Digital advertising automation has become a lifeline. If you’re thinking about the latter without the former, you’re falling behind the competition.
While the idea of bots stealing marketing jobs plagues the worriers and laggards, automation frees up time for ad teams to focus more on branding, strategy, data and, in turn, the creativity
PPC advertisers need to embrace machine learning and feed it with the right data to improve performance.
You vs AI is a fight you won’t win. AI is at the heart of every decision at Google, and creativity is driving automation.
Google’s new ad types in Google Marketing Live (i.e. video views and demand generation campaigns) and products like Ads Creative Studio have made it clear that strong creative must be a priority.
Here’s why and how advertisers can focus on PPC ad creative to get better results in Google Ads.
Creative PPC advertising front and center
TikTok’s explosion has inspired other platforms to create similar products and changed the format and frequency in which content is consumed.
Vertical videos with a real look and trendy audio is the direction ads need to go to stay relevant and keep users engaged.
This means less text, more images and more movement.
Consumers are exposed to thousands of advertisements per day. Advertisers are fighting with their competitors for attention and going against all other advertisers for the digital advertising space.
When Google decides when to show your display ad, it considers the following:
Your bid in the auction. How relevant your ad is to the user. How likely is the user to click on it?
After all, Google makes money from clicks.
The importance of relevant and engaging ads means more assets are needed than ever. The more asset choices powered by machine learning, the better.
Algorithms decide which to show your audience based on asset strength scores.
Creative should be tailored to the people you’re trying to reach, be consistent with brand messaging, and contain a compelling offer to increase engagement.
Rationalization of creative production
Unsurprisingly, Google would make it easier for advertisers to produce creative content to support this push.
“Ads Creative Studio is a creative management platform designed for creative teams. You can use it to create ads, manage creative assets and share them with media teams. Ads Creative Studio can improve collaboration and transparency between your creative and media teams and help you create effective ads with greater efficiency and scale,” he explains. Google.
Google’s Bumper Machine is also an easy way to turn your video or image assets into a 6-second video asset for YouTube bumper ads.
While these tools make it easy for teams to build and collaborate, the end product will only be as good as what you feed it.
Ads Creative Studio and Performance Max’s use of generative AI should not replace a creative team, as unique, high-quality creative leads to a better user experience, more relevant to brand and for users.
Different creative ad types and formats allow you to get more placements for your brand to make an impact.
While generating a large amount of visuals can be overwhelming, scalable creativity doesn’t have to break the bank.
Some simple ideas to level up your creative offerings include:
Adding motion to an existing static banner. Trim an existing video to test shorter lengths. Try different CTAs. Analyze variables such as color, headlines, and dimensions for learnings and optimizations.
Brands are often afraid of the high price of video production. However, depending on the budget, a production can create 50-100 different assets or more, saving money and staying ahead of creative renewal needs.
Video first mentality
The two new video campaign types announced in Google Marketing Live are video views and demand generation.
Video View campaigns aim to reduce the cost of video views by combining in-stream, in-feed and short skippable YouTube ads.
Demand generation campaigns will also show on YouTube, Discover and Gmail to drive conversions through lookalike audiences.
As Google rolls out more types of video-first campaigns, advertisers need to keep up.
In addition to the increased consumption of video content, there are numerous benefits to leveraging video, including:
Ad formats to modernize your brand. Video provides more insight than static banners to overcome barriers to purchase. This format is ideal for education, use cases and demos. Videos can be used across multiple platforms (and on your website) without duplicating effort. View rates can indicate creative performance, a data point that static images can’t tell you.
Always tailor your creative to your audience. The more relevant and useful the content, the more engagement it will receive.
Consider where a user is in the buyer’s journey and decide which message fits their needs. Use a strong call-to-action at each stage of the funnel and test your sequenced messages.
Video ad sequence allows you to tell your brand story with multiple ads displayed in a specific order to deliver a message or achieve a conversion goal.
Measure success
Testing is critical when it comes to fueling new AI creativity. Getting insights from creative variations helps advertisers strengthen optimizations and machine learning.
Determining creative success isn’t always as simple as looking at conversion metrics, even if conversions are your ultimate goal.
KPIs like CTR, CPC, Views, CPV, Video Completion Rates, Actions Earned on YouTube and more can tell a complete story about how your creative is performing before the user lands on your landing page or form.
Note that bidding strategies can influence performance. For example, if you’re using a conversion-optimized strategy, you might see fewer impressions and clicks.
Setting up an experiment is an easy way for Google to do the work for you. There are several experiment options available on the platform.
The test’s peak performance increase can help you understand the impact of running PMax alongside your existing campaigns. Video experiments identify which of your video ads are performing the best.
Finally, custom experiments can test any variable you want. The custom experiment duplicates your existing campaign and allows you to change it without adjusting the original.
You only need to test one variable at a time (ie the creative color) so the experiment remains a true A/B test without any other factors influencing the results.
All experiments run for a set amount of time and measure successful results to determine a winner. From there, you can decide how to proceed with the account.
Advertisers should never be complacent about the number of assets they manage and the messages they drive. A never-ending attitude of learning makes you a successful marketer and helps your AI achieve the best results.
Always test the latest tools and features to see what works for your brand and learn to embrace changes in the advertising industry. It’s just the beginning!
The views expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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