Each year Google hosts their Marketing Live Event, and we stream talks to learn about the latest innovations, changes, and new product launches.

Last year, Google announced changes to mobile landing page speed scoring, AdWords (now Google Ads) and cross-device Analytics reporting. The announced changes were rolled out throughout the following year and changed marketing practices across the world. This year – the event took place in San Francisco and was attended in-person by around 5,000 industry professionals. After watching the event, we highlighted some of the most significant announcements: 

1. New Ad Formats

Discovery Ads

In 2017, Google launched its ‘feed’, a platform which delivers relevant content to users, even when they’re not searching. In September 2018, Google shared that over 800 million people use the ‘feed’ each month and, that as part of their three fundamental shifts in Search, they would rename the platform to ‘Discover’.  

During Marketing Live 2019, Google announced that soon ‘Discovery Ads’ will show on the Discover platform. The new ads will provide advertisers with a way to engage target audiences using a ‘swipeable’ carousel style format. Discovery Ads will also be available on YouTube’s home feed and in Gmail’s promotions tab.

Discovery ads will use ‘machine learning’ – and over time, will deliver the best performing ads to target audiences. Google hopes the new ads will help businesses reach potential customers when they are more open to finding something new.

Gallery Ads

Google also announced another new ad format, Gallery ads. These carousel style ads will appear at the top of mobile search engine pages and will be ‘swipeable’, like Facebook and Instagram carousel ads.

Gallery ads will display:

• 4 - 8 images
• Up to 3 headlines, with CTA experimentation
• A 70 character text box for each image

Gallery Ad test campaigns have shown an increase in user interactions by up to 25%. We’re excited to test this new feature, and our PPC team will look to launch the new ads as soon as they’re available.

Showcase Shopping Ads

Showcase Shopping ads are a highly visual ad format, which currently show in search engine results when a user searches for a broad, non-branded product, like ‘white trainers’ or ‘new laptops’. This format allows advertisers to display a catalogue of their relevant products when an ad is clicked, rather than taking the user directly to a product landing page.

Google rolled out showcase shopping ads at the end of 2017 but has now announced the ads will be available on Google Images, Google Discover and YouTube, providing advertisers with more opportunities to reach target audiences.

2. New Google Shopping

Google shopping ads currently link users to merchant websites to complete transactions – but it was announced that soon users will be able to complete transactions via Google. Along with this change, Google will also be redesigning shopping’s user interface – so searchers can compare millions of products from hundreds of retailers, in one place.  

For brands, this means they will be able to connect with consumers throughout their journey using ads, local and shopping all in one place. Consumers will be able to make purchases confidently, with Google’s guarantee.

Google Shoppers will also be able to view a personalised homepage, which they can use to filter to display brands they like, read reviews and watch product videos.

3. Phrase Match Type

Last year, Google changed ‘exact match’ keywords to include close variants - and this year have announced that they’re doing the same for ‘phrase match’ keywords too.

Closer monitoring of negative keywords within our PPC campaigns will be critical with this new update.

4. Campaign Level Conversions

Until now, conversions were applied to an entire account. This meant all conversions counted were totalled up in the conversion column for campaigns. Google announced that you can now choose which conversions to include in the conversion column for each campaign.

Campaign level conversion will allow for better measurement of results and are especially useful for:

• Campaigns with different marketing budgets to target separate actions
• Campaigns with different marketing objectives
  • Brand awareness campaigns – user engagements
  • Lead generation campaigns – form completions

Looking ahead

The announcements made in Google’s Marketing Live 2019 event are in line with the changes we have seen in recent years. Consumers are looking for personalised results – which cut through the vast amounts of content and ads they see every day; ads are becoming more interactive and engaging to stand-out – and being visible on mobile is still the focus for paid and organic campaigns.

As a digital marketing agency, we pride ourselves on keeping up to date with industry changes so we can provide our clients with the best advice, recommendations and campaign developments. If you would like to discuss anything mentioned in this blog post or anything Google related contact us.