This year’s Google Marketing Live Keynote brought quite a few changes that leaders in the automotive industry should pay attention to. On July 10th, leaders, such as Senior Vice President of Google Ads Sridhar Ramaswamy, Group Product Manager of Video Ads Nicky Rettke and Product Management Director of Google Ads Anthony Chavez, took to the stage to share all the updates surrounding Google Marketing and Google Ads. While there were quite a number of changes discussed at the keynote, a few stand out that can impact how automotive industry marketers and advertisers can reach the audiences they target and produce better results. Here are the top highlights and updates from this year’s keynote you should know:
From AdWords to Google Ads
To better represent the complete range of advertising capabilities it offers, Google is changing its popular advertising platform’s name from AdWords to Google Ads. This change reflects not only a cohesive branding message on the company’s behalf, but it also makes it easier and more consistent for you to purchase advertisements regardless of the Google channel you use, whether it’s YouTube, search or Google Maps.
Consumers and Advertisers Have More Choices
In its effort to deliver more choice and transparency to marketers, Google is combining its Analytics platform with its Enterprise Advertising platform. By combining these platforms, marketers will be able to take advantage of Google’s Analytics 360 Suite and Double-Click Advertising products from one central location. This helps automotive marketers have more transparency regarding measurement and deciding which media to use in advertisements. The platform will be able to support for more than 100 integrations, solutions and measurements as well.
Google’s senior vice president of Google Ads, Sridhar Ramaswamy, reminds marketers and advertisers about the importance of personalization and providing relevant advertising that matters to consumers as “consumers choose ads that work for them.” This is part of why Google is now providing consumers the option to mute or completely opt out of advertisements with one click on all of their devices. However, it’s important to note that viewers will choose ads that are more relevant to what they are interested in. Thus, it’s important for advertisers to leverage Google Ads and Google Marketing updates to drive better results.
Machine Learning That Drives Responsive Search Ads
Google Ads is applying machine learning in a way that helps to match and shuffle ads that are not only responsive but flexible, too. With the help of machine learning, marketers will be able to leverage a technology that finds the right combination of descriptions and headlines that will better resonate with their audiences. According to Chavez, advertisers will see an expansion of ad settings that enable them to include more content about the benefits and features of products, which is reflective of a 90 percent increase from Search Ads capabilities today. That means you’ll be able to create four-line descriptions and as many as 15 headlines.
Maximize and Lift YouTube
Google Marketing Live also introduced a type of “smart bidding” technology called Maximize Lift Bidding. This bidding capability is expected to be live by the end of 2018 on the Google Ads platform and will help advertisers to improve ad targeting to focus on those who are more likely to engage with the brand the more they view it. According to research by Google, “…[users are watching] over 1 billion hours of content on YouTube every day…[and]… nearly 1 in 2 car buyers say they turn to YouTube for information before their purchase.” This research demonstrates the importance of displaying your advertisements. It’s also driven by machine learning to help improve
New Types of Campaigns
At Google Marketing Live, new campaign types were also shared that automotive industry leaders and marketers can take advantage of, including:
- TrueView for Reach. You can use this campaign to raise awareness across several types of customers within YouTube’s environment.
- TrueView for Action. To drive website conversion rates, you can take advantage of TrueView for Action. This new campaign provides you with the capability to have a call-to-action in the form of a branded banner that appears throughout the video and even when the video is finished helping to increase the influence of driving action among your targeted audiences. You can have it customized to a specific goal, such as “buy now” or ” call today”. Google will also introduce Form Ads within the TrueView for Action campaign for lead generation by the end of 2018. With Form Ads, you’ll be able to better create, nurture and manage prospective buyers
- Local Campaigns. A new type of campaign that marketers within the automotive industry should consider is local campaigns. This new kind of campaign is designed to exclusively drive store visits.
- Smart Shopping Campaigns. Instead of manually managing bidding and individual products, you can leverage Smart Shopping Campaigns. Google announced its plan to enhance these shopping campaigns at Google Marketing Live 2018 so that you can use it to achieve a variety of business goals so that small businesses can also take advantage of shopping campaigns.
Final Thoughts
Google’s goal is to improve trust for the consumer, advertisers, and Google. The company’s core principles of trustworthiness, value, and transparency help to drive the changes behind its platforms to produce stronger relationships among the advertiser, consumer, and Google itself, and creating simple experiences for consumers and better results for advertisers. When you’re marketing or advertising automotive services, it’s important to take into account the different tools to help you drive performance the results you’re looking to achieve. With the changes that Google has in store, you can improve the experiences and outcomes of your advertising efforts.
