Tag Archives: Google Ads

Upgrade to Performance Max to prepare for the holidays

Today’s consumers are always-on, where curiosity and inspiration can strike them anytime and anywhere. They’re also kicking off their holiday buying earlier than in previous years to find the best deals and avoid supply chain issues. As of June, 26% of shoppers in the US reported already having started their 2022 holiday shopping.[f657a2]The race is officially on to turn curiosity into customers this holiday season!

To win customers throughout the extended season, look no further than Performance Max campaigns. They find the right mix of inventory and formats across all of Google’s advertising channels to help you drive more sales both online and in-store.[347c82]

Earlier this year, we shared the timeline and process for upgrading your Smart Shopping and Local campaigns to Performance Max using the “one-click” upgrade tool in Google Ads. The tool started rolling out in April for Smart Shopping campaigns and is available now for most advertisers. We strongly recommend using the tool to upgrade your campaigns as soon as you can to get a head start on the holiday season. The self-upgrade tool for Local campaigns will be available soon. More information is coming in the next few weeks, stay tuned for updates published to the Help Center.

Starting automatic upgrades for Smart Shopping campaigns

If you use Smart Shopping campaigns you’ll have advance access to the self-upgrade tool for two months on average to give you time to upgrade yourself before automatic upgrades begin. Automatic upgrades are happening on a rolling basis for Smart Shopping campaigns that have not already been self-upgraded using the tool. Keep these details in mind as automatic upgrades begin:

Automatic upgrades will gradually progress and finish in September for most advertisers. You’ll receive a notification in Google Ads two to three weeks before your campaigns are automatically upgraded. The notification will provide a specific date when your campaigns will start automatic upgrades.
Some Smart Shopping campaigns using features like vehicle ads that are not yet available in Performance Max will complete automatic upgrades in early 2023. For campaigns not yet eligible for upgrades, advertisers will receive more specific information later this year about their automatic upgrades coming in early 2023.
When your campaigns are self-upgraded using the tool or automatically upgraded, learnings from your previous Smart Shopping campaigns carry over to your new Performance Max campaigns to maintain consistent performance. Your campaign settings will also automatically transfer to Performance Max. Find more details in our Help Center.

Engage shoppers with new video formats on YouTube

YouTube has over 2 billion monthly logged-in users and attracts a generation that has grown up watching what they want, when they want, on any screen.[e93e4c]New video formats — powered by your product feed — make it easier for viewers to shop relevant products directly from your video ads across YouTube on Shorts, in-feed video and in-stream.

Once you’ve upgraded to Performance Max, upload your own video assets to drive better results on YouTube. It’s never been easier to create video ads! With video ad creation now available in Google Ads, you can build a high-quality video ad in a matter of minutes and then add it to your campaigns including Performance Max.

GIF demonstrating a mobile phone with an ad for c’Balm Natural Care in YouTube Shorts, including a person smelling different products.
Reach customers that consume short-form video content on YouTube Shorts
Still image of mobile phone on YouTube in-feed video content with an ad shown for skincare. Images of different skincare products are shown below the ad with a prominent “Shop now” button.
Connect with viewers while they’re discovering new or related content on in-feed video
Still image of desktop playing a YouTube in-stream video ad for c’Balm. Images of different skincare products are shown to the far right with a prominent “Shop now” button.
Invite shoppers to experience your digital storefront while watching in-stream ads

See how retailers are succeeding with Performance Max

At first we were hesitant to use automation to make such important decisions. But the results spoke for themselves. Automation stays on top of customer trends and behavior faster than we can. Kate Barrow
VP of Growth, Rothy’s

Performance Max outperformed our existing Smart Shopping campaigns. We’ve increased our quality traffic and our overall efficiency. Horus Chan
Growth Marketing Manager, Casetify

Upgrade to Performance Max as soon as you can to make sure you’re well positioned for the holiday season. Visit the Help Center for best practices and mark your calendars for Think Retail on August 30. Join us at this virtual event to hear Google product leaders and industry experts share the latest holiday trends and ways you can get your business ready.

