Enhancing the consumer journey

Google is making it easier for brands to guide customers toward a purchase with the help of AI.

For example, with a new AI search experience, someone searching for storage facilities might click on the ad of a particular brand. Then the user could upload photos of the items they needed stored, and that storage site could recommend the most suitable containers.

Google executives said this new format was in early tests and wouldn’t share further examples of how this might work outside of this storage example.

Google is also expanding its virtual try-on technology to advertising, specifically for men’s and women’s tops in the apparel category. The tech lets shoppers see clothing on various body types.

Visual upgrade

Google has also rolled out tools to make brands look more compelling in Search and Shopping results.

When users search for a brand, Google will create a visual profile for that company: a collage of images, videos and other information that comes from what the brand has already uploaded into Google and Google’s Shopping Graph, a data set of what Google knows about the world’s products and sellers.

Additionally, Google is letting brands link short-form videos to their Shopping ads. Searching for a shirt in Shopping results could pull up a clip of how it looks on a creator, or different ways to style it.

Like other platforms, Google also announced generative AI tools for creative. They include the ability to generate videos from a single photo within Google’s Product Studio suite, and the ability for brands to give guidelines to the AI-buying tool Performance Max on attributes like font and color, which the tool will then use in image generation.