A keynote at Google’s Marketing Live event showcased new AI-powered visual search results that include ads that engage users in the context of an AI-assisted search, blurring the line between AI-generated search results and the ads.
Google Lens is a really useful app, but it becomes unconventional when it blurs the line between an assistant that helps users and guides them to a shopping cart. This new way of capturing potential customers with artificial intelligence is so far that the presenter does not even call it advertising, does not even use the word.
Visual search traffic opportunity?
Sylvanus Bent, Google Group Product Manager, begins the presentation with an overview of the next version of Google Lens visual search that will be useful for finding information and finding where to buy it.
Sylvanus explained how it will be an opportunity for websites to receive traffic from this new way of searching.
“… whether you’re snapping a photo with a lens or scrolling through your social feed to find something, visual search unlocks new ways to explore what catches your eye, and we recently announced a page of newly redesigned results for visual search.
Soon, instead of just visual matches, you’ll see a wide range of results, from images to videos, web links, and knowledge graph data. It gets people the useful information they need and creates new opportunities for places to be discovered.”
It is hard to say whether or not this will bring search traffic to the websites and what the quality of that traffic will be. Will they stay to read an article? Will they commit to a product review?
Visual search results
Sylvanus shares a hypothetical example of someone at an airport baggage claim falling out like someone else’s bag. He explains that the person just needs to take a photo of the luggage bag and Google Lens will take them directly to the purchase options.
He explains:
“No words, no problem. Just open Lens, snap a quick photo, and you’ll immediately see options to buy.
And for the first time, shopping ads will appear at the top of linked search results, where a business can deliver what a consumer is looking for.
This will help them easily buy something that catches their eye.”
These are image-heavy shopping ads at the top of search results, and as annoying as they are, they don’t come close to the “next-level” advertising that comes with the new version of Google Visual Search, where Google presents a paid promotion in the context of an AI assistant.
Interactive shopping search
Sylvanus then describes an AI-powered advertising form that goes directly to search. But he doesn’t call it advertising. It doesn’t even use the word advertising. He suggests that this new form of AI search experience is more than just an offering, saying “it’s an experience.”
You’re right not to use the word ad because what it describes goes far beyond advertising and blurs the lines between search and advertising in the context of AI-based suggestions, paid suggestions.
Sylvanus explains how this new form of shopping experience works:
“And then imagine a world where every search ad is more than just an offer. It’s an experience. It’s a new way to engage more directly with your customers. And we’re exploring search ads with AI-based recommendations in different verticals. So I want to show you an example that will be released soon and you will see even more when we go shopping.”
He uses the example of someone who needs to store their furniture for a few months and turns to Google to find short-term storage. What he describes is a short-term local storage query that turns into a “dynamic ad experience” that leads the searcher to throw packing supplies into their shopping cart.
He explained how it works:
“You’re searching for short-term storage and see an ad for extra space storage. Now you can click through to a new dynamic ad experience.
You can select and upload photos of different rooms in your home, showing how much furniture you have, and then additional storage space with the help of Google, AI generates a description of all your belongings for you to check. Get a recommendation on the right size and type of storage unit and even how many packing supplies you need to get the job done. Then just go to the website to complete the transaction.
And this is taking the definition of useful ad to the next level. It does everything but physically pick up your stuff and move it, and that’s great.”
Step 1: Find short-term storage
The screenshot above shows an ad that, when clicked, takes the user to what looks like an AI-assisted search, but is actually an interactive ad.
Step 2: Upload photos for “Assistance AI”
The image above is a screenshot of an ad served in the context of AI-assisted search. Masking an ad in a different context is the same principle behind an ad where an ad is hidden in the form of an article. The phrases “Let AI do the heavy lifting” and “AI-powered recommendations” create the context of AI search that masks the real context of an ad.
Step 3: Chosen images for upload
The screenshot above shows how a user uploads an image to the AI-powered ad in the context of an AI-powered search application.
The word “app” masks that this is an advertisement
Above is a screenshot of a user uploading a photo to the AI-powered interactive ad in the context of a visual search engine, using the word “app” to add to the illusion that the user you’re interacting with an app, not an ad.
Load process masks The advertising context
The phrase “Generative AI is experimental” contributes to the illusion that this is AI-assisted search.
Step 4: Upload confirmation
In step 4, the “app” announcement is to confirm that the AI has correctly identified the furniture to be stored.
Step 5: AI “Recommendations”.
The screenshot above shows “AI recommendations” that look like search results.
Recommendations are ad units
These recommendations are actually ad units that when clicked take the user to the “Extra Space Storage” shopping website.
Step 6: The search engine visits the advertiser’s website
Blurring the boundaries
What Google’s keynote speaker describes is the integration of paid product suggestions into an AI-assisted search. This kind of advertising is so far that the Googler doesn’t even call it advertising and rightly so because what it does is blur the line between AI-assisted search and advertising. At what point does a useful AI search become just a platform for using AI to provide paid suggestions?
Watch the keynote at the 32 minute mark
Featured image by Shutterstock/Ljupco Smokovski
[ad_2]
Source link