Source: Google Ads & Commerce

New tools to make collaboration and ad creation easier

We want to make it easier to create effective ads for any Google Ads campaign. That starts with improving how images and videos are organized, accessed and created. With assets available in a central place, you can create ads and campaigns faster or swap content more easily when you need to make a change. And, if you’re missing a video needed to reach an important audience or business objective, you can now make one directly in Google Ads.

A new home for asset storage and organization

When you’re working with a team supporting several different campaigns, it’s important that everyone can access the content they need. With the asset library, images and videos are available to users across your Google Ads account in a visual-first experience. You and your colleagues can view, import and organize creative assets from both past and present campaigns. This makes sharing, collaboration and consistency easy.

A mock of the asset library in Google Ads.

When it’s time to create or edit a campaign, you can access the library directly while building an ad. There’s no need to re-upload assets that you’re using across multiple campaigns. This experience is currently available in Performance Max, Discovery, App, Local, Display campaigns and some ad extensions.

If you use Google Ads Editor for campaign management, you’ll find an asset library there too. Similar to Google Ads, you can view and select content from your library to construct ads. And, you’ll soon be able to import images and videos to Google Ads directly from your Google Drive account.

We hope the asset library will help you spend less time managing or hunting down assets and more time developing creative ideas.

An easy, fast way to create video ads that work on YouTube

Video has a unique ability to captivate and influence people, especially on YouTube where billions of people come to watch content they love. Yet, many businesses struggle to unlock the full potential of video advertising because the creation process can often be lengthy, resource-intensive and complex. But, it doesn’t have to be!

With video ad creation now available in Google Ads, anyone can create a high-quality video ad in a matter of minutes. Start by selecting a template from our catalog and populating it with your brand colors, logo, images and text. Then, pick a music track from our audio library. Finally, use the video in any campaign that includes video, like a Video action campaign or a Performance Max campaign.

The templates are made for YouTube, meaning they have optimal pacing, brand and product placements and prominent calls to action. They are designed to help your ad stand out and drive results. With templates guiding you, the complexity of creating a video disappears and you can spend more time developing your messaging, audience insights or campaign strategy.

A mock of video ad template selection in Google Ads.

Invertironline is an Argentinian fintech company that turned to video creation in Google Ads for its efficiency and flexibility. “We always thought about YouTube, but we didn’t want to enter in the design loop until video creation in Google Ads appeared,” says Ariel Peralta, acquisition marketing lead of the financial technology company. With the help of templates, Invertironline reduced the time to produce video ads from two days to just 15 minutes. Compared to previous video ads, conversion rates doubled and the cost per acquisition was cut almost in half.[39b95e]

Another aspect of video creation we’d like to simplify is adding voice-over to videos. Audio is a critical factor in driving creative effectiveness on YouTube. The ABCD guidelines for effective video ads consistently show that videos with voice-over drive better performance. That’s why we’ve launched an easy way to generate a voice-over for YouTube videos, powered by Google’s industry-leading text-to-speech technology. This feature is accessible directly from the asset library.

Simply type in your script, select your preferred voice and with one click we’ll overlay your voice-over onto your video. We currently offer 7 voices in English (US) that are specifically created with advertising in mind. We also offer general text-to-speech voices in the following languages: Filipino, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Korean, Malaysian, Mandarin, Spanish and Swedish. We plan to add more ad voices and languages in the future.

In studies, creative is often the most significant driver of advertising return on investment. That’s why we’re so focused on helping you create and curate great assets for all of your Google Ads campaigns. We hope the asset library fosters more collaboration and smooth campaign deployment for your teams, freeing up time for you to develop creative ideas. With easier video ad creation and voice-over in Google Ads, we’d like to help you fully unlock the benefits of video advertising.

Learn more about the asset library, video creation and voice-over in the Google Ads Help Center.

