Earlier we told you that Google is going to integrate Generative AI into search results. We predicted it will change how we advertise in the future. Now we take a closer look at the SEA component of this change. Did you miss what Generative AI is and what it means for Google? No worries, you can read all about it here.
A quick refresher: Google's integration of Generative AI means you no longer get a list of ads as search results. Instead, you'll get one hyper-specific ad at the top of the page that fits your complex search query. So will Generative AI sit in the SEA marketer's chair? Our copywriter Cecile sat down with SEA marketer Jannes for more clarity on this.
Jannes: "A search engine like Google's is actually already an AI. That makes the expansion of AI integration a logical development." Google used to look for the most relevant results for you from all websites. The addition of Generative AI mainly changes how Google handles all the information it has access to. By combining different relevant assets on the Internet, Google creates a new, perfect result. Thus, according to Google, the search experience becomes smarter AND easier.
Rapid changes
Jannes: "The online marketing landscape is changing at lightning speed. The best thing you can do is to go with the flow. These kinds of changes may take some getting used to, but in the end it almost always results in less work and more results. In an older stage of online marketing, you had to bid per keyword; with the advent of smart bidding, that was no longer necessary."
"We saw something similar happen with the advent of Performance Max," Jannes continues. "You determined what the campaign goals were and you provided the necessary data, then Performance Max made sure the right customer was targeted at the right time." Performance Max was thus the latest chapter in the story of SEA. In the division of labor between SEA marketer and AI, Performance Max's role is going to increase.
Power Couple
Why is the focus on Performance Max growing? If you tell Google AI a little more about your business and your goals, and provide your texts and images, Google AI uses machine learning to figure out the best performing composition. You can still make adjustments, of course, or remove them. Google gives you insights on which assets work best, including suggestions on where best to add new assets.
The emphasis on visuals is also increasing, Performance Max is selling the ad space for that. With all those ingredients that Google generates, Performance Max in turn creates the best Search ad. In short: Google and the advertiser provide the ingredients, Performance Max thereby creates an ad that fills the space at the top of the search results.
New focus
Search results are displayed differently: with a Google-tailored ad, you not only get information about a product, but also information on how best to make a purchase decision. Currently, Google is experimenting with Search and Shopping Ads integrated with AI powered snapshot (a snapshot of search queries) and conversation with the user. This way, there is an appropriate search result for every step of the shopping journey.
This fits with Broad Match's recent improvements. Your search history helps Google generate the best results, even if the search intent is not always clear. Smart bidding has also been improved, using Google AI and large language models. With these developments, searches are better understood, even previously unknown searches. If you search for soccer games and then search for tickets, Google understands that you are looking for tickets to a soccer game.
The range of tasks for SEA marketers
If AI creates the components of an ad and Performance Max creates and distributes the ads, what tasks are left for the SEA marketer? The AI is not going to generate assets from scratch; you still have to feed the algorithm with commands and relevant data. That requires tracking, which comes full circle.
Jannes: "At Tomahawk we specialize in setting up good tracking, our standards for implementation are high. Tracking gives us more and more information that we can feed into the algorithm that Generative AI and Performance Max work with. The campaigns thus generated go live, bring new visitors to a website and thus give us new data that allows us to make our campaigns even better. Online targeting is like a circle. Through these new developments, the circle becomes more automated and our task shifts to driving algorithms."
So how can you as a SEA marketer drive the algorithm? Several new features give you options for that:
- In the future, you can add brand restrictions to broad match. That way you maintain the wide reach of broad match while keeping search results relevant to specific brand needs.
- The integration of new customer acquisition goal in PMax is improved so you can better target new customers. Based on the data about your customers, Google AI can better serve both existing and new customers.
SEA marketing and crossborder e-commerce
For crossborder e-commerce, this is also a welcome development. Generative AI can automatically translate product descriptions, ads and other types of content. But we all know that AI translations are not 100% accurate, so a little proofreading won't hurt. In addition, this provides more data from your international customers, which in turn is good for the aforementioned circle of tracking. This in turn allows you to target other international customers and capitalize on trends in other geographical areas.
Conclusion
"The integration of Generative AI into Google is going to take a lot of work out of our hands. That will pave the way for innovation and new knowledge. When Google just came out, no one knew what a successful search term would look like. We had to teach ourselves how to Google. Now we can be more responsive to how people learned to search for something on Google," Jannes said. Now that more complex search queries are possible, we are teaching ourselves to google again. For SEA marketers, this presents opportunities for experimentation and innovation to deal with this new Google method.
We draw a tentative conclusion: generative AI in Google is not going to take over all SEA work. Mostly, you're going to save time, because you'll spend less time manually creating and optimizing that perfect ad, leaving more time for strategy and data analysis.
