This May, we (Nirsiya and Andrew) journeyed to God’s Own Country! Dublin to rep Katté & Co at Google Marketing Live 2024.
Somewhere between stocking up on Barry’s tea, hightailing it round Temple Bar and being treated to banging live sets from Becky Hill (!) and Jax Jones (!) we learned first-hand from Google and their engineers about how AI has fully arrived; shaping how we build, see and interact with advertising into the future.
Here are our top takeaways from our time in Dublin.
(1) AI is Crazy
No longer is putting AI to work a theoretical ‘what if’.
Now it is a race to see exactly what engineers and marketers can make it do for them, and how fast they can implement it throughout their processes.
In Dublin we saw firsthand some of the wider – and wilder – ways you could put AI to work today.
Wyclef Jean (!!) took the stage, showing a live demo of Google’s Music AI Sandbox – with just a few cues, Wyclef and AI could create unique, new instrumentals from scratch, flipping and editing them on the fly. Google also set up a Penalty Kick Challenge in the lobby – where cameras analysed and scored your shooting technique, whilst a Southgate-esque voice offered you relevant feedback and coaching.
Back to more ‘inside-the-box’ thinking – we could see how AI is changing how we create advertising today.
Generative AI imagery is now levelled up across Performance Max and Demand Gen – with its own sandbox, taking recommendations and now able to work with wider ranges of prompting and with reference photos.
Generative AI imagery will soon also be On Brand – allowing advertisers to create new on-brand imagery on the fly, as Google incorporates brand guidelines, colours and fonts, working with reference imagery to fit each brand’s individual style.
It’s not just imagery, too – improved Generative AI is also helping advertisers find new angles and inspiration in copywriting, whilst AI is forming the backbone of being able create new reports on the fly to better understand the work we do.
As these features develop, we are keen to begin to get going with testing them.
It is natural to have seen the finest examples of AI generated imagery and copy highlighted in Dublin – going forward it is about seeing how this plays out in practice – as you generate thousands of images how accurately can AI reflect brand taste, messaging and tone?
(2) Advertising Is Now Immersive
AI is changing now only how we create our adverts, but also how we engage and interact with them.
Increasingly the SERP is no longer static, but instead is an interactive playground of information.
In few ways is this clearer than with Google Lens and Circle to Search.
In the coming months Google is also rolling out 3D spin and ‘Virtual Try On’ features, built directly into the SERP experience.
For so many retailers, shopping is a fundamentally visual medium, and so these tools are hoping to reduce the friction between inspiration and customer purchase.
What remains to be seen is how customers react to such a changing SERP experience.
These tools are impressive – but are they here to stay, and will they change how customers search and shop? How widely adopted will these features be, and how will they affect – or not affect – CPCs?
(3) First-Party Data is King
Leveraging first-party data is key to driving your strategy and making best use out of your marketing spend. Understanding who your customers are, how they interact with your brand and your strategy based on that from both your marketing to your customer service on-site was an important talking point from Google.
Based on BCG Global digital marketing maturity survey “Marketers that effectively used their 1P data can generate 1.5x incremental revenue from a single ad placement, communication or outreach.”
Therefore Google has made progress to ensure integrating first-party data is as seamless as possible via new features in Data Manager to manage your first-party data in one place. One key element has been more automated connections, allowing more seamless integrations with third-party platforms such as Shopify. Alongside this is a more easy to use interface that further eases the integration of first-party data into your Google Ads account without the need to utilise coding.
There have also been some further additions with the introduction of ‘recommendations’ to flag if there’s further actions you can take to enhance your first-party data. With additional new diagnosis tools within Data Manager to help flag potential issues with your data integrations.
These are new features that have already been rolled out globally – at Katté we have already found Data Manager a useful conduit to integrating more first-party data across our accounts.
However, it is worth noting that there have been some key recent developments in this field, with Google stating they will not be deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome.
Google instead are opting to use a Privacy Sandbox API to introduce a “new experience in Chrome that let’s people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time”. Current details of what this Privacy Sandox entails are vague with Google having stated they are “discussing this new path with regulators”.
Whilst this is an exciting announcement, Google emphasises the importance of focusing on “privacy-preserving alternatives” and Google is looking to continue to invest in this area with the introduction of 1P Protection into Chrome’s Incognito mode.
So despite the recent news, we still believe a first-party data led solution is a key starting point to your strategy and ensuring you have quality data flowing into your account is going to be important to elevating your account and achieving your goals.
This recent update from Google has some potential to lead us into an interesting path… but only time will tell!
Over and out – Nirsiya & Andrew.