Source: The Keyword

New tools to make collaboration and ad creation easier

A new home for asset storage and organization

We hope the asset library will help you spend less time managing or hunting down assets and more time developing creative ideas.

An easy, fast way to create video ads that work on YouTube

Learn more about the asset library, video creation and voice-over in the Google Ads Help Center.

Source: The Keyword

Creativity meets scale in Ads Creative Studio

Last year, we introduced a beta version of Ads Creative Studio as a destination for creative and media professionals to make more effective ads at scale. After a successful beta period, the platform is now globally available with more features to help teams collaborate, create and customize display and video ads.

Increase relevance with customized ads

Consumers expect — and prefer — relevant ads: 80% of viewers say they are more open to advertising or branded content relevant to them. But delivering this experience in practice, and at any kind of scale, can be complex and cost prohibitive, especially for video ads. For this reason, many marketers have had to forgo the effectiveness gains that come from highly relevant, customized advertising. That changes with ad customization in Ads Creative Studio.

Now you can create multiple or even hundreds of versions of a single display or video ad. They can be customized for different audiences, locations, languages or contexts. Simply tell us what element of the ad creative — like a product image, superimposed text or sound — you want to set as ‘swappable’ and provide different versions of that element based on a set of rules you create. The rules include the audiences you want to reach or contexts you want to match.

For example, you might make a rule to change the text overlay on your video creative based on whether your audience is in the market for cold-weather gear or warm-weather travel. We’ll apply the rules quickly to all videos and render the different versions in a matter of minutes. Then, you can create and share a preview that shows every video, along with the rules that apply to that video, with anyone who needs to review it.

These features are available today for video creatives and will soon be launching for display.

Experience easier workflows across all your campaigns

We want to make it easier for media and creative teams to work together and at the same speed. A set of new features ensure that projects made in Ads Creative Studio can be seamlessly shared to all of our media platforms — Google Ads, Display and Video 360 and Campaign Manager 360.

First, you can now export images from the Ads Creative Studio asset library to the Google Ads asset library of any linked account. That means users within Google Ads can easily find those images and use them when assembling creatives for Performance Max campaigns, for example. You can think of the Ads Creative Studio asset library as a single, consolidated home for all creative assets, which you can then share with multiple media accounts for activation.

And second, you can now connect an Ads Creative Studio account to Campaign Manager 360. Ads Creative Studio was already available in beta to Display & Video 360 customers. Today, everyone can upload, manage and export HTML5 creatives directly to either Campaign Manager 360 or Display & Video 360. And, soon, you’ll be able to export video creatives as well.

Improve creative effectiveness and efficiency

Ads Creative Studio has helped brands and agencies cut down on time and costs and facilitate collaboration between media and creative teams. Men in Green, a creative agency out of the Netherlands was able to cut its creative production time in half using Ads Creative Studio and Display and Video 360. By implementing the platform into its workflow, the agency was able to maintain strict quality control for multiple creative assets while having different designers work on them simultaneously.

PepsiCo wanted to increase associations of the bubly brand with different contexts like house parties, barbecues, sports viewing and more. The company ran an experiment using customized videos built in Ads Creative Studio to see if occasion-specific messages aimed at relevant audiences could drive higher brand lift. PepsiCo found that campaigns with creative showing social gathering and food pairing situations were most effective. The path to customization was smoother and more efficient and, with a single tool, the team was able to standardize processes across functions.

In another instance, General Motors South America wanted to boost brand awareness of the Cruze 5 model. The brand decided to customize beyond the basics and needed to produce 14 unique ads without sacrificing time, budget or resources. Using Ads Creative Studio, the brand reduced costs by 30% and the campaign saw a 56% increase in Google searches for “chevrolet cruze” and a reduction in cost per view of 32% compared to the industry benchmark.

Ads Creative Studio is built to provide full support for creative teams and to enhance collaboration, creative effectiveness and scale. To learn how to get started, visit the Ads Creative Studio Help Center.

