After ten years of watching Google Marketing Live virtually from my computer, I had the opportunity to attend the event in person this year.
If you’re not familiar with it, Google Marketing Live is an annual event put on by Google that showcases its major product announcements for Google advertisers.
This year, Google unveiled 30 product updates for Google Ads! While not all of them were mentioned during the keynote, there was one core theme of the updates:
AI.
The majority of product updates can be categorized under these main components of Google Ads:
- Creatives.
- Media.
- Measurement.
Now that the event is over, I’ve had time to digest these platform announcements and really think about how to use them as an advertiser—or at the very least, what these updates can mean in the broader scope of marketing.
Below are my top product updates I’m most looking forward to in 2024.
AI Creative Announcements
As expected, Google announced multiple updates specifically around ad creatives and functionality for advertisers. These include:
- AI-powered image editing. Advertisers can edit images (including product feed). AI-generated images will appear in recommendations for Performance Max campaigns. Add and remove objects, extend backgrounds, and adjust image sizes to meet many sizes, orientations, and ratios.
- New brand standard guidelines. Advertisers can provide Google AI with brand guidelines, colors, and fonts. The option to upload example images as a reference point for the generative AI will also be available.
- Animated image ads for Demand Gen campaigns. If you have a Merchant Center account, you can serve animated image ads on YouTube Shorts and video ads. The animated images will be automatically generated from your product feed images.
- Integrations with creative platforms. Google now has partnerships with Canva, Smartly, and Pencil Pro to integrate into the Google Ads asset library. This means you can create assets on those platforms and export them to Google Ads.
As far as timing goes, not everything announced is available right away.