Google Marketing Live 2023: Everything you need to know

The core component of this year’s Google Marketing Live (GML) event can be summed up with just two letters: AI.

There will soon be AI here, AI there and AI everywhere in your Google Ads account. 

Following the trend of Google I/O, the majority of the announcements today featured some form of artificial intelligence. 

Here’s a recap of everything you need to know from Google Marketing Live, with links to our full coverage of each major announcement.

Google Ads lets you create campaigns using conversational AI

You can now create Google Ads campaigns with Google AI-driven chat directly within the Google Ads interface.

This new asset creation feature allows Google AI to do some of the heavy lifts (or at least get you part way there) with AI, all via chat.

Advertisers, have no fear! You’ll be able to edit the assets generated by AI before going live.

Google Search Generative Experience integrates Search, Shopping ads

We learned of Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) just two weeks ago at Google I/O.

In the demo, all ads were located outside of the conversational chat. That’s now changing. Google is working to directly integrate ads into Search Generative Experience.

This is still an experiment, but we can get a glimpse of what’s to come for the eventual monetization of SGE.

Google PMax adds generative AI to create text assets, images

Google’s newest campaign type will soon be offering an even more automated experience with Google AI baked into the campaign setup process.

Furthermore, image creation using generative AI will be included to help generate creative for these image and video-heavy campaigns.

An enhanced goal and a brand new goal will also aid you in steering PMax efforts toward your ideal customers.

Google Ads will create AI-powered assets that target search queries

Automatically created assets will soon gain more relevance thanks to Google AI.

Instead of building assets pre-auction, with these new features Google AI will be able to generate assets based on the user intent of an individual query.

Google Product Studio brings AI-generated images to advertisers

With Google’s new Product Studio tool, merchants will be able to manipulate product photos edit, enhance or sharpen photos via Google AI.

Product Studio will allow you to create dynamic backgrounds or remove old unappealing ones – and even sharpen low-resolution images.

Google: Merchant Center Next to replace Merchant Center

Google Merchant Center Next will replace Google Merchant Center by 2024.

This simplified home for product feeds can leverage your website data in the feed creation process to remove some of the harder, technical work for less savvy merchants.

Also, an improved UI as well as insights in the Performance tab look to enhance the experience within the platform.

7 new Google Ads features include Brand restrictions in broad match, AI in Smart Bidding

A handful of tactical elements are coming to your Google Ads account that features better insights, more tools to guide Google around brand restrictions as well as, you guessed it, AI and LLMs in Smart Bidding.

Google Ads adds 2 new campaign types: Video views, demand gen

If you are in the market for more YouTube views or a new twist on demand generation, you’re in luck as two brand-new campaign types were announced.

• Video view campaigns will combine skippable in-stream ads, in-feed ads, and Shorts ads to get the most views for a video.
• Demand gen campaigns will show across YouTube Shorts, YouTube in-stream, YouTube in-feed, Discover, and Gmail to drive conversions. A new lookalike segment builder will also help advertisers expand their reach.

Why we care. While this Google Marketing Live was heavy on AI, it isn’t forced. The AI is shown to be rolling out in a way that will help with the heavy lifting that advertisers face, rather than replacing all of the work. Overall, these changes should majorly help to save time and give better control with steering automated campaigns.

Reactions from the experts at SMX Advanced

We’ve already assembled a team of PPC experts (Julie Friedman Bacchini, President, Neptune Moon LLC; Gil Gildner, Co-founder, Discosloth; Melissa Liu, Associate Media Director, Search, RPA; and Julia Vyse, Digital Director, iProspect Canada) to break down what it all means for you at SMX Advanced. So register now for SMX Advanced and then join us on June 14!