Biggest Announcements at Google Marketing Live 2023
This year marked the 10th anniversary of Google’s signature conference for professional marketers, and our team was watching the keynote closely for the biggest announcements at Google Marketing Live 2023.
Kicked off by Philipp Schindler, Google Chief Business Officer, the Google Marketing Live Keynote was packed with updates and new information. And, technically, Google Bard helped launch the keynote with a joke it wrote for the occasion.
“the era of everything, everywhere, all at once…”
– Philipp Schindler, google chief business officer
Google Wants You to Know It’s Ready for the AI Revolution
Google is all-in on generative AI. In fact, it referred to itself several times during the keynote as “Marketing, Powered by AI.” Google wants you to associate it with AI. In fact, it wants the name Google to be synonymous with AI.
Google emphasized that AI has been a part of its products for many years, and that we as professional marketers and consumers have actually been interacting with it more than we think.
“you are not competing with ai. you are competing with other marketers using ai.”
vidhya srinivasan, vp/gm google search ads
Google sees generative AI improving its ability to meet the needs of advertisers in 3 key ways:
- Customer Connections
- Creative
- Your Level of Confidence
During the keynote, Google demonstrated a number of examples of this. And, yes, some of them are VERY impressive. It’s easier to see how AI has the potential to revolutionize professional marketing.
Google is going to be experimenting with new ways of integrating ads into search results and search “conversations” with Bard. It’s obvious SERP is going to be dramatically impacted by this. Our team is already figuring out how to benefit from this evolution.
Here is an AI Essentials checklist Google referenced during today’s Google Marketing Live 2023 Keynote.
Google is Still Pressing It’s Emphasis on Privacy
Citing that 80% of consumers are concerned about privacy, Google continues to press on this hot button, emphasizing its readiness to meet consumer expectations.
It’s obvious from the keynote that privacy will continue to be a lens through which Google’s product development happens. And it’s apparent the commitment to eliminating 3rd-party cookies is coming into clearer focus. Cookies will be gone by next year.
Google is going to continue to put consumers in charge of privacy. And professional marketers have to adapt. We see this as a good thing, because it removes bad actors from the mix; rewarding those who do things the right way.
Read More: How Privacy is Impacting Advertising on iPhone
Google is also making it easier for professional marketers to integrate first-party data into the Google Marketing Platform so that it can be utilized to make Google products smarter.
Read More: Why We’re Obsessed About First-Party Data
Google is Still All-In on Performance Max
This is good news for those of us who have made the commitment to embracing Performance Max campaigns for clients.
Google is making Performance Max even more agile, and it feels this new AI-powered campaign type continues to improve.
“customers are seeing an average uplift of 18% with performance max.”
– jerry dischler, vp/Google ads
A number of more automated campaign creation tools designed to improve the quality of ads, save time, and improve performance were demonstrated during the keynote. We’re looking forward to seeing the more detailed follow-ups to these demos.
And it was interesting to see the demonstration of Product Studio. This is going to be a really useful integration for businesses that sell products online. We’re impressed by the automatic background removal, scene generation, and other elements that save a ton of time and effort getting products to look awesome online.
Google also announced two new campaign types:
A new Video View campaign type in You Tube. The beta test will begin next month.
The Demand Gen campaign type. Designed as a direct attack on social media advertising, we think. And we LOVE it!
Things We Heard that Caught Our Attention
Here are a few “quick hit” items that really caught our attention during the Google Marketing Live 2023 keynote:
The living room is Google’s fastest-growing new marketplace. We’re assuming this is due to the heavy investments in You Tube TV and You Tube on smart televisions. Google’s new connected TV measurement systems will help here.
Video viewing has exploded. Short, long, and everything in between. Google pointed out a lot of stats that are seemingly contradictory, but make more sense when you consider that consumers are so fractionalized.
Impulse shopping online has increased over 200% since 2019.
Generative AI (whether in the form of Bard for Search, or the same AI working alongside all 21 Google products) is playing a much larger role than we’ve known, and it really looks like Google is letting it take over how just about everything happens at Google.
Anyone who doesn’t upgrade to GA4 is completely screwed. Lots of upside for making this change. We need to stop looking at it as a pain the butt, and more of an opportunity to grow our visibility of what’s happening.
Google is trying to be the most creator-friendly platform, particularly on You Tube. Given the HEAVY emphasis on You Tube during the Google Marketing Live 2023 keynote, it’s pretty apparent Google is looking for massive revenue growth here.
Curiously, not ONE mention of the Google Discover platform. Hmmm??
In general, we’re very impressed with how Google has responded to the early criticisms of Performance Max. And they seem to be applying this learning across the board to all 21 products.
Given that one of the primary underlying principles of our company is making tools the big guys use against you every day more accessible, we love how generative AI appears to be accelerating the pace at which the playing field is leveling.
“this is our moment as an industry to rise to a new era. if we get this right, we can build the future of marketing together.”
– Jerry dischler, vp/google ads
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