Source: The Official Google Blog

Creativity meets scale in Ads Creative Studio

Increase relevance with customized ads

These features are available today for video creatives and will soon be launching for display.

Experience easier workflows across all your campaigns

Improve creative effectiveness and efficiency

Source: The Official Google Blog

Building the future of marketing together

Technology is powering more business growth around the world than ever before. And new consumer behaviors are redefining the role technology plays in everyday life. We see this in the surge of video watch time, the rise of browsing behavior on Search and the growth in online shopping. There is opportunity in all of this.

With the right tools, you can meet your customers where they are today while building resilience for tomorrow — and Google is here to be your partner. Your insights and feedback are helping shape every investment we’re making across Google Ads.

Throughout Google Marketing Live, you’ll see the many ways we’re working to help you unlock growth for your business and navigate today’s rapidly shifting advertising landscape. Join us at 9:00 a.m. PT (12:00 p.m. ET) to hear about Google’s latest product innovations across Ads and Commerce. Here’s a preview of some of those announcements.

Reimagining the future of marketing across Search and YouTube

Consumers are turning to Google Search and YouTube more than ever for help with purchase decisions. In fact, we see over one billion shopping journeys happen across Google every day.[5bfc42]

When it comes to shopping on Google Search, we’ve made the experience more natural and intuitive. Categories like apparel have seen tremendous success as consumers explore information in more visual and browsable ways. Later this year, advertisers will be eligible to show new, highly visual Shopping ads to U.S. customers. These will be clearly labeled as ads and will be eligible to appear in dedicated ad slots throughout the page.

Reimagining Shopping ads in new, visually engaging search results (U.S.-only search results)

However, nothing can quite replace seeing a product in person or bringing it home to try out. Augmented reality (AR) on cameras gets us close, and shoppers are ready for it. More than 90% of Americans currently use, or would consider using, AR for shopping.[3396f7]Soon, merchants will be able to have 3D models of their products appear directly on Google Search, allowing shoppers to easily see them in their spaces.

Augmented reality in Search provides a fully immersive shopping experience

In the coming months, you’ll also be able to promote your loyalty benefits to potential customers in the U.S. when they’re shopping across Google. Loyalty programs represent a meaningful relationship between you and your customers, and soon you’ll be able to easily integrate them with Google Ads.

Showcase your loyalty benefits across Google to consumers in the U.S.

Using Performance Max campaigns — along with a product feed — you’ll be able to drive more online loyalty sign-ups across YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail and Maps.

Starting today, your Video action campaigns and App campaigns will automatically scale to YouTube Shorts. YouTube Shorts now averages over 30 billion daily views — four times as many as a year ago — and we want to help you reach people immersed in this short-form content.[4cc29a]Later this year, you’ll also be able to connect your product feed to your campaigns and make your video ads on YouTube Shorts more shoppable. We've been experimenting with ads in YouTube Shorts since last year, and we’re now gradually rolling that out to all advertisers around the world. This is an exciting milestone for advertisers, and a key step on our road to developing a long-term YouTube Shorts monetization solution for our creators, which we'll share more about soon.

Product feeds on Video action campaigns will roll out to YouTube Shorts later this year

Delivering better results with automation and insights

The best way to unlock growth for your business is combining your data and marketing expertise with Google’s machine learning. This means building automated products that meet your objectives and are simple to use.

Performance Max campaigns are a powerful tool for helping you meet consumers where they are across Google channels. In fact, advertisers that use Performance Max campaigns in their account see an average increase of 13% total incremental conversions at a similar cost per action.[ee87c8][3b5bb4]Today, we’re announcing six upcoming additions:

1. More tools for experimentation, like A/B tests to see how Performance Max is driving incremental conversions.
2. Expanded campaign management support in Search Ads 360 and the Google Ads mobile app.
3. Support for store sales goals to optimize for in-store sales, in addition to store visits and local actions.
4. Maximize impact with burst campaigns for a set time period to help meet in-store goals during seasonal events.
5. New insights and explanations, including attribution, audience and auction insights so you know what’s driving performance.
6. Optimization score and recommendations so you can see how to improve your campaign.

