AI News Feels like AI Olds - Google Marketing Live 2024 Recap

You’ll never guess what Google Marketing Live 2024 was about.

Joking. Artificial intelligence - what a surprise! At this point, many of us are so bombarded with AI buzzwords and headlines that even big updates like those showcased in GML 2024 might feel routine. Stay strong, marketers. It’s the consumers’ job to get bored, not ours. Understanding the latest marketing tech must stay a priority for business leaders. IMM wants to help - we’ve sifted through the GML ‘24 noise to identify the updates that’ll matter most to you.

We get it, Google. The robots have taken over.

On the heels of Google’s AI Overviews announcement, Google Marketing Live 2024 announced various updates to their suite of digital tech tools. Many voices in the industry were left disappointed by a lack of truly new developments - most announcements felt “like slightly more advanced versions of last year’s GML”. Particularly, there were very few B2B or lead generation updates, a space in which many feel Google’s lag.

Despite its significant announcements, this update may have felt boring because AI has already been changing the digital game for years. Formerly manual tasks like post scheduling, emailing, campaign optimizing, and analytics have been automated for a while. This year’s announcements echoed recent trends around the increasing power of generative AI, but contained no revolutionary changes. 2024’s GML centered around more powerful generative AI within campaigns, first-party data prioritization, and better integrated system-wide analytics. Here’s a summary of the live event, in case you missed it.

• AI-generated digital assets will find more alignment with their company’s brand personality through the addition of a “brand profile” guideline tool. Performance Max will utilize these new brand guidelines to produce and place more effective assets at scale.
• YouTube creator accounts can now be linked to Ads accounts. This is big news for user-generated content strategies and YouTube ad placements. New partnerships such as YouTube x Shopify might provide opportunities for powerful brand storytelling.
• Virtual garment try-ons are an exciting development for retailers.
• Enhancement of analytics systems (integration of GA4 and Campaign Manager 360 accounts) will help produce more detailed engagement and conversion metrics.
• Highly detailed PMAX reporting is now available at the asset level, as well as reporting for YouTube placements.
• Google provided an “AI Essentials Checklist” to help businesses make strategic use of all their new toys.

These updates will make our lives easier and our campaigns smarter. Let’s dive into the nitty-gritty below.

Bigger AI means better targeting.

We all saw this headline coming because all we know generative AI continues to grow. The adaptability and personalization of automatically placed ads keeps improving every year.

For instance, hyperlink headlines on search campaigns will be tightly tailored to searchers’ specific language. AI will pull conceptual meaning from a website’s landing page content, and then craft hyper-relevant copy against users’ unique queries.

Google also introduced Automatically Created Assets. This feature will leverage machine learning to generate ad creatives based on existing content, user engagement data, and the ‘brand profile’. This feature won’t just spit out generic visuals, it will craft content around specific nuances that might make a user convert. Imagine the time saved when ads are not only instantly generated, but also hyper-relevant to your audience's preferences. For anyone struggling to balance high-quality yet cost-efficient creative, Google’s new AI-powered image and video generation might change the game. By generating increasingly high-quality assets through machine learning, AI will try to keep content fresh and engaging. No more spending hours in design software or scrambling for stock photos - Google can do the heavy lifting.

Greater inference power makes the whole system more effective.

Alongside creative asset production, Performance Max’s analytics systems got an upgrade. Performance Max maximizes conversion value by using machine learning algorithms to determine the best combination of creative, audience targets, and bid strategies. So, heightened AI inference power will produce better predictive analytics that makes the entire system better at what it's supposed to do. It will even let marketers see which ad elements might perform best before launching a campaign - like a crystal ball specifically built to maximize ROI.

Something else we haven’t mentioned: Google also wants to improve customer interactions through advancements in conversational AI. Improved technology will handle more complex queries and provide more accurate responses, increasing chatbots’ usability. Likewise, better language processing capabilities will make interactions feel more human-like. Customers will get higher quality service so your team can focus on strategic tasks. Blah, blah.

Performance marketers are pumping their fists.

We spoke with IMM’s digital media and SEO experts to see what they're looking forward to testing:

"I'm excited to test AI-generated assets in PMAX, turning copy into images, to boost performance even more and allow faster campaign launch." - Hailey Mathieson, Associate Media Director

"The brand profile feature also seems promising to boost branded search performance by occupying more real estate on the SERP 'above the fold', and win back impressions and clicks over competitors." - Marion Assaf-Robert, Search Supervisor

And here's a quick list of recommendations we recommend (yes, we just said that):

• If you haven't already, start discussing what the new SEO and paid search nuances mean for your business. Better to be on top of the game now than play catch-up later.
• Make sure your data and website language is relevant, clean, and up-to-date so that AI has the best chance of picking it up.
• If you're running your own campaigns, start small and measure the results against your old tactics
• Use AI to handle mundane tasks and free up your time to make creative, compelling stories.

Feeling a lack of novelty watching Google Marketing Live 2024 tells a clear story: AI isn’t the future; it’s the present. These new tools promise to make our lives easier, our campaigns smarter, and our results better. IMM helps clients within B2B tech and DTC e-commerce realms achieve revenue targets by staying ahead of the technology curve.

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