After reading the “AI-Powered Ads” presentation from Google, which we received as Google Premiere Partners, we’ve gained valuable insights into how artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionising the world of digital marketing and presenting strategic opportunities for businesses to leap ahead of their competition.
In this blog post, we’ll examine how Google’s AI-driven solutions are changing the way businesses conduct their marketing strategies and how they have effectively used these tools to generate growth.
While AI has recently gained widespread attention, this ‘overnight success’ has been years in the making. In fact, Google has been investing an enormous amount of resources into researching and developing AI over the past 10 years.
Google has launched numerous projects and initiatives that have greatly impacted various industries, including digital marketing. With this knowledge from the “AI-Powered Ads” presentation, we aim to help you better understand and leverage the power of AI in your marketing efforts.
Enhancing Expertise and Creativity
AI is not here to replace human expertise and creativity; instead, it serves to enhance our abilities. With Google’s AI, businesses can leverage advanced tools and technologies to create new value and drive greater impact in their marketing efforts.
From automating repetitive tasks and uncovering hidden insights to generating creative ideas and optimising content, AI empowers marketing teams to work more efficiently and effectively. By combining human ingenuity with the power of AI, businesses can stay ahead of the curve and consistently deliver innovative, engaging, and high-performing marketing campaigns.
AI is key to driving powerful marketing efficiencies
In 2022, AI adoption was 2.5 times higher than in 2017, with 70% of adopters experiencing an increase in revenue and 28% enjoying cost reductions, as reported in “The state of AI in 2022—and a half decade in review” by McKinsey (12/6/22).
As we progress through 2023, we can only expect this trend to accelerate at an even greater rate, given the significant rise in AI usage and its transformative potential across various industries.
Embracing an AI-First Approach: The Power of Collaboration
An AI-first approach begins with you, the business owner or marketing manager, and your understanding of your organisation’s goals and objectives. By leveraging AI technologies, you can multiply your business’ potential for success and growth. Not only does AI learn from your input, but you also gain valuable insights from AI as you collaborate and adapt to its capabilities.
Combining your expertise with Google’s AI creates a powerful flywheel effect that can drive your marketing efforts to new heights. This synergistic relationship consists of four key steps:
1. Supplying Creative, Goals, and Conversion Data:
As the foundation of your AI-driven marketing strategy, you need to provide the creative assets, your specific goals, and the conversion data relevant to your business. This information helps the AI system understand your objectives and tailor its actions accordingly.
2. AI Remixes Creative to Convert Customers:
Google’s AI takes the creative assets you provide and remixes them to optimise customer conversions. By analysing the data and adapting your marketing materials, AI can create highly targeted, engaging content that resonates with your audience and drives results.
3. AI Casts a Wide Net:
Google’s AI doesn’t just optimise your existing marketing efforts; it also casts a wide net to explore new opportunities and reach untapped customer segments. By harnessing the power of AI, you can expand your reach and identify potential customers who may have otherwise gone unnoticed.
4. AI Delivers Returns and Insights:
The final step in this collaborative process involves AI delivering tangible returns on your investment and providing valuable insights to inform your future marketing decisions. By analysing the performance data, AI can help you identify trends, strengths, and weaknesses in your marketing strategy, enabling you to make informed decisions and optimise your efforts.
By embracing an AI-first approach and collaborating with Google’s AI, you can unlock your business’ potential and stay ahead of the competition. The synergy between your expertise and AI’s capabilities creates a powerful force that can drive significant marketing efficiencies and elevate your business to new heights.
AI-powered products from Google that you can use today
Google’s AI-powered products offer a wide range of tools for advertisers to improve their advertising performance across various platforms.
From search to app campaigns, value-based bidding to optimised targeting, Google’s AI products utilise advanced algorithms and machine learning to help businesses reach their target audience and drive better results.
In this table, we provide an overview of some of Google’s AI products and their corresponding results, based on internal data and industry benchmarks.
Google AI ProductsDescriptionResultsSearch + Performance MaxMultiply results across all of Google with Search and Performance Max, the ads power pairing.SearchWhen paired with tools like Responsive Search Ads and Automatically Created Assets, Google’s AI can use your assets and AI-generated content to create the best ad, in real-time.Drive +20% more conversions at a similar cost per action.
Google Internal Data, April 2021 – Advertisers that adopt responsive search ads in campaigns that also use Broad Match and Smart Bidding see an average of 20% more conversions at a similar cost per action.
Broad MatchCapture new performance opportunities in real time. Combine Broad Match keywords with Smart Bidding in your Search ads for up to.+35% more conversions
Advertisers that upgrade their exact match keywords to broad match in campaigns that use conversion
Performance MaxPerformance Max uses the full power of Google’s AI to help you multiply conversions across all of Google. Find untapped growth opportunities from new search queries and channels to drive better results towards your goals.Advertisers who use Performance Max achieve on average over +18% more conversions at a similar cost per action.
Source: Google Data, Global, Ads, November – December 2022
Ad CampaignsUse App campaigns to find and keep your highest-value app users, whether you’re promoting a retail app or launching a new game. Share your goals and App campaigns tap into the full power of Google’s AI to promote your app across channels—all from a single campaign.