Rothy’s, a sustainable brand known for its iconic shoes and accessories, turned to Performance Max to connect with customers across channels. As a result, they increased conversions by 60% and grew revenue by 59%.

Case study video where Rothy’s discusses their experience with Performance Max

Insights page uses machine learning to identify new pockets of consumer demand and provide personalized trend data. Only Google can surface these types of insights, based on the billions of searches we see every day and the millions of signals we analyze for every ad auction. Today, we’re introducing three new reports that will roll out over the coming months:

1. Attribution insights show how your ads work together across Google surfaces — like Search, Display and YouTube — to drive conversions.
2. Budget insights find new opportunities for budget optimization and show how your spend is pacing against your budget goals.
3. Audience insights for first-party data show how your customer segments, like those created with Customer Match, are driving campaign performance.

Screenshot of the attribution insights report with a bar graph titled “multi-touch conversion paths”
Attribution insights show how your ads work together to deliver results
Screenshot of the budget insights report that highlights insights for a campaign
Budget insights show how your budgets are pacing and identify optimization opportunities
Screenshot of audience insights report that highlights top performing audience segments
Audience insights show which customer lists are driving performance

Building resilience in a shifting landscape

At Google we’re driven by a shared goal: to be the most helpful company in the world. But we know that our products can only be as helpful as they are safe. That's why we’re launching innovations like My Ad Center later this year to keep users in control of their privacy and online experience. People will be able to pick the types of ads they want to see more or less of, and control how their data informs ads they see across YouTube, Search and Discover.

Control your ads experience in My Ad Center

And these solutions can and should still work for advertisers. We can both advance privacy and continue supporting the ecosystem.

Join us at Google Marketing Live

What an extraordinary time to be in this industry — my team and I are humbled to be on this journey with you. It’s a big moment for all of us, and I know that we can meet it by working together.

Join us today at Google Marketing Live at 9:00 a.m. PT (12:00 p.m. ET) to learn more about these and other ads innovations and commerce announcements. We hope to see you there!

Source: Google Ads & Commerce

YouTube receives brand safety distinction for second year

At YouTube, we’re committed to protecting our viewers, creators and advertisers. Last year, we became the first digital platform to receive content-level brand safety accreditation from the Media Rating Council (MRC). Today, the MRC has given us that accreditation again, making YouTube the only platform to hold this distinction.[ceb9d8]This is a testament to the investments we’ve made in responsibility, YouTube's top priority.

“We congratulate Google for this noteworthy achievement,” says George W. Ivie, Executive Director and CEO of the MRC. “Brand safety and suitability are critical issues in today’s digital ad environment, and MRC’s accreditation of YouTube, first granted last year and continued today, remains a landmark achievement in providing marketers with strong assurances that their advertising investments on the YouTube platform are being well protected.”

As part of this accreditation, the MRC extensively audited our content review systems, including the machine learning technology that analyzes content uploaded to our platform and the policies that determine which videos on YouTube are eligible to run ads. The MRC auditors also met with our brand safety personnel on site to review our processes and dug into how we protect our global community — including our procedures for evaluating content across different languages. The accreditation also recognized YouTube’s advertiser safety error rate, a metric authorized by the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) which evaluates the total percentage of ad impressions that run across violative content.

“We’re thrilled to see YouTube take another industry-leading step in their continued accreditation with MRC this year,” says Robert Rakowitz, Initiative Lead, GARM. “With this latest certification, YouTube fulfills a key request from advertisers and agencies in having an audit oversight body approve a core metric on the safety of their monetization practices. This is a step to celebrate and a further demonstration of YouTube’s commitment to GARM’s mission.”

