Google Marketing Live 2022 Recap: Building the Future of Marketing Together

Google Marketing Live returned in person this year and was packed with Ads and marketing news. 

Each year, Google invites marketers to hear all about their latest product innovations across their advertising and commerce offerings. With more customers than ever before turning to Google and Youtube to seek help with purchasing decisions, it’s clear Google is keen to work with marketers so they can save time and leave more room for campaign optimisation. 

This year, Google showcased a bunch of new updates and enhancements to its ad products, with plenty of attention being paid to Youtube Shorts and the adoption of Performance Max.  

With so much news to digest, we decided to break down the most important announcements marketers and advertisers need to know from Google Marketing Live 2022.

Performance Max Updates: All you need to know 

This year, Performance Max features got a lot of attention. Google announced a swathe of new features and enhancements geared towards helping marketers with automation and conversions. These enhancements include:

• In-store goals 
• Burst campaigns for seasonal foot traffic 
• ‘Experiment tools’ to help test potential 
• Increased insights 
• Support for Search 360 and the Google Ads app 
• Optimisation score recommendations. 

Here’s a little more on the new features coming to performance Max campaigns: 

1. Experimentation Tools: these will allow marketers to run experiments, measuring the effectiveness of the Performance Max campaigns they are running against existing performance campaigns
2. Explanations: a diagnostic tool to help marketers understand Performance Max campaign results in just a few clicks
3. Recommendations & Optiscore: users will receive recommendations to improve a Performance Max campaign based on performance history, settings, Google search volume and trends.
4. Search Ads 360 & Floodlight tags: advertisers can measure and optimise Performance Max campaigns using Floodlights tags for click-through conversions.
5. Store Sales Reporting & Bidding: advertisers will now have the ability to optimise for Store Sales and not just Store Visits within Performance Max. There will also be a loyalty benefits feature which will allow stores to promote features like free shipping, points and curbside pickup. 

Privacy Future-proofing

Along with a focus on Performance Max enhancements, Google also paid a lot of attention to how measurement tools can continue to drive results amidst changing privacy regulations. From the iOS updates and third-party cookie depreciations, marketers were keen to know what Google is doing to provide support. 

Google knows marketers need access to accurate measurement and optimisation tools that allow for scalable results and growth. So, in response, Google is launching new privacy-safe measurement tools for marketers. 

Privacy-safe measurement improvements:

1. Enhanced Conversions via SA360: conversion tags to capture user-provided customer data, like email addresses, and match it against Google web data. This future-proofs measurement by alleviating the reliance on third-party data.

2. Enhanced Conversion Leads: this update brings simplicity and accuracy to lead-gen measurement, allowing advertisers to import offline conversions directly into Google Ads for reporting and optimisation.

3. Data-Driven Attribution Enhancements: DDA will become the default model for new Google Ads conversion actions and GA4 analytics properties. Advertisers will continue to have the option to opt-out of this feature.

That’s all folks — we’ve kept this breakdown short and snappy, in the hopes of helping you understand all the new updates and features we are going to be dealing with in the coming months. 

Thanks for tuning in — events like Google Marketing Live are always exciting to watch and see how platforms like Google are reacting to the current market. You can read more about Google Marketing Live here.  

– 

If you want to check out more marketing insights, check out our blog for weekly posts. Don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn if you want to get the latest social media news through a digital marketing lens.