Key Updates from Google for H1 2024

Being up-to-date isn’t just about staying in the flow; it’s about staying ahead. By remaining informed about the latest updates, trends, and technologies, digital advertisers can adjust their strategies, optimize their campaigns, and ultimately achieve marketing success. Explore the latest Google Product updates for H1 2024 in our overview.

Table of Contents:

1. What is Google Product Kickoff?
2. Google Product Kick off Key Updates
   • Deferred Offline Conversion adjustments (DOCA)
   • Google Ads Data Manager
   • Google’s AI-Powered Search
   • Google Ads & Gemini
   • Automatically Created Assets
   • Budget Report
   • Web to App Connect
   • Store Sales Receipt-based Dynamic Values
   • Omnichannel Experiments for Shopping and Search Campaigns
   • Pickup Later in Merchant Center
   • Performance Max & Gemini
   • Re-engagement Goal in Performance Max
   • Auto-gen on GMC Expansion
   • Performance Max for Omnichannel Goals
   • Performance Max for Store and Online Goals
   • Additional Performance Max Updates
   • YouTube & Video: Reach Planner for Demand Gen
   • Product Feeds with Demand Gen
   • New Creative Preview Combinations and Sharing Function on Demand Gen
   • Creative Preferences across Demand Gen, Video Reach Campaigns, and Video View Campaigns
   • YouTube Select
   • YouTube Select: 30-second non-skips
   • YouTube CTV QR Codes
   • Consent Mode V2
   • User-Provided Data (UPD)

What is Google Product Kickoff?

Google started 2024 with new EMEA product updates. The Google Ads EMEA Product Kickoff for the first half of 2024 unveiled many updates geared toward improving measurement, harnessing AI in advertising, and broadening Performance Max functionalities. Let’s dive into the major updates we think will impact advertisers throughout the year.

Google Product Kickoff Key Updates

Deferred Offline Conversion adjustments (DOCA)

Deferred Offline Conversion Adjustments (DOCA) offer the advantages of having a tag on your website without the immediate requirement to pass the desired value for bidding. This feature proves incredibly beneficial if you aim to bid based on profit or expected lifetime value rather than basket value. Perhaps you prefer not to expose this value in your data layer, or you simply haven’t acquired it when a conversion occurs on your website.

DOCA provides the best of both worlds: by having a tag on your website, you can leverage consented signals to enhance bidding performance. However, because these signals are set in a deferred manner, our bidding algorithms only train under restated values, ensuring bidding stability. Currently in beta for Google Ads, this feature is compatible with search and shopping campaigns, with pMax compatibility slated for later this year.

Google Ads Data Manager

Google Ads Data Manager stands out as a premier solution designed to streamline connections between your first-party data sources and Google Ads. The primary goal is to simplify workflows for advertisers, allowing them to effortlessly connect and activate their data from various sources, bringing it into Google One for activation across multiple platforms.

With this launch, we’re introducing access to nine data connectors to kickstart the process, including Google BigQuery and Salesforce, among others. Additionally, two Google endpoints were included: Customer Match and enhanced conversions for leads.

Customer Match, alongside the introduction of Customer Audience types, empowers you to organize better and categorize your Customer Match lists. This not only simplifies list management but also provides an additional signal for AI to comprehend the stage of the customer lifecycle within your audiences. As a result, this enhances algorithm performance, enabling a quicker focus on high-value customers through smart bidding.

Google’s AI-Powered Search

Google Ads AI may display only one headline if it anticipates it will generate robust engagement. This allows your most compelling messages to receive greater prominence. Headline two will then appear at the start of your description line.

If you utilize Google Dynamic Assets, it’s important to acknowledge that dynamic image assets, site links, callouts, and structured snippets will be served alongside your manually created assets. This grants you increased flexibility, simplified campaign management, and more intelligent ads.

Google Ads & Gemini

Gemini, Google’s sophisticated language model, has enhanced the conversational setup experience, making it more streamlined. The conversational feature within Google Ads resembles a chat, aiding marketers in constructing optimized search campaigns. All you need to do is input your website URL, and Gemini will take it from there, guiding you through the process. It generates pertinent ad content, incorporating keywords derived from Google’s AI insights and your expertise.

Additionally, Gemini will soon propose tailored images for your campaigns. Utilizing AI capabilities, it analyzes your website and crafts visually appealing assets entirely from scratch.

Automatically Created Assets

Automatically created assets are now available in open beta. As a quick reminder, when activated at the campaign level, this feature examines your landing page, keywords, and current ads to produce extra headlines and descriptions. Marketers can conveniently review and delete automatically generated assets as necessary. Furthermore, this feature now supports seven additional languages.