Our continued accreditation confirms that our strategy and systems are keeping pace with the current environment. And it builds on our commitment to remaining at least 99% effective at ensuring brand safety of advertising placements on YouTube, in accordance with industry standards.

In addition to working with the MRC and GARM to raise the bar on brand safety, we’re also improving brand suitability. Over the past two years, we’ve worked directly with advertisers and agencies to better understand their needs and develop a set of best practices, such as anchoring on YouTube’s inventory modes and reassessing whether they should exclude certain types of content. When advertisers knew how to better navigate our suitability controls, they experienced performance benefits ranging from increased reach and view-through rates to decreased cost-per-view.

We’re now using these best practices and customer feedback to evolve our suitability offering. This will include intuitive controls, more consistency across all Google inventory and clarity on how controls may impact ad campaigns. We’ll share more details in the coming months.

“Better suitability controls allow advertisers to access and support more diverse content and audiences in a brand-safe way,” says Luis Di Como, EVP, Global Media, Unilever. “Unilever has long championed a responsible and safe online environment, and we are encouraged by YouTube’s commitment to create a positive digital ecosystem that is safe and inclusive for all.”

By extending the rigor of our brand safety systems to our suitability solutions, we hope to continue to help advertisers tap into the full scale and potential of YouTube.

Source: The Official Google Blog

Our 2021 Ads Safety Report

User safety is at the top of our list when we make decisions about ads and monetized content on our platforms. In fact, thousands of Googlers work around the clock to prevent malicious use of our advertising services and help make them safer for people, businesses and publishers. We do this important work because an ad-supported internet means everyone can access essential information.

And as the digital world evolves, our policy development and enforcement strategies evolve with it — helping to prevent abuse while allowing businesses to reach new customers and grow. We’ve continued to invest in our policies, teams of experts and enforcement technology to stay ahead of potential threats. In 2021, we introduced a multi-strike system for repeat policy violations. We added or updated over 30 policies for advertisers and publishers including a policy prohibiting claims that promote climate change denial and a certification for U.S.-based health insurance providers to only allow ads from government exchanges, first-party providers and licensed third-party brokers.

In 2021, we removed over 3.4 billion ads, restricted over 5.7 billion ads and suspended over 5.6 million advertiser accounts. We also blocked or restricted ads from serving on 1.7 billion publisher pages, and took broader site-level enforcement action on approximately 63,000 publisher sites.

Gif with the text "3.4B bad ads stopped in 2021"

Check out the entire 2021 Ads Safety Report for enforcement data, and read on for a few of the highlights.

Responding to the war in Ukraine

Though the report only covers 2021, we also wanted to share an update on our response to the war in Ukraine — given it’s top of mind for so many around the world, including our enforcement teams. We acted quickly to institute a sensitive event, prohibiting ads from profiting from or exploiting the situation. This is in addition to our longstanding policies prohibiting content that incites violence or denies the occurrence of tragic events to run as ads or monetize using our services.

We’ve also taken several other steps to pause the majority of our commercial activities in Russia across our products — including pausing ads from showing in Russia and ads from Russian-based advertisers, and pausing monetization of Russian state-funded media across our platforms.

So far, we’ve blocked over eight million ads related to the war in Ukraine under our sensitive event policy and separately removed ads from more than 60 state-funded media sites across our platforms.

Suspending triple the number of advertiser accounts

As we shared in our 2020 report, we’ve seen an increase in fraudulent activity during the pandemic. In 2021, we continued to see bad actors operate with more sophistication and at a greater scale, using a variety of tactics to evade our detection. This included creating thousands of accounts simultaneously and using techniques like cloaking and text manipulation to show our reviewers and systems different ad content than they’d show a user — making that content more difficult to detect and enforce against.

We’re continuing to take a multi-pronged approach to combat this behavior, like verifying advertisers’ identities and identifying coordinated activity between accounts using signals in our network. We are actively verifying advertisers in over 180 countries. And if an advertiser fails to complete our verification program when prompted, the account is automatically suspended.

