And if you’re interested in tapping the power of YouTube creators, Partnership ads powered by BrandConnect are now available in Google Ads globally.
You can use videos made by a creator and promote them as ads, then create new audience segments based on viewers of those videos.
A new video-linking API is also available to link creator videos to your Google Ads account at scale.
New Controls. More Transparency.
We all know that when using AI, better inputs lead to better outputs – and outcomes for your business.
Google AI doesn’t automatically know the definition of better results for your business – only you do. That’s why we’ve continued to add more ways to tell Google what’s important to your business.
In Search campaigns, brand inclusions allow you to use broad match, while still constraining your brand campaigns to serving on specific brand or related product queries.
Brand exclusions are now available for all match types and Dynamic Search Ads to prevent your ads from serving on certain brand queries, including misspellings and variants.
We also rolled out these highly requested updates for Search campaigns:
Negative keywords now take misspellings into account. Just add one negative keyword to exclude traffic from all misspelling variations.
The search term report shows 9% more search terms on average by reporting misspelled queries with the correctly spelled query.
Image from author, December 2024
You can also see this focus on controls and transparency emphasized in many of the Performance Max updates this year, such as:
With Brand guidelines, you get to tell Google about your brand colors and font to generate on-brand visuals.
Campaign-level negative keywords – a top ask – are in beta and will be rolling out soon.
IP exclusions are supported, and account-level placement exclusions now also apply to the Search partner network.
A new experiment allows you to test the impact of final URL expansion to let Google AI select the most relevant landing pages and help you match to additional relevant search queries.
To give you more flexibility when managing both Performance Max and Standard Shopping together, Ad Rank is now used to determine which campaign serves when you have product overlap between them.
In addition to controls, we’ve also added more insights for Performance Max, including:
Asset-level conversion reporting.
Impression share reporting.
Demographics in audience insights.
New target pacing insights.
This is an area we are actively focused on. Stay tuned for more in 2025!
More Bidding Options Tailored To Specific Goals
Another area I want to call out is the continued focus on expanding and improving bidding capabilities tailored to advertisers’ specific goals.
Here’s a look at some of the work happening in this area:
For retailers with both online and physical stores, omnichannel shoppers tend to spend more.
In Demand Gen campaigns, Omnichannel Goals is now in beta to give those retailers the ability to optimize towards both online conversions and Store Visits.
For lead gen advertisers, the customer journey can be complex. And, of course, not every customer has the same value to your business.
I’ve talked a lot about value-based bidding for lead gen advertisers this year, including a series of short videos followed by deeper dives here in Search Engine Journal.
Continuing to make value-based bidding easier to understand and execute will continue to be a focus area because we’ve seen the positive results it can drive for advertisers.
Lifecycle goals offer additional options to optimize toward your most valuable customers:
Last month, we added the ability to use custom experiments in PMax (in beta) and Search to test new customer acquisition.
The new retention goal is currently in beta for Performance Max. It allows you to optimize your campaign to win back lapsed customers to reduce churn rates.
And lastly, bidding to profit has also been a top ask from customers.
The new gross profit goal is in beta in Performance Max and Standard Shopping campaigns. It pulls in profit data from sources you already have, like Merchant Center, enabling you to bid to profit with Smart Bidding.
You can also easily switch between revenue and profit goals without disrupting performance.
Data, Measurement & Privacy
Image from author, December 2024
While advancements like image generation may capture attention, the solutions that provide Google AI with the necessary data are equally vital.
Your first-party data is the foundation for better performance and measurement. It helps drive better results and safeguard your campaigns against the impact of privacy changes and signal loss.
We’ve developed a number of privacy-centric solutions that enable durable measurement and allow you to make the most of your first-party data.
Google Ads Data Manager is a big step forward in simplifying the process of connecting your first-party data sources to your account and keeping your audience lists and conversion data complete and accurate.
This fall, we introduced confidential matching for Customer Match in Google Ads Data Manager. It securely processes first-party data for use in Google Ads.
This happens automatically in the background so you don’t have to think about it other than knowing your data remains encrypted and unseen by anyone – including Google.
We’ve also launched the option to encrypt the data yourself and receive proof that your data is processed as intended. And, we are currently running a closed beta to enable confidential matching for enhanced conversions for web.
Tag diagnostics for the Google Tag is available in Google Tag Manager, Google Ads, and Google Analytics to help you quickly identify and troubleshoot potential issues.
Measurement diagnostics for Enhanced Conversions for Leads is also fully rolled out in Google Ads. Use it to monitor your setup and ensure you can take action against the offline data you share with Google.
While we’re on lead generation, new lead funnel reporting for lead gen gives you added visibility into offline conversions when you share qualified and converted leads with Google.
Lastly, advanced consent mode includes two new parameters for sending consent signals needed for ad personalization and remarketing purposes to Google.
The easiest way to enable and maintain advanced consent mode is to work with a Google CMP partner.
The new integrated CMP setup in the Google Tag UI makes this even easier with select partners. Just connect your CMP and configure consent settings right within the Google Tag UI – no code editing needed.
Looking Ahead
AI’s power comes in helping you dynamically adapt to market shifts and create better experiences – and ultimately better outcomes – for your customers and your business.
When you put AI to work with good data and inputs about what you know about your business and goals, you can spend more time focused on, well, the joy of marketing.
In the year ahead, you can expect us to continue building on these capabilities to help you create and measure engaging experiences that drive incremental value for your business.
Keep the feedback coming, and be sure to check out the full recap of top launches across each campaign type in Google Ads this year!
More Resources:
Featured Image: Ginny Marvin/Google