Google Announces New Ad Tools at Marketing Live, Including New Options for YouTube Shorts Promotions

Google has announced a range of new ad tools at its Google Marketing Live event, including new opportunities to advertise within YouTube Shorts, new layouts for Responsive Display Ads, improved analytics, new ad testing options, and more.

First off, on YouTube Shorts, which has seen massive growth in interest over the past 12 months. To help marketers tap into Shorts, Google’s integrating Shorts placement into its ‘Video Action and App campaigns’, which will enable brands to connect product feeds into their Shorts promotions.

That will make Shorts promos much more shoppable, by providing direct product links directly in-stream.

The same could eventually be incorporated into regular Shorts clips, enabling creators to better monetize their content. That’s not available as yet, but the new display could be a valuable offering for brands, with Shorts now driving more than 30 billion daily views.

Google’s also adding new video options into its Discover feeds.

“Discover is where people scroll through their favorite personalized content for ideas and inspiration. We’re exploring ways to help you bring short video assets to Google’s feeds so you can offer more compelling and engaging ad experiences.”

Discover is a lesser-used personalization element within the Google app, but the new video ad options could help to connect with users specifically interested in certain topics and trends.

Google’s also updating its Display & Video 360 ad options, with advertisers soon set to be able to add Connected TV campaigns to reach affinity, in-market, and demographic audiences across YouTube and other ad-supported connected TV apps.

Google’s also updating its Performance Max campaigns, with A/B testing, support for store sales goals to optimize for in-store sales, new insights and explanations, including attribution, audience and auction insights, and optimization score and recommendations.

Performance Max campaigns enable advertisers to effectively extend their Search ad efforts, by enabling Google’s system to showcase your promotions across more surfaces.

Google’s also adding new search data to its ad insights page to improve contextual understanding and targeting. 

“Based on the billions of searches we see every day and the millions of signals we analyze for every ad auction, we’re introducing three new reports that will roll out worldwide over the coming months.”

The three new reports are:

• Attribution insights show how your ads work together across Google surfaces — like Search, Display and YouTube — to drive conversions.
• Budget insights find new opportunities for budget optimization and show how your spend is pacing against your budget goals.
• Audience insights for first-party data show how your customer segments, like those created with Customer Match, are driving campaign performance. 

Google’s also rolling out automatically created assets for responsive search ads, which will automatically create assets for your campaigns based on content from your landing pages and existing ads.

“The system will then display the best-performing combination of automatically created assets, and the assets you provide, to make your ads more relevant.”

On another front, Google’s rolling out some new, mobile-first formats for its responsive display ads, which will provide additional options for displaying your offerings in full-screen.

Google’s also bringing its optimization score to more campaigns, while it’s also bringing Conversion Lift Testing to Display & Video 360 campaigns.

Google has also announced that it will begin worldwide testing of its more privacy-focused ad targeting tools later this year, including interest-based advertising in Google Ads and Display & Video 360.

As part of its gradual evolution to phase out third-party cookie tracking, Google announced its shift to topic-based targeting back in January, which will eventually enable advertisers to reach users based on search interest, as opposed to individual activity. Interest-based targeting is another aspect of this push, as Google moves away from more identifiable data traits.  

Finally, Google’s also previewed its coming Ad Control Center, which it initially announced at its I/O Summit earlier this month.

There are some interesting additions here, leaning into the rising popularity of video, while also providing new opportunities for product showcase and analytics.

The biggest addition, however, will likely be the new Shorts display options, providing new ways to connect with the rapidly growing Shorts audience. It’s amazing to see short-form video become the hugely influential element that it’s grown into, led by the rise of TikTok, but with that now being the case, it’s important for brands to consider their options, and look for ways to tap into these options to maximize appeal and resonance.

You can read more about Google’s latest ad updates here or check out the sessions from Google Marketing Live here (with sign-up).