This combination of efforts has allowed us to match the scale of our adversaries and more efficiently remove multiple accounts associated with a single bad actor at once. As a result, between 2020 and 2021, we tripled the number of account-level suspensions for advertisers.

Preventing unreliable claims from monetizing and serving in ads

In 2021, we doubled down on our enforcement of unreliable content. We blocked ads from running on more than 500,000 pages that violated our policies against harmful health claims related to COVID-19 and demonstrably false claims that could undermine trust and participation in elections. Late last year, we also launched a new Unreliable Claims policy on climate change, which prohibits content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around its existence and causes.

We’ve stayed focused on preventing abuse in ads related to COVID-19, which was especially important in 2021 for claims related to vaccines, testing and price-gouging for critical supplies like masks. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve blocked over 106 million ads related to COVID-19. And we supported local NGOs and governments with $250 million in Ad Grants to help connect people to accurate vaccine information.

Introducing new brand safety tools and resources for advertisers and publishers

Maintaining advertiser brand safety remains a top priority. Last year, we added a new feature to our advertiser controls that allows brands to upload dynamic exclusion lists that can be automatically updated and maintained by trusted third parties. This helps advertisers get access to the resources and expertise of trusted organizations to better protect their brands and strengthen their campaigns.

We know that advertisers care about all the content on a page where their ads may run, including user-generated content (UGC) like comment sections. That’s why we hold publishers responsible for moderating these features. We’ve released several resources in the past year to help them do that — including an infographic and blog post, troubleshooters to solve UGC issues and a video tutorial.

In addition to these resources, we made targeted improvements to the publisher approval process that helped us better detect and block bad actors before they could even create accounts. As a result, we reduced the number of sites that needed site-level action compared to previous years.

Looking ahead to 2022

A trustworthy advertising experience is critical to getting helpful and useful information to people around the world. And this year, we’ll continue to address areas of abuse across our platforms and network to protect users and help credible advertisers and publishers. Providing more transparency and control over the ads people see is a big part of that goal. Our new “About this ad” feature is rolling out globally to help people understand why an ad was shown and which advertiser ran it. They can also report an ad if they believe it violates one of our policies or block an ad they aren’t interested in.

We believe this combination of work will help to create a safer experience for users everywhere. You can find ongoing updates to our policies and controls in our Help Center.

Source: The Official Google Blog

New features to grow your business with Performance Max

As people move quickly between channels and devices, today’s consumer journey is always-on and rarely straightforward. Automation is helping businesses meet their customers at the right moment along this complex journey. Whether you’re looking to stay ahead of shifting consumer behavior or unlock incremental conversions from new places, Performance Max finds the optimal mix of Google Ads inventory and formats to help you drive better results.[3a6511]

In the coming weeks, we’re introducing new features to help you acquire new customers, better understand performance and start upgrading your Smart Shopping campaigns to Performance Max in just one click.

Focus on new customers

Performance Max optimizes results based on your conversion goals and looks for the highest-ROI conversion opportunities — regardless of channel. The new customer acquisition goal in Performance Max is rolling out over the next few weeks for all advertisers looking to generate leads or increase online sales. This was previously available for retailers using Smart Shopping campaigns and is now expanding to more advertiser goals in Performance Max.

This goal will allow you to either bid more for new customers compared to existing customers, or focus your optimizations on new customers only while maintaining your cost efficiency. You’ll also have more flexible ways to identify new customers, like providing your own first-party data through Customer Match lists, setting up conversion tags and using Google’s autodetection method.

Guide your campaigns with helpful insights

The Insights page helps you understand decisions guided by automation and find levers to improve results in your campaigns. In the coming weeks, we’re rolling out consumer interest insights to all advertisers to help you uncover search themes that are delivering conversions. Two new types of insights are also arriving for Performance Max.

