt in to this). They can also show a relevant ad from an ad in a different ad group. You’ll be able to see the ads they are making in the asset reporting functionality
  • Also launching Google Business Messaging – which will allow searches to start messaging a business without leaving the search results page
  • Asset library will become available to all advertisers (a way of storing all your creatives within the account). It can also integrate with Google Drive to make it accessible. It will also contain reporting functionality
  • It will also create a feature where you can create a video asset, and upload it to YouTube within 60 seconds
  • GA4’s homepage uses machine learning to surface insights that are useful in understanding your campaigns performance. 
  • More automated reporting insights coming to Google Ads – like the ability to to see what conversion paths look like. You can also see where campaigns might be being held back with budget planning tools. Also will start to show conversion performance data against audience lists – i.e. your top value customer list drives 59% of conversions. These views will also move up to the Manager account level instead of single accounts. 
  • Opti-score is going to cover all campaign types in Google Ads. 

Saurabh Sharma – Senior Director of Product Management

  • Users will get more control over the data that is used to target them in My Ad Centre – being able to auto-delete over set time periods. 
  • Later this year Privacy Sandbox interest based and remarketing signals will start to be used by Google Ads and DV360
  • Uploading customer match into Google Ads will allow us to focus strategies on acquiring new customers. It’s enabled for PerformanceMax and will come to other campaign types later this year
  • Improving their MMM data platform 
  • Google continues to invest to make conversion modelling more accurate & robust
  • DDA models will be available regardless of conversion volume. It will become the default attribution model for most conversion actions
  • On-device conversion measurement means they can track app actions without data ever leaving the user’s phone. 
  • Google Tag is coming soon and will replace the Global Site tag. Will allow you to manage multiple Google product tags in one place. 
  • Enhanced conversions for leads will allow you to sync data from CRM platforms to see the real value of leads directly in Google Ads. Enhanced conversions will start to come to SA360 soon too

Bill Ready – President of Commerce & Payments

  • People aren’t researching and buying through  traditional funnel anymore. “Browsing time has blended with shopping time”
  • Search results pages are becoming more visual for commerce queries
  • AR capabilities coming to shopping so searches can see what a product looks like in their lounge – if you have 3D models available. 

Tina Weyand – Senior Product Director Retail Ads

  • Paid and Organic shopping will work together to create a swipeable feed. Can tap into specific results and get more data about the product (sizing, reviews etc). Rolling out in the US in time for holiday season
  • Product feed ads will become available to YouTube short content
  • PMax has been designed to meet both online and offline goals simultaneously. You can bid to store visits and phone calls but soon will be able to bid to physical store sales

Matt Madrigal – GM Merchant Shopping

  • Be able to shift from the search results page directly to the merchant basket – with your product in the basket – with one click. 
  • Bringing more Merchant Centre data into Google Ads – i.e. spotting inactive offers. Later in th eyear will also be able to see information to improve the quality of your feed (ie missing GTINs) as well as seeing if your bid strategy is losing you share because others have a better offer
  • Soon be able showcase loyalty programme benefits directly on Google – powered by customer match
    • Ie if you are in the loyalty programme you might get access to special promotions, free shipping or special deals / earning points
    • Will also be able to serve loyalty incentives (reasons to sign up to a programme) via Performance Max

Additional resources:

The live stream 
All the on-demand videos
Ads Liason live tweeted the announcement

Interested to know more? Our team would love to hear from you.