Budget Report

Budget Report serves as a valuable tool in Google Ads, aiding in a deeper comprehension of budget pacing and improving overall performance. It enables users to visualize cumulative spending throughout the month, grasp daily budget details, uncover potential opportunities, and monitor budget adjustments. Accessing this report is simple: click on the pencil icon within your campaign budgets view. From there, you can customize and analyze budgets, optimizing performance by uncapping budgets and adjusting bid targets.

Web to App Connect

The Web to App Connect feature is designed to boost web conversions. This hub is structured into three main sections, presented in a guided flow to facilitate smoother implementations. The sections include the Performance Overview Card, which provides essential success metrics and summary performance statistics; the App Conversion Tracking and Bidding section; and lastly, the Deep Linking Setup and Opportunities, which holds significant value.

Store Sales Receipt-based Dynamic Values

An entirely automated store sales measurement solution is now accessible to eligible retail and restaurant advertisers across 12 EMEA countries. This solution utilizes store sales receipt-based dynamic values, which are modeled based on ad interactions, store visits, and data obtained from the Google Opinion Rewards app. In this app, consumers willingly upload receipt data in exchange for rewards, such as Play Store credit.

Powered by AI and machine learning, the store sales solution ensures the utmost level of data privacy. It furnishes you with aggregated and privacy-conscious conversion data, empowering you to make well-informed decisions without compromising customer privacy. The receipt-based store sales dynamic values offer deep insights into how your digital ad investments drive in-store sales and how this fluctuates over time.

Omnichannel Experiments for Shopping and Search Campaigns

These experiments enable advertisers to conduct A/B tests comparing the impact of online-only bidding versus omnichannel bidding, which includes store visits or store sales. This involves adjusting default values for store visits or store sales in existing omnichannel bidding campaigns, as well as transitioning from store visits to store sales in existing campaigns that bid for store visits.

Pickup Later in Merchant Center

With Pickup Later, you could promote products that may not currently be available in-store but could be picked up within a few days or online items that could be shipped to the store. Merchants had the option to either incorporate it into the existing inventory feed or use it solely with the shopping feed.

Performance Max & Gemini

Gemini models are now being integrated into Performance Max campaigns. AI-powered asset generation and image editing within Google Ads for pMax campaigns are designed to assist you in creating superior text and image assets with just a few clicks. Asset generation is currently being rolled out globally in English, with plans for additional language support in the near future. Meanwhile, image editing will initially be introduced in the U.S. in March before being made available globally for all English language users.

With these enhancements, Performance Max is poised to elevate your advertising efforts using some of our most advanced AI solutions. Additionally, we’re thrilled to unveil a multitude of exciting new developments through this esteemed panel of product specialists.

Re-engagement Goal in Performance Max

This goal is crafted to aid advertisers in reclaiming lapsed customers while complementing their efforts in acquiring new customers. To utilize this objective, advertisers must furnish a Customer Match list containing lapsed customers and designate a value for re-engagement. Performance Max will then optimize towards these users.

You can utilize the audience customer type label to designate your list of lapsed customers and facilitate the setup of the re-engagement objective. If an advertiser has already opted for the new customer acquisition objective and enabled the new customer high-value mode, Performance Max will optimize towards both new high-value customers and lapsed customers.

Auto-gen on GMC Expansion

This feature aims to assist advertisers facing challenges in producing video assets, which is crucial for expanding the reach of Performance Max campaigns and boosting conversion rates. Starting from March, advertisers who haven’t uploaded their videos and have chosen automatic asset creation in their campaign settings will receive auto-generated video ads. These ads will utilize product images from their Merchant Center feed, along with any additional image assets provided in their asset group.

Performance Max for Omnichannel Goals

Through this pilot program, advertisers who are already running Performance Max (pMax) campaigns with Google Merchant Center (GMC) and bidding to omnichannel goals are now considering integrating store visits with online conversions to serve additional formats, notably Maps promoted pins and the local unit on Google.com. This expansion provides more avenues to connect with your customers at various stages of their shopping journey. Continuing with the theme of simplicity and accessibility across marketing objectives, offline sales support will now be available in SA360.

Performance Max for Store and Online Goals

SA360 advertisers will now find it convenient to create, manage, and track pMax for store goals campaigns directly within SA360. However, there are certain requirements to note. Firstly, advertisers must have a linked Google Ads account. Secondly, they need to have location assets added, either through Google Business Profile or Global Location Groups. Finally, they must be eligible for local actions, store visits, or store sales.

In a pilot program, advertisers can experiment with replacing their Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) campaigns with an equivalent pMax campaign. Eligible advertisers can utilize our tool via the recommendations page, which offers a simple and guided process to self-upgrade single-channel DSA to Performance Max.

Additional Performance Max Updates

The enhanced auction insights feature assists in interpreting performance fluctuations, such as when competitors adjust their budgets and how these changes affect your campaign.