With asset audience insights, you’ll be able to better understand how your text, image and video assets resonate with specific customer segments. For instance, if you’re an outdoor retailer running a campaign for bikes, you may find that exercise enthusiasts engage more with images of people mountain biking rather than product images of the bike itself. Using these insights, you can tailor your creative and influence your broader marketing strategy.

After you create your Performance Max campaigns, diagnostic insights will provide a snapshot of outstanding setup issues preventing your ads from showing. Each issue will include suggestions to resolve them, so you can easily and quickly get your campaign up and running. For example, if your creative assets are disapproved, you’ll be prompted to fix them so you can start serving your ads and avoid missing out on conversion opportunities.

The Insights page in Google Ads. The top header says “Discover top audiences responding to your assets” and the main section shows ad images of bikes and people riding bikes. Underneath each ad image are audience segments that engaged with the ad.
Asset audience insights will show how your creative assets resonate with specific customer segments.
The Insights page in Google Ads. The main section says “Your campaign can’t run ads” and “Review issues that are preventing people from seeing your ads.” There is a blue button labeled “Fix it” on the page.
Diagnostic insights will help you easily identify and fix campaign setup issues.
The Insights page in Google Ads. The page reads “Consumer spotlight” with search query themes that are related to an advertiser’s campaigns.
Consumer interest insights will surface top-performing search query themes that are relevant to your campaigns.

Start upgrading your Smart Shopping campaigns

In January, we shared a preview of how to upgrade your Smart Shopping and Local campaigns to Performance Max to access additional inventory and formats across YouTube, Search text ads and Discover.[235f18]Over the coming weeks, you’ll see a notification in your Google Ads account when the “one-click” upgrade tool is ready for your Smart Shopping campaigns. You’ll also be able to access the tool from the Recommendations page and the Campaigns page. You can start upgrading your Local campaigns in June.

When you upgrade your Smart Shopping or Local campaign, it will become a new, separate Performance Max campaign that keeps the learnings from your previous campaign to maintain consistent performance. The campaign budget and settings from your previous campaign will also be carried over. Visit our Help Center for more details on the upgrade experience.

Retailers across the globe are seeing continued success with Performance Max. In fact, advertisers who upgrade Smart Shopping campaigns to Performance Max see an average increase of 12% in conversion value at the same or better ROAS.[bd1e6d]

Upgrading your existing Smart Shopping and Local campaigns helps ensure you can take advantage of expanded inventory and get your campaigns ready for the holiday season. You’ll be able to choose when to upgrade your campaigns until the automatic upgrade process begins. Smart Shopping campaigns will be automatically upgraded from July through September, and Local campaigns will be automatically upgraded from August through September. You’ll also be able to create new Performance Max campaigns through Google Ads, the Google Ads API, or starting in early summer, through e-commerce partners like WooCommerce and BigCommerce.

Check out our upgrade video tutorial and best practices to set up your Performance Max campaigns, and follow @AdsLiasion to stay informed throughout the upgrade process. On May 24, join us at Google Marketing Live where we’ll share what’s ahead for Performance Max.

Source: The Official Google Blog

Register for Google Marketing Live: May 24, 2022

"Register now" button with copy that says "Tuesday, May 24 at 9:00 a.m. PT"

It’s almost time for Google Marketing Live, our annual event showcasing the latest product innovations to help your business thrive. This year’s virtual event will take place on Tuesday, May 24 — starting with a keynote from 9:00 - 10:30 a.m. PT that will be livestreamed across the globe.

After the keynote, you’ll be able to join a variety of on-demand breakout sessions designed to help you meet your business goals. Here’s a sample of what’s in store:

Supercharge your full funnel video strategy on YouTube
Be ready for the future of commerce
Achieve better business results today with measurement that prioritizes privacy

And here’s a sneak peek into our speaker lineup:

Register now to reserve your (virtual) front-row seat. And keep up with the conversation on social media at #GML2022. See you on May 24th!