GOOGLE

PPC trends to look out for in 2020

Published

4 years ago

January 7, 2020

For PPC advertisers, 2020 is going to be a pivotal year. Technology will be driving all the key PPC trends at the start of the decade and advertisers are going to react to this in one of two ways.

Some are going to sit back and wait for the technology to progress. Others will take the tech available to them right now, grab it by the horns and use it to drive innovation on their own terms. These are the advertisers who will be setting PPC trends in 2020 and beyond, while the rest play catch-up.

Here’s what matters most for the year ahead:

Taking control of PPC automation

Marketing automation has progressed a lot in recent years and we can now rely on software to handle a wide range of repetitive tasks. This isn’t specific to PPC but paid advertising arguably has the most to gain from automation due to the time-consuming nature of managing and optimising campaigns.

Google Ads has introduced a string of automated features recently, including smart campaigns, smart shopping campaigns, Dynamic Search Ads and a growing list of automated bidding strategies.

Google Ads has even been pushing advertisers to let it manage campaigns for them.

Well this is new. @GoogleAds basically saying “we’re gonna start messing with your accounts in a week unless you explicitly say no.” pic.twitter.com/zShgxKH62i

— aaron levy (@bigalittlea) January 24, 2019

Advertisers need to decide how much they’re going to allow tech giants to automate their strategies. Keep in mind that Google’s priority is to maximise clicks, which is at odds with the aim of most advertisers. Thankfully, you don’t need to give PPC platforms a free license to manage your strategy. You can create your own automated workflows to optimise bids, budgets, marketing lists and a range of other key PPC performance tasks.

PPC automation doesn’t necessarily mean surrendering control; 2020 is the year advertisers can take it back.

Artificial intelligence & machine learning become accessible

For the average business or advertiser, matching Google’s data-driven ability to automate might sound crazy. And, until recently, it would have been. However, artificial intelligence and machine learning are now accessible to everyone, which means advertisers can build their own algorithms to automate highly specific tasks on their own terms.

Instead of relying on generic automations, built for the masses by the likes of Google, it’s never been easier to address the specific needs of your own advertising goals.

Are your sales affected by weather patterns? Then, you can automate bids to match the weather conditions in each of your target locations, all in real-time. Are your remarketing campaigns failing to engage with B2B leads over weekends when their mind isn’t on work? Then, automate a delay on remarketing campaigns triggered by site visits on Fridays and public holidays.

Rising CPCs in Google Ads

The unwelcome PPC trend for 2020 will be rising CPCs and this will be most evident on Google Search. With the SERPs becoming increasingly competitive and organic results falling further down the page, brands with big budgets will simply increase ad spend and this drives up the cost for everyone.

Hello, higher CPCs.

More budget-conscious advertisers will need to spot new opportunities outside of simply increasing ad spend. This may involve analysing SERPs in real-time to find missed organic spaces, ploughing through campaign data to lost leads or using third-party data and AI to create predictive analytics models that can deliver more relevant messages.

Either way, the answer is going to lie in data science and technologies like AI and machine learning.

Rethinking your PPC platforms of choice

Moving away from the algorithmic side of technology, advertisers will also need to rethink their PPC platforms of choice in 2020. The obvious option for retailers is Amazon Ads, which offers a powerful addition (or alternative) to Google Shopping campaigns.

For local businesses, Google is also providing a new channel aimed at smaller businesses. Waze Local allows businesses to target drivers as they’re travelling through their immediate location – ideal for people on the move who need to teak a break from driving and make spontaneous purchases on the way home.

Quora Ads is making big progress in a number of areas, too – especially in the B2B, software and consumer electronics niches. Meanwhile, the big rising star of 2019 has been Chinese social media platform TikTok, which has just embarked on its own advertising adventure that could give the likes of Facebook and Instagram a lot to think about – one to watch for 2020.

Meanwhile, Facebook’s reduction in News Feed ads will likely push more consumer brands over to Instagram and B2B advertisers in search of other options.

