If you are in the digital marketing industry you’ve probably heard that Google Marketing Live is currently live. However, if you haven’t heard about Google Marketing Live, this blog post will help you understand all the major announcements that Google released during its annual event.
The New Google Ads Types
The first big announcement to come from the Google Marketing Live event was regarding the new Google Ad types that will be available to users in the next coming months. These include Discovery Ads, Gallery Ads, and Expanded Reach for Showcase Shopping Ads.
Discovery Ads
Advertisers must create a discovery campaign in to order to run a discovery ad. Discovery campaigns allow advertisers to have ads shown on both the Gmail social and promotions tabs, the YouTube home page and now the Google Discover feed.
The unique aspect of Discover Ads is that they are targeted with audiences rather than keywords. These audiences include interest, in-market and affinity audiences. The audiences are generated through users search behavior and other factors including the type of videos they have watched on YouTube, visits to the Google Display Network, and applications they have downloaded from the Play Store.
Discovery Ads must include a landing page URL, a landscape image and logo image. You can include up to 5 headlines and 5 descriptions of your product or service that you are offering. Google will use machine learning to switch up the creative and images on these ads and distribute them across Google’s platform.
How can Discovery Ads help you and your business?
Discovery Ads allow businesses and advertisers to take advantage of the audience data, provided by Google, to automate ad targeting and showcase ads across multiple properties. Discovery Ads are very similar to Facebook ads by that they are visually standout and targeted based on user’s data instead of search intent.
Gallery Ads
Gallery Ads provide business owners and advertisers the ability to add images and ad copy to display on Google’s search network. Essentially, these ads are very similar to current search ads but with an added carousel of images. With Gallery ads, advertisers and business owners will be able to upload a minimum of four images and a max of eight showcasing your product or service. They will be able three headlines and a single description on each ad with a max character count of 70.
Individuals searching for keywords related to your products or services will be able to swipe through the images or click a single image to expand and few them vertically. Therefore, you need to have a description of each individual image. If you can get creative, enough you should create a story to tell over the course of your ad. This may entice the user to purchase your product or service.
For the time being, Google has stated that Gallery Ads will only be eligible to show in the top results of mobile-only searches. They will also compete in the same auction against regular texts ads. Advertisers and business owners will be charged in one of two ways: cost-per-click or on a cost-per-swipe basis. Just like current search ads, if a user clicks on a headline from the gallery they’ll be charged. The new cost-per-swipe will come into effect if a user swipes more than 3 images from the gallery ad. As mentioned above, the minimum number of images required is four.
How can Gallery Ads help you and your business?
Google has tested this ad format over the last several months and has stated that image-heavy text ads can work in search results. Google has stated that Gallery Ads saw a 25% increase in interactions. Essentially, images drive engagement. As well, advertisers can use gallery ads to show more content that will connect with people searching for keywords related to your brand. Gallery Ads will allow you to tell a story about their brand, introduce a new service, etc.
Showcase Shopping Ads
Showcase shopping ads are not a new feature in Google. Showcase shopping ads were introduced back in 2016. Showcase shopping ads provide business owners and advertisers the ability to showcase their products to non-branded searches such as “winter boots” or “summer shorts”. According to Google, over 40% of queries are for related to broad product-category searches such as the ones listed above.
Showcase shopping ads feature the main image but expand to showcase other products that are selected by the retailer. The showcase shopping ads display information regarding the store’s location and if they have the showcased product in-store.
The reason Google announced new inventory for showcase shopping ads is because they are now being extended to Google Images, the Discover feed, and the YouTube feed.
However, during Google’s Marketing Live event that announced that a major overhaul was coming to Google’s Shopping platform. Google is now allowing online shoppers to purchase directly from Google’s Shopping interface rather than the merchant. Google wants to build confidence with their customers to ensure that they will offer returns and top-quality customer service. Google also announced that Shopping Actions will also be added to YouTube and Google Images in the upcoming months.
For more information on Google ads, and ways to improve your ads, contact us here.
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