Between ever-changing consumer trends and technological advancements, the digital advertising landscape is becoming increasingly complex. The proliferation of channels, devices, and formats presents a number of touchpoints that no single marketer can manage alone.
“I’ve spoken to marketing directors at Canadian companies who are creating hundreds of assets for their campaigns,” says Sabrina Geremia, vice president and country general manager for Google Canada. “It’s really hard to do all of that manually.”
Fortunately, marketers have new tools to help them meet these demands. Generative AI (GenAI) helps them adapt to the speed of their customers and reach them at the right time and with the right message.
“I see AI delivering on the promise of media and personalization at scale,” Geremia says, noting that advances in AI are helping marketers automate some of their day-to-day tasks, optimize performance and drive business results.
Google launched its first AI products years ago, long before generative AI became mainstream. But Google’s latest efforts are making AI more widely accessible to marketers and helping them integrate the technology into their campaigns on the platform.
Sabrina Geremia, Vice President and Country General Manager, Google Canada
Today, Google’s AI-powered advertising tools can automatically create and edit many of the creative assets clients need for their campaigns. With Product Studio, marketers can improve visual assets at any time. This free tool uses generative AI to help advertisers create new product images or edit existing ones, so they can easily scale their campaigns across multiple channels and reach more customers.
Similarly, with Ads Creative Studio, brands can quickly create multiple versions of their YouTube video ads and customize display ads for different audiences. Summer Insider Report Last year, Loblaw used Ads Creative Studio to create 16 variations of a single creative asset for YouTube. Each ad featured unique messaging and AI-generated voiceovers, allowing Loblaw to reach different audiences in a more personalized way.
Geremia believes AI-powered tools like Product Studio and Ads Creative Studio will help marketers be more effective. They “unleash creativity,” she says, by empowering marketers and giving them more time to focus on strategy and big creative concepts.
Already, 80% of people who have used Product Studio say the tool has made them more efficient or that they hope to be more efficient in their work by using it, according to a study Google SurveyAnd over 25% of YouTube video advertisers (total) have used an auto-generated video in a campaign.
Other Google tools have changed the possibilities for measuring and optimizing campaigns.
Performance Max uses Google AI for bidding, budget optimization, audience targeting, and creative to maximize campaign performance. Marketers share their budget, creative assets, and campaign goals, and Performance Max automatically aligns, produces, and executes ad campaigns across all Google channels, including Display, Search, YouTube, and Gmail.
According to Geremia, advertisers using Performance Max campaigns get an average of 18% more conversions for a similar cost per action. “That’s more results for the same amount of money.”
Cosmetics giant L’Oréal selected Canada as one of its first test markets for Performance Max, using Kiehl’s as the pilot brand. The campaign generated a 78% increase in advertising return on investment and a 49% increase in revenue. Building on this success, L’Oréal expanded the effort to all of its brands in Canada and saw an average revenue growth of 44%.
There’s also Demand Gen, another campaign type designed to drive mid-funnel consideration on channels like YouTube Shorts, and Broad Match, which applies Google’s AI tools to match ads to relevant searches by taking into account context and misspelled words.
Geremia says she likes to frame AI for marketers as a suite of tools that can free up time “to do big thinking that only you can do as a marketer, creative, or CMO.”
“Think of them as what they are: tools that will help you and continue to evolve,” she notes. “Embrace that mindset of continuous learning and get started.”
In most companies, marketers have been the first to explore, implement and see the results of AI. This gives them an opportunity to shine within their organizations and helps CMOs stand out among C-suite leaders, she explains.
She cites an eMarketer study that shows CEOs view CMOs more positively, thanks to their knowledge of AI. “This has given marketers a front-row seat to the AI transformation—a head start on understanding the changes that are coming to other areas of the organization.”
For more information on leveraging Google’s Generative AI tools for marketing, please visit:
Gemini Marketing Handbook Download
And keep watching this space: the 2024 Google Search Honors Awards nominees will be released on September 17.