Callum Coard, PPC specialist at Vertical Leap.

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GOOGLE

Google’s Next-Gen AI Chatbot, Gemini, Faces Delays: What to Expect When It Finally Launches

Published

5 days ago

December 4, 2023

Max

In an unexpected turn of events, Google has chosen to postpone the much-anticipated debut of its revolutionary generative AI model, Gemini. Initially poised to make waves this week, the unveiling has now been rescheduled for early next year, specifically in January.

Gemini is set to redefine the landscape of conversational AI, representing Google’s most potent endeavor in this domain to date. Positioned as a multimodal AI chatbot, Gemini boasts the capability to process diverse data types. This includes a unique proficiency in comprehending and generating text, images, and various content formats, even going so far as to create an entire website based on a combination of sketches and written descriptions.

Originally, Google had planned an elaborate series of launch events spanning California, New York, and Washington. Regrettably, these events have been canceled due to concerns about Gemini’s responsiveness to non-English prompts. According to anonymous sources cited by The Information, Google’s Chief Executive, Sundar Pichai, personally decided to postpone the launch, acknowledging the importance of global support as a key feature of Gemini’s capabilities.

Gemini is expected to surpass the renowned ChatGPT, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, and preliminary private tests have shown promising results. Fueled by significantly enhanced computing power, Gemini has outperformed GPT-4, particularly in FLOPS (Floating Point Operations Per Second), owing to its access to a multitude of high-end AI accelerators through the Google Cloud platform.

SemiAnalysis, a research firm affiliated with Substack Inc., expressed in an August blog post that Gemini appears poised to “blow OpenAI’s model out of the water.” The extensive compute power at Google’s disposal has evidently contributed to Gemini’s superior performance.

Google’s Vice President and Manager of Bard and Google Assistant, Sissie Hsiao, offered insights into Gemini’s capabilities, citing examples like generating novel images in response to specific requests, such as illustrating the steps to ice a three-layer cake.

While Google’s current generative AI offering, Bard, has showcased noteworthy accomplishments, it has struggled to achieve the same level of consumer awareness as ChatGPT. Gemini, with its unparalleled capabilities, is expected to be a game-changer, demonstrating impressive multimodal functionalities never seen before.

During the initial announcement at Google’s I/O developer conference in May, the company emphasized Gemini’s multimodal prowess and its developer-friendly nature. An application programming interface (API) is under development, allowing developers to seamlessly integrate Gemini into third-party applications.

As the world awaits the delayed unveiling of Gemini, the stakes are high, with Google aiming to revolutionize the AI landscape and solidify its position as a leader in generative artificial intelligence. The postponed launch only adds to the anticipation surrounding Gemini’s eventual debut in the coming year.

GOOGLE

Google Brings Bard Students Math and Coding Education in the Summer

Published

6 months ago

June 8, 2023

Entireweb News Bot

$Google Brings Bard Students Math and Coding Education in the Summer$

Google is stepping up its AI efforts this summer by sending Bard, its high-profile chatbot, to summer school. The aim? To boost the bot’s math and coding smarts. These developments are excellent news— when Bard first debuted, it was admittedly not a finished product. But Google is steadily plugging away at it, and have now implemented implicit code execution for logical prompts, and handy Google Sheets’ integration to take it to the next level.

Thanks to implicit code execution, Bard can respond to inquiries requiring calculation or computation with Python code snippets running in the background. What’s even more amazing is that coders can take this generated code and modify it for their projects. Though Google is still apprehensive about guaranteeing the accuracy of Bard’s answers, this feature is said to improve the accuracy of math and word problems by an impressive 30%.

In addition to this, Bard can now export directly to Sheets when asked about tables. So, you don’t need to worry about copying and pasting, which comes with the risk of losing formatting or data.

From the company’s I/O keynote address, it is clear that they are focused on making the most of what Bard can offer. As they continue to speak highly of the chatbot, we’re sure to expect more features and capabilities when the summer comes around.

GOOGLE

Google Bard vs. ChatGPT: which is the better AI chatbot?

