Bumper Machine, Gallery Ads & More: Updates from Google’s Marketing Live Keynote

Did you have time to attend or watch the 2019 Google Marketing Live keynote? Or did you watch it and forget to take notes? Don’t worry, we won’t judge.

We’ve compiled all the major highlights for anyone interested in Google Ads.

1) New Google smart bidding features

For many, you might see the option to test out Google’s new smart bidding strategy, Maximize Conversion Value, in your Google Ads campaigns. This new bidding strategy will take in more than just conversion volume—unlike its predecessor Maximize Conversions. It’ll use machine learning to bring your business the highest revenue possible within your determined budget.

This is a must-try for any e-commerce business.  Additionally, this should be a helpful improvement for improving ROAS for businesses with differing lead volumes.

Google is also introducing a new option to choose different conversions to optimize between different campaigns. This gives you even more power over organizing your bidding strategies and optimizations.

2) Local campaign ad inventory expansion

Google recently ran global studies with 10 different advertisers utilizing Local Campaigns with its best practice guidelines. According to Google, these advertisers saw a median of 5x increased incremental ROAS in in-store sales as a result.

With that success, Google is excited to announce that Local Campaigns will be rolling out all to advertisers that want to use them in the near future and that they are expanding their local campaign ad inventory with the following:

Product lines: Soon you’ll be able to use local campaigns to display specific product lines and allow users to explore your store before they get there.

Recommended searches: Advertisers will soon be able to advertise brick-and-mortar stores in recommended searches for users while they are in Google Maps. For instance, a pet food store will be able to show an ad as a search suggestion to a user who has recently typed in a search for a nearby dog park.

Expansion of promoted pins: Promoted pins currently only show when users typed in a relevant search or explore the relevant area in Google Maps. However, soon advertisers will be able to show promoted pins to users while they are planning a route to a destination or while they are navigating there.

3) Bumper Machine

According to research done by Ipsos and cited in the Keynote, showing users a sequence of three 6-second bumper ads led to a 107% higher ad recall and 134% higher purchase intent than showing users one 30 second ad. Given the success advertisers have seen with showing users these 6-second bumper ads on YouTube, Google has designed a tool to make it easier for advertisers to design new creative for this placement. Enter Bumper Machine.

 All you need is to input one longer video into this upcoming tool and Bumper Machine will use Google’s machine learning capabilities to pick out and trim appealing, well-structured moments from the longer video that you input. This tool is developed to specifically pick out moments that contain product or brand information, human faces, motion, and contrast. This allows the tool to create the ideal bumper video to grab the user’s attention.

4) Gallery Ads

No longer are you forced to seek out placements on other websites in the Google Display Network to showcase how visually stunning your business and products are. Gallery Ads, coming later this year, will help you show your offering with compelling images and text directly in the SERP.

Advertisers will be able to feature 4 to 8 images along with short 70-character taglines for each image. You can also test 3 headlines with different CTAs.

In beta, Google has found these visually rich ads received up to 25% more interactions (in both paid clicks and product swipes) at the top of the SERP.

5) Google Shopping homepage and product pages

Google is introducing a new Google Shopping homepage that will show users recommended products from past purchases, shopping list history, and recently viewed products. Additionally, Google’s product pages are getting a revamp in order to provide users all the information they need to research and purchase an item without ever having to leave the Google site.

New product pages may include product reviews, relevant videos of the item (i.e. people unboxing the item), the most relevant options for buying the product (online or in-store), and the option to purchase those items directly from retailers without leaving Google.

Along with these changes, Google will be providing a “Google Guarantee” on relevant products. This communicates to users that they will receive high-quality customer service. Users will also be able to store their shipping and payment information in their Google profile. 

The option to purchase directly through Google has already rolled out in France and will be fully rolling out in the U.S. later this year across Google Search, Voice, Google Images, and YouTube. All of these changes indicate the increasing importance of staying on top of your business’ Google product reviews, merchant center feed, and shopping experience.