Google Ads updates - ACA and AI explained
Google Marketing Live 2023 concluded this week, and the hot topic, to no one’s surprise, was AI. Google released a quick summary of the AI changes in their blog, and I wanted to touch on how this will change things for marketers and brands.
What is ACA?
ACA, or Automatically Created Assets, is a new(ish) feature from Google they started rolling out in 2022. Basically, with ACA, Google would ask you for a landing page that you want to be promoted and create headlines and descriptions based on the content on your page. ACA has been an opt-in campaign-level setting that would permit Google to create additional headlines and descriptions in addition to your own to use in responsive search ads.
The benefits listed by Google include improved performance, relevance, and reduction of manual work in ads creation.
How will AI enhance ACA and Performance Max?
Google’s Marketing Live event was, as expected, heavily reliant on AI-related updates. One of the bigger changes was the announcement of AI-powered ad creation based on landing pages. Now, if enabled, Google would use AI to create even more relevant headlines and descriptions, based on your landing page, that directly address the queries and questions the search user poses. This would also not be limited to just texts but also include images.
PMAX, as many call it, is now becoming a truly AI-powered campaign format
In addition, marketers using Performance Max campaigns can see new assets created by Google appear in the already AI-powered campaign format. PMAX, as many call it, is now becoming a truly AI-powered campaign format. Previously, Google decided on the ad formats and creatives while the user still created the assets and provided Google with a target and a budget.
In addition, you can have conversations with the platform itself on how to improve your ads.
What does AI-powered search mean for marketing?
With all things new, there is a lot of speculation about what it will mean for marketers and brands. AI is a tool, and it can be used the right way and the wrong way. If you think it will be a solve-all answer to Google Ads, you might have an expensive realization at some point ahead of you.
AI performed about 50% worse than manually created ads.
As an example, I earlier put my 12+ years of Google Ads experience against a generative AI by giving it a summary of my services and website and asking it to create headlines and descriptions for Conversion Train. AI performed about 50% worse than manually created ads. The reason is that the OpenAI language model would only consider the context I provided and create headlines based on previous learning but not consider how the headlines interact with each other or their purpose of use. In the same way, as AI does not “understand” why 2+2 equals 4, it does not understand why pairing value propositions with a compelling call to action results in a higher CTR.
What Google’s announcement means for marketers and brands:
It will be easier and faster to create campaigns.
There will be less control over the creatives shown to the customers as generative AI would seamlessly merge assets created by brands and the AI.
Website content will play an even more crucial role. Bad content will lead to bad ads.
Expertise and understanding of Google Ads best practices will save costs and improve performance even with AI.
Brands need to excise control over what assets Google uses from the website. This can be especially tricky for sites that do not revolve around a single theme, such as news websites.
Understanding the strengths, weaknesses, and issues with AI will improve Google Ads performance, so make sure your Google expert understands these.
You as a brand/marketer, need to be ready to adapt and embrace the changes as there will be large-scale changes in how ads will run in the coming 12-24 months.
Google will introduce ads embedded into generative AI conversations with the help of Search Generative Experience (SGE)
Using copyrighted content like images may cause your ads account to get in hot water.
The insights offered by Google for your ads will likely change to recommendations by a generative AI chatbot, likely resulting in better adoption of said recommendations.