Published

10 months ago

February 20, 2023

Entireweb News Bot

Google Bard vs. ChatGPT: which is the better AI chatbot?

Google Bard and ChatGPT are two of the most prominent artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots available in 2023. But which is better? Both offer natural language responses to natural language inputs, using machine learning and millions of data points to craft useful, informative responses. Most of the time. These AI tools aren’t perfect yet, but they point to an exciting future of AI assistant search and learning tools that will make information all the more readily available.

As similar as these chatbots are, they also have some distinct differences. Here’s how ChatGPT and Google Bard measure up against one another.

Which is better, Google Bard or ChatGPT?

This is a tricky question to answer, as at the time of writing, you can only use Google Bard if you’re part of a select group of early beta testers. As for its competition, you can use ChatGPT right now, completely for free. You may have to contend with a waitlist, but if you want to skip that, there’s a paid-for Plus version offering those interested in a more complete tool the option of paying for the privilege.

Still, when Google Bard becomes more widely available, it should offer credible competition for ChatGPT. Both use natural language models — Google Bard uses Google’s internal LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), whereas ChatGPT uses an older GPT-3 language model. Google Bard bases its responses to questions on more recent data, with ChatGPT mainly trained on data that was available prior to 2021. This is similar to how Microsoft’s Bing Chat works.

We’ll have to reserve judgment on which is the more capable AI chatbot until we get time to play with Google Bard ourselves, but it looks set to be a close contest when it is more readily available.

Are Google Bard and ChatGPT available yet?

As mentioned, ChatGPT is available in free and paid-for tiers. You might have to sit in a queue for the free version for a while, but anyone can play around with its capabilities.

Google Bard is currently only available to limited beta testers and is not available to the wider public.

Banner of Google Bard intro from February 6.

What’s the difference between Google Bard and ChatGPT?

ChatGPT and Google Bard are very similar natural language AI chatbots, but they have some differences, and are designed to be used in slightly different ways — at least for now. ChatGPT has been used for answering direct questions with direct answers, mostly correctly, but it’s caused a lot of consternation among white collar workers, like writers, SEO advisors, and copy editors, since it has also demonstrated an impressive ability to write creatively — even if it has faced a few problems with accuracy and plagiarism.

Still, Microsoft has integrated ChatGPT into its Bing search engine to give users the ability to ask direct questions of the search engine, rather than searching for terms of keywords to find the best results. It has also built it into its Teams communications tool, and it’s coming to the Edge browser in a limited form. The Opera browser has also pledged to integrate ChatGPT in the future.

ChatGPT	Google Bard
Accessible through ChatGPT site. Only text responses are returned via queries.	Integrated with Google Search. You only need to change a Google setting to get your regular search results when using Google Bard AI, and vice versa.
ChatGPT produces answers from its trained database from 2021 and before.	Google Apprentice Bard AI will be able to answer real-time questions.
Based on GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer).	Based on LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications).
Service has a free and paid plan option (called ChatGPT Plus).	Service is free.
Has built-in plagiarism tool called GPT-2 Output Detector.	No built-in plagiarism detection tool.
Available now	Still in beta test phase

Google Bard was mainly designed around augmenting Google’s own search tool, however it is also destined to become an automated support tool for businesses without the funds to pay for human support teams. It will be offered to customers through a trained AI responder. It is likely to be integrated into the Chrome browser and its Chromium derivatives before long. Google is also expected to open up Google Bard to third-party developers in the future.

Under the hood, Google Bard uses Google’s LaMDA language model, while ChatGPT uses its own GPT3 model. ChatGPT is based on slightly older data, restricted in its current GPT3 model to data collected prior to 2022, while Google Bard is built on data provided on recent years too. However, that doesn’t necessarily make it more accurate, as Google Bard has faced problems with incorrect answers to questions, even in its initial unveiling.

ChatGPT also has a built-in plagiarism checker, while Google Bard does not, but Google Bard doesn’t have the creative applications of ChatGPT just yet.