Budget pacing insights provide a comprehensive assessment of campaign performance, particularly if limited by budget, indicating whether increasing budgets can enhance performance. It highlights any anomalies in this regard.

Performance shift insights delve deeper into understanding performance shifts attributed to various factors, such as changes in locations, devices, campaigns, goals, or landing pages. These insights are invaluable in identifying specific variables impacting overall performance and facilitating necessary adjustments.

YouTube & Video: Reach Planner for Demand Gen

The newly launched AI-powered solution, Reach Planner for Demand Gen, aims to seize and convert demand effectively. We understand the pivotal role of the planning phase in campaign setup. As part of this initiative, forecasting is now available for Demand Gen campaigns in beta within Reach Planner. By selecting the Action or Online Conversion cards in the Reach Planner setup page, you can anticipate metrics such as conversions, average CPA, and average conversion rate on the forecast page for Demand Gen planning.

Product Feeds with Demand Gen 

Now, you have the ability to showcase your product catalog alongside your Demand Gen campaigns, enabling you to engage and convert consumers with captivating, relevant, and visually appealing creatives that capture attention and prompt action at the opportune moment. Utilizing product feeds transforms your campaigns into a virtual storefront, fostering purchase consideration and driving sales. Additionally, you can add or remove a product feed from an existing campaign whenever necessary. Furthermore, product feeds can now be utilized across all bidding types, including max clicks. The Demand Gen with product feeds policy is now aligned with other campaigns, ensuring a seamless experience.

New Creative Preview Combinations and Sharing Function on Demand Gen 

This feature allows you to view all combinations of a chosen video or image with one of your uploaded headlines or descriptions. Recognizing that collaboration is key to crafting compelling creatives, you’ll have the option to share these combinations using a share preview feature. This means that anyone, not just users with access to Google Ads, will be able to preview your ads.

Creative Preferences across Demand Gen, Video Reach Campaigns, and Video View Campaigns

This latest feature empowers you to manage the placement of your videos, ensuring they appear in the precise context and environments you intend. When constructing your ad, you can activate the manual mode, which adds a dropdown selection beside each video asset. From there, you can choose the format type on which you want the video asset to appear—whether it’s Shorts, in-stream, in-feed, or all formats.

YouTube Select

YouTube Select prioritizes CTV content foremost. While options may differ by market, there are four primary YouTube Select solutions available. Firstly, “Lineups” offers local market pages showcasing the most popular and relevant content tailored to specific topics, audiences, or moments. Secondly, “Custom” provides customized packages based on selected brand channels or advanced contextual packaging. Thirdly, “Shorts Lineups” highlights top and trending shorts creators along with upcoming content based on specific topics. Lastly, “Sponsorships” offer a high share of voice and sponsorship opportunities. AI-powered algorithms curate the most popular content aligning with campaign objectives, and our AI-powered technology continuously monitors content to ensure adherence to suitability standards.

YouTube Select: 30-second non-skips

The 30-second non-skippable format allows you to convey your brand message within the most viewed content on the largest screen in households. It’s a chance to utilize your existing 30-second non-skippable ads to target cord-cutters who are not accessible through traditional linear TV.

YouTube CTV QR Codes

If you aim to enhance interactivity and prompt immediate engagement when your ad is displayed on CTV, consider incorporating QR code extensions into your campaigns. This allows viewers to easily scan the code with their phone, directing them to a website, facilitating purchases, or providing further information about your product or service.

Consent Mode V2

Consent Mode is the tool to communicate consent used for online use cases, online measurements, and online audiences. You can read our article to learn more about updates for Google Consent Mode. 

User-Provided Data (UPD)

First-party data, where users willingly provide their information, now allows advertisers to share consented, hashed, rich first-party data with Google Analytics 4, building upon existing user ID implementations. User-provided data serves as a foundation for many crucial analytics scenarios post third-party cookie depreciation. The encouraging aspect is that certain aspects of this process are already accessible as open data and can be experimented with today, starting with demographic and interest reports.

Following the depreciation of third-party cookies, user-provided data will be utilized to generate demographic reports for users signed into their Google accounts. Additionally, some segments of this reporting will depend on Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox APIs. Shifting focus to Google Analytics 4 and enhanced conversions, user-provided data facilitates support for enhanced conversions in GA4. This advancement enables analytics to deliver a comprehensive view of cross-channel conversion attribution for Google-owned and operated media using first-party data.

This integration matches consented hashed customer data with Google’s data to fill gaps in Google Ads interactions that may not be observable. Subsequently, it utilizes this comprehensive perspective to enhance conversion modeling and bid optimization, providing an improved understanding of cross-channel performance in GA4 as well as Google Ads reports. Once more, it’s worth noting that both of these features are currently available in open beta and can be tested.

Which update excites you the most? Contact VIDEN to learn more about how to boost your campaigns by utilizing new Google updates.