Key Takeaways from Google Marketing Live 2024

Google Marketing Live 2024 took place yesterday with lots of interesting announcements that will change digital marketing as we know it today. With a heavy focus on creative assets and AI-led advertising, these advancements signal shift away from driving mass traffic to more qualified traffic to brands.

Big changes for the way we view digital marketing:

Creative and engaging ad assets replace targeting

Google seems to be moving away from targeting and more towards creative assets: like video, stickers, animated images, and interactive ads (3D spins, virtual try-on, etc.).

Those familiar with rich-media display ads likely already utilized these tools and techniques. These ad formats have historically been quite resource heavy (labour-intensive to create, costly to place, etc.) and therefore not as mainstream as search and standard display ads. 

Google adding them to the SERP, Youtube, Gmail, etc., will certainly have an impact on the adoption of these formats, and the use of AI tools to create them will make them more accessible (from a labour perspective).

To keep an eye on: The cost of leveraging these formats is not yet known. Will they still be within the reach of the typical SMB? TBD.

Brand-safe Mass AI Creative Asset Production

Speaking of the use of AI in the creation of assets, Google announced rolling out Generative AI in Performance Max. Allowing for Mass AI Creative Asset Production, while allowing for brands to retain oversight on these assets through editing and customization tools.

What this means for brands: Training Google on brand’s guidelines will seamless and easy, and through a direct connection to product catalog, creating infinite variations of ads will reduce the need for design resources. Human interaction (editing, approval, etc.) can be as involved as needed until the brand is comfortable in letting the AI fly on its own.

To keep an eye on: The impact on human and financial resources required to make the shift to AI asset creation. Less design resources but more cloud and processing resources. Will it be a 1:1 ration in terms of costs to the business? TBD.

Increased Visibility on Where Ads Appear

To add to brand comfort levels, Google will allow brands to see exactly where all their ads are being shown, and which placements and creatives are performing best. This signals a return towards contextual ad placements. Which makes sense. With 3rd party cookies disappearing, the ability to target potential clients wherever they are on the web will disappear as well. This means returning to selecting environments that correspond to your brand/product/client profile, and purposefully placing ads there. Welcome back to 2005!

From Mass Traffic to Qualified Traffic

With these new assets, Google appears to be aiming to help the consumer through the selection process within its environment, and then drive ready-to-convert users to brand. This potentially means impact to visitor and visits metrics (less traffic), but higher conversion rates and time-spent.

To keep an eye on: Will this shift increase, decrease or sustain a brand’s overall revenue? Only time will tell.

For example:

If Google currently contributes 100K visits to a brand and 2% convert. That’s 2K sales.

Future state could mean that Google contributes 10K visits, but 20% convert, then the impact on the brand revenue is the same.

If the conversion rate is lower than that, the brand will see a negative impact.

The biggest unknown that I see right now is the balance between organic and paid. If the cost to achieve 10K traffic from Google is higher than it currently costs to achieve 100K of traffic from Google, then even if the brand meets the 20% conversion goal, they will still see a negative impact on the brand will still

Overall, a lot of interesting announcements yesterday and exciting new developments. Brands and marketers are keeping a close eye on what they will all mean in the future. Do you have any questions? Predictions? Concerns? Voice them in the comments!