Google announced a slew of new features and tools at its Google Marketing Livestream event yesterday. This includes new features for hotel ads, local campaigns, local inventory ads, customer match, insight page upgrades, performance max, product feeds, tROARS and more.
Here is a quick rundown of those changes:
Hotel Ads
Hotel ads appear when a traveler searches for a hotel on Search or Maps. These ads appear in a hotel booking module that can show photos of the hotel, amenities, prices, and a link to book the hotel. Google is launching three new products to help our partners capture pent up travel demand.
(1) Hotel booking extensions amplify advertiser's search campaigns and help expand the reach of these campaigns. This is now in an open beta for advertisers globally.
(2) Vacation rentals on the Hotel results page for a given destination. This is now generally available to advertisers globally.
(3) Enhancing commissions (per stay) bidding to make it easier to find more qualified customers at a lower cost. This is also now generally available to advertisers globally.
Local campaigns
Local campaigns are designed to help businesses provide their potential customers the information that they need to decide when and how to visit their stores and also make it easy for advertisers to promote their stores in the Google Search Network, Maps, YouTube, and the Google Display Network. Google is launching three new formats for local campaigns.
(1) Auto Suggest ads show an advertiser's nearby location to users searching for businesses. For example, if searching for "oil change," users may see an ad for an auto garage that's nearby.
(2) Navigational ads promote a business while people are in navigation mode in Google Maps in a safety conscious manner. The business location may show up along the route for relevant users.
(3) Similar Places ads allow businesses to show their business location to Maps users who are searching for similar businesses nearby that are closed during the time of the search.
All of these formats are available in Q2 2021 to all advertisers globally.
Local inventory ads
Pickup later is coming to local inventory ads. Local inventory ads feature allows advertisers to showcase their products and store information to nearby shoppers searching with Google. When shoppers click an ad or free listing that shows a local product, they arrive on a Google-hosted page for that retailer's store, called the local storefront. Google is expanding store pickup options by adding a "pickup later" option to local inventory ads. This is now in an open beta for advertisers in the US.
Customer match
Customer Match lets advertisers use their first-party online and offline data to reach and re-engage with customers across Search, the Shopping tab, Gmail and YouTube. Google said that using information that customers have willingly shared with the advertiser, Customer Match will show ads to those customers and other customers like them. This is now generally available to all advertisers globally.
Here is the customer match manager:
Here is the customer match uploader:
Insights page
Insights page surfaces trends tailored to an advertiser's business, so advertiser's can see if they are keeping up with demand for trending products or services. The tool is available globally to all advertisers and has self-serve capabilities. Google has "Demand Forecasts" on Insights page is a new type of insight that predicts relevant changes to search behavior over the next 90 days. This is now in a closed alpha for advertisers globally.
Performance max
Performance Max campaigns are a new way to buy Google ads across all our inventory. Google Ads currently offers fully-automated campaigns for app marketers, retailers, and businesses with physical locations to drive results across Google's surfaces, Google said. The Performance Max campaigns leverages automation to deliver a comprehensive solution that works for all advertisers across a wider range of marketing objectives. This is now in an open beta for advertisers globally.
Product feeds
Product feeds link to Google Merchant Center, enabling advertisers to leverage their product catalogues to create more dynamic ads. Product feeds pull product information and imagery from an advertising retailer's Google Merchant Center account and display this info as part of an ad campaign. This is now generally available for Video Action Campaigns advertisers globally. This is also now in an open beta for Discovery Ads advertisers globally.
tROAS - Target Return on Ad Spend
tROAS is a value-based, automated bidding strategy that stands for Target Return on Ad Spend. This Google Ads Smart Bidding strategy helps advertisers get more conversion value or revenue at the target return on ad spend (ROAS) they set. Bids are automatically optimized at auction-time, allowing advertisers to tailor bids for each auction. This is now generally available for Video Action Campaigns advertisers globally. And is now in an open beta for Discovery Ads advertisers globally.
Other Items
Here are some other announcements that were not lumped together above:
- You can use image extensions to make your Search ads more visual and engaging. These are now available globally, learn more here.
- You can now create more personalized and relevant responsive search ads at scale with ad customizers. These are now available globally.
- You can get more robust attribution reporting. In addition to Search and Shopping, touchpoints from Display and YouTube ads will soon be included in all attribution models, including data-driven attribution. Google will be integrating in-app conversions from those touchpoints as well.
- Preserve accurate and complete conversion measurement. Set up enhanced conversions for a more accurate, privacy-safe view of performance–even when fewer cookies are available. Reach out to your Google account team if you’d like to join the beta.
- The personalized feed in the Google Ads app has more customized information. In the next few months, you’ll see new insights tailored to your business and educational content aligned with your campaign goals.
- You can drive shopping inspiration and action across YouTube and Google. Connect your Google Merchant Center feed to showcase your top products in Video action campaigns. This will also become available for Discovery ads in the coming months.
- New OCI (Offline Conversion Import) helper tool to implement offline conversion imports. OCI helper makes it easier and faster for your team to set up offline conversion imports, so you can improve your campaign optimizations to drive more qualified leads. It automates project management and provides detailed guidance for each stakeholder across every step.
Community Reaction
So what did some folks in the community think? Overall, a lot of excitement about the new features but not everyone was happy. There seemed to be a disconnect with the average advertiser here.
its like you were living in my brain
— Colleen Harris (@cdawg2610) May 27, 2021
my struggle is the difference between what they say and what most retailers see - like stop telling me about how you can show in store visits if 80% of the dealers will never see the data based off of not being able to anomie it
— Colleen Harris (@cdawg2610) May 27, 2021
This as well. They gave examples and suggestions we can't implement because they don't give us visibility into those things.
— Amalia Fowler (@amaliaefowler) May 27, 2021
... and about automation completely ignored the need for additional budget or volume of data in order to make those effective. No suggestions for small advertisers. Spent 2 hours saying what could have been said in 20 minutes.
— Amalia Fowler (@amaliaefowler) May 27, 2021
Forum discussion at Twitter.