Value-based biddingReach high-value customers and drive increased ROI by combining your first-party data and Google’s AI-powered value-based bidding.On average, advertisers that switch their bid strategy from having a target CPA to a target ROAS can see 14% more conversion value at a similar return on ad spend
Source: Google Internal Data, Global, February 2023
Enhanced conversionsGet transparent conversion measurement when enhanced conversions supplement your existing conversion tags in a privacy-safe way.Advertisers who use Enhanced conversions for Web see an average conversion lift of 5% on search and 17% on YouTube
Source: Google Internal Data, Global, February 2023
Insights pageWith just-in-time insights and forward-looking trends, the Insights Page uses Google’s AI to help you navigate uncertainty and inform your broader strategy. Get new insights tailored for your business to answer important questions about your performance, customers, and creative.
Optimised TargetingAI-powered audience solutions build on top of the audiences you share and use audience signals across Google to help you find new, relevant customers.55% improvement in campaign objectives
Google Data, Global, 9/8/22-9/15/22 – On average, advertisers who use optimised targeting in Display & Video 360 can see 55% improvement in their campaign objectives when using first-party data.
MeasurementsAI-based solutions, like modeling in Google Analytics 4, offer more accurate measurements when surfacing relevant insights and informing customer behaviour. Together with your own expertise, you can get deeper insights about your customers and how they’re engaging with you so that
Unleash the Power of AI-Powered Creative Tools for Maximum ROI
Creative content is the key to driving higher returns on investment (ROI) in the world of digital marketing.
“AI-powered creative solutions can intelligently make, flip, or trim YouTube videos to simplify and speed up the creative process — helping you scale across audiences, surfaces, and formats”
By leveraging these innovative solutions, you can effectively scale your content across diverse audiences, platforms, and formats. One such approach to enhance your advertising performance is to incorporate the ABCD’s of effective YouTube ads – four principles derived from insights gathered from thousands of ads on the platform.
A – Attention
B – Branding
C – Connection
D – Direction
These proven principles can elevate your ad’s creative performance by up to 30%, ensuring that your marketing campaigns capture attention, build brand awareness, connect with viewers, and inspire action.
Source: “The ABCDs of Effective Video Ads”
AI-Powered Creative ToolsDescriptionResultsVideo Reach CampaignsGoogle’s AI optimises the video assets you provide to deliver on your goal (reach, ad completions, or reach at a specific frequency) in the most cost-efficient way.When optimised with Google’s AI for efficient reach, we saw 16% lower CPMs and up to 44% more reach.
Source: YouTube VRC Campaign Meta Analysis, Global, Oct 2019 – Feb 2021. Data from n=33 video experiments vs manually managed campaigns.
Video Action CampaignsWith Optimised Targeting powered by Google’s AI, Video Action Campaigns can see a boost of up to 20% in conversions.
Source: VAC Comm Doc: YouTube Internal Data, Global, May – June 2022
Text-to-SpeechConverts text input into natural-sounding speech that you can overlay on a YouTube video with Google’s AI. Audio can be your video superpower.Sony created voice-over for their 15 and 30-second video advertisements and, through video experiments, demonstrated that the ads featuring voice-overs resulted in a 25% increase in ad recall and a 50% reduction in cost per uplifted user compared to the original assets that only had background music.
Source: Google Ads data, 9/8/21-10/4/21
Case Studies: Success Stories with Google's AI
Google’s AI collaborates with Rothy’s to boost their revenue growth.
Rothy’s, a sustainable shoe brand, aimed to use a full-funnel, cross-channel approach to grow conversions and revenue efficiently.
The company utilised Google’s Performance Max to unlock new channels and creatively meet their customers where they were.
Results
- 89% increase in impressions
- 60% increase in conversions
- 59% increase in revenue.
“At first we were hesitant to use AI to make such important decisions. But the results spoke for themselves. AI stays on top of customer trends and behaviour faster than we can.” Kate Barrows / Rothy’s, VP of Growth
McDonald’s uses Google’s AI technology to connect with their customers.
During the pandemic, McDonald’s Hong Kong faced the challenge of adapting to changing customer habits.
The fast-food giant partnered with agencies Media.Monks and OMD to use Google’s AI-powered solutions to gather customer insights and deploy App campaigns to boost in-app orders and in-store pickups.
Results
- 550% increase in conversions
- 63% decrease in cost-per-acquisition
- 560% increase in revenue.
“AI enables us to do so much more to increase media efficiency and sales, and we look forward to seeing more breakthroughs brought by GA4 and other solutions powered by Google’s AI.” Joanna Chow / OMD Hong Kong, Associate Digital Director
Google’s AI collaborates with Tails.com to spark sales expansion
Tails.com, a pet food subscription service, needed to increase brand awareness and sign-ups in Germany using a cost-efficient approach.
The company tested AI-powered Search campaigns that combined broad match with Smart Bidding, responsive search ads, and data-driven attribution.
Result
- 182% increase in sign-ups with AI-powered Search ads.
“When you move into a different market, it’s really difficult to know in advance what will be the search terms customers use in that market.
We were using a manual approach–and of course it gives you a feeling of control–what it doesn’t do though is give you the ability to stay current with the nuances as they change in the landscape.” Jamie MacNaughton / Tails.com, Head Of Digital
Conclusion
Google’s AI is revolutionising the digital marketing space by providing businesses with powerful tools to enhance their marketing strategies and achieve growth.
By integrating the expertise of marketing teams with AI, businesses can create more effective ads, target the right audiences, and boost overall performance.
Incorporating AI as a central component of their strategy and partnering with Google’s AI technology enables businesses to outpace competitors, refine their marketing, and reach new levels of success.
The accomplishments of companies like Rothy’s, McDonald’s, and Tails.com demonstrate the tangible impact of AI in marketing and offer valuable insights for other businesses looking to harness AI for growth.
