AI platform updates in paid advertising

According to Marketing Tech News, a staggering 92% of Marketers said that integrating AI into their marketing is the number one trend for 2024, and this trend doesn’t show any signs of slowing down any time soon. AI is all the rage right now, but how can it be harnessed to elevate your paid strategy?  

When we polled attendees at a recent Masterclass delivered by our Head of Performance, Malcolm Gibb, we found that 71% of attending marketers didn’t believe their organisation was making the most out of the potential of AI. With all the hype and seemingly everyone offering up an AI-powered product, it can be difficult to know where to start, so let’s take a look at some AI-powered products you’re likely to come across as a marketer, and what they can offer you. 

Google has been integrating advanced AI capabilities across its products and services to incorporate the power of AI in its offering within Google Ads. From Predictive analytics to PMax and now Generative SERPs, increasingly Google’s new products use AI with the goal of improving performance and making deploying ads on their network easier. Let’s take a look at some of their offerings: 

Predictive analytics and generative insights 

Predictive analytics and Generative insights within Google Ads offer AI and machine learning tools that aim to change the way advertisers approach, develop, and optimise their campaigns.  

Predictive analytics aims to empower advertisers to forecast campaign performance, optimise ad spend, and preemptively address issues. This foresight endeavours to allow for strategic adjustments to positively impact campaign outcomes.  

Generative insights use data analysis and trend information to generate suggestions and content ideas that might enhance ad effectiveness. Seeking to reduce the knowledge required to get up and running with optimising Google Ads, Generative insights can suggest edits to improve performance and help you tweak your ads for maximum impact.  

Deployed together, predictive analytics and generative insights continue Google’s efforts to make Google Ads a product that requires increasingly less effort to manage, but as ever, that doesn’t necessarily come at the best interests of the marketers using the platform. No doubt, you’ll be used to Google Ads making changes to your paid ads that can suddenly cost you more money than you budgeted for, so it’s always important to keep a close eye on your Google Ads deployments, even if they are being monitored and optimised by AI! 

Predictive audiences 

Predictive audiences leverage machine learning models to identify users who are most likely to engage with your business, then allow you to directly target them as an audience. By analysing past behaviour and data, predictive audiences can pinpoint potential customers with a high likelihood of conversion.  

This targeted approach aims to help advertisers focus their efforts and resources on what Google’s machine learning algorithm identifies as the most promising segments of your audience, thereby, in theory, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of your campaigns. 

Performance Max (PMax)  

Performance Max (PMax) campaigns use Google’s AI to optimise ad placements and formats across Google’s extensive inventory. Generative ads within PMax look to create personalised ad creatives that are tailored to different audiences and contexts.  

Whether or not generative AI-produced images ever get to the point of refinement where they can be used with effect in advertisement remains to be seen… as you’ll see from what PMax is currently producing!  

PMax aims to ensure that ads are not only relevant but also engaging, enhancing the likelihood of capturing the audience’s attention. Google is rapidly moving in the direction of wanting advertisers to use Google Ads scripts to monitor and manage PMax campaigns, automating jobs like performance monitoring, budget adjustments, and report generation. These automations are being rolled out with the goal of allowing advertisers to focus on strategic decision-making, rather than day-to-day monitoring of Google Ads performance. 

Google Merchant Centre Next 

Google Merchant Centre Next, is a fleet of resources and tools aimed at helping merchants to sell on Google Shopping. With an offering that ranges from AI-generated product data, titles, and descriptions, to automated product addition, and then Product Studio which looks to enable you to retouch, improve and alter images using AI.  

This range of products aims to make it easier than ever to sell on Google Shopping, with Google suggesting that using these tools to optimise your placements can lead to higher engagement and increased sales.  

Meta: Generative assets 

Generative Assets in Meta Ads use AI to create ad variations tailored to different audiences, aiming to deliver better targeting and a more custom ad experience and make a part of the wider package of AI-powered tools deployed by Meta to support advertisers.  

Able to suggest actionable tweaks based on trends and user behaviour, and deploying AI to support generating predicted audiences, Meta has a comprehensive selection of tools to help identify users likely to engage, focusing efforts on high-potential segments and serving them personalised AI-generated and optimised ads.  

How you make the most of AI to support your advertising efforts is ultimately down to your choice as an individual marketer and as a business. What is important to note, however, is that the tide seems to be moving in one solid direction, and that is the direction of using AI to reduce the amount of laborious manually intensive work marketers have to do.  

Explore AI for your organisation with confidence

It’s important to make the effort to familiarise yourself with what tools companies like Google and Meta are producing for marketers, and how you can best deploy them to your advantage. At some point, there is a good chance not using them will come at a cost to your performance, and if you want to remain competitive, you will likely need to explore how you can deploy AI to best serve your goals and ambitions within these platforms.  

If you’re interested in exploring how you can make the most of these tools but aren’t sure where to start or where to focus your efforts, get in touch with our team of experts who are well-placed to help you figure out where AI can best support you. There is a lot of noise, hype, and excitement around AI, so having a knowledgeable team you can get advice from away from the never-ending media furore is a great way to figure out where you might want to focus your efforts.  

Get in touch today to find out how we can help you make the most of AI!