Google Marketing Next: Shiny new tools to help you work smarter

Innovations / June 06, 2017

Ready to play with some new planning, targeting, optimization and attribution tools in your Google accounts? We are. Read on for our summary of the shiny new betas and upgrades announced at Google Marketing Next 2017.

What does Google have in store marketers in the next 12 months? We’ll give you a hint: it’s all powered by machine learning. From targeting, to attribution, to optimization, Google’s artificial brain will be working harder than ever to deliver a suite of new advertising tools to eager ad managers and planners everywhere.

In its annual keynote presentation, newly titled Google Marketing Next, various engineers and product managers took to the stage to pull back the curtain and show us what we can expect. (We’ve summarized the hour-long presentation below, in case you don’t have time to make popcorn and watch the keynote.)

Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google’s Senior Vice President of Ads & Commerce, prefaced the announcements by summarizing three realities that inform the latest crop of updates and tools.

New realities for business:

1. Smarter with data: Marketers must rely on data to deepen their insights into the consumer decision journey.
2. One step or one second: Mobile users will only tolerate landing pages that contain one step or that load in one second.
3. Non-line assistance: Consumers no longer differentiate between online and offline channels. The customer is the channel.

In light of these realities, Sridhar announced some updates and betas:

• Applying machine learning to micro-moments to show the right ad for the right intent.
• Location extensions and store visits for YouTube and TrueView video campaigns.
• Applying AMP to decrease load time on search ad landing pages and GDN ads.
• The ability to import AdWords and third party data to measure in-store sales.

New ways to target and track

Reaching across all networks, Bhanu Narasimhan, Director of Audience Products, showcased updates being applied to Google’s audience analysis and targeting, announcing better audience identification across devices, new YouTube segments based on life events, and the expansion of in-market audiences to search.

Introducing Google Attribution

Bill Kee, Google’s Group Product Manager of Attribution promised to ease our attribution woes with the launch of Google Attribution. You’ll be able to interlink all your google accounts and unify attribution data between networks and across devices. We can’t wait.

Get ready to optimize landing pages in the new AdWords

Still waiting for access to the New AdWords? According to Karen Yao, Group Product Manager of Advertiser Platforms, you’ll all have your brand spanking new AdWords interface by December 2017. The new AdWords experience will enable you to create in-market audiences, plus build and test new landing page variations thanks to integration of Google Optimize.

Automated ad planning

Ad planners may or may not be quaking in their boots with the announcement of an automated ad planning tool in DoubleClick. Roshan Khan, Google’s Senior Product Manager of Programmatic explained how the new tool will use machine learning to facilitate the ad planning process, creating an ad plan that you can approve and implement on the spot.

Ok, Google. Show my inventory in real time.

In his introduction, Sridhar alluded to the growth in voice searches, noting that 20% of all Google Android search app searches are now by voice. Jennifer Liu, Director of Google Shopping, gave us a glimpse into how brands and marketers can get involved with Google Assistant.

By sharing real-time inventory data with Google, Google’s voice activated AI systems will be able to tell shoppers which products are in stock at local stores. Learn how your brand can get involved at Actions on Google.

New and better ways to target, optimize and report

While none of these upgrades and tool are earth-shattering (well… maybe Google Attribution), each brings considerable benefits to ad planners and managers. We’re seeing new targeting, analysis and optimization possibilities applied across the board. These upgrades are actionable. And being people of action, we like that a lot. Watch this space as we unpack each of these innovations in detail over the coming weeks.