At the Google Marketing Next event held last week, Google announced a number of exciting updates to their advertising platforms, all aimed at putting your customers at the heart of your advertising strategy and driving ROI.
Using machine learning, Google is becoming increasingly efficient at not only collecting user data but more importantly understanding user behaviours. This means Google are able to understand and profile user types in ways that have been previously impossible.
What does this mean for marketers?
Increasingly accurate user data means that marketers will be able to leverage behavioural insights and consumer habits to reach highly relevant, intent driven audiences and outperform their competitors. Delivering highly relevant ads to groups of people most likely to convert will increase advertisers success and delight customers as they receive only ads relevant to them.
1.Similar Audiences for Search
This new tool (now available in your account) uses real-time data, refreshed every 24 hours, to target ads to audiences who have shown similar behaviours to users who have already interacted with your ads, and who are already on your remarketing lists.
Machine learning learns from the queries of current users in your remarketing lists and uses these signals to identify when other, new audiences show similar behaviours. Creating these similar audiences will allow advertisers to reach more relevant, intent driven customers who show a higher value to their business and will increase ROI.
To implement Similar Audiences for Search navigate to the audiences tab in your account. Click + Targeting, select your campaign or ad group, click the add campaign targeting drop down, select category and check the Similar to remarketing lists option and save.
2.In-Market Audiences for Search
Due to launch later in the year, this powerful tool will help you reach buyers with intent – in real time – and improve your ROI. Again, utilising machine learning, advertisers will have the ability to create in market audiences and drive consideration among ready to buy consumers. Something done to great effect in Display campaigns for some time.
3.Life Events
What if you could engage with audiences during important life events such as having a baby, buying a house or going to college or university – knowing that at these times they are significantly more likely to buy your products or services?
Soon you will be able to do just that. Reaching audiences in key life moments before, during or after life events to drive sales. This new tool, again powered by 20 years of machine learning, allows advertisers to understand users beyond demographics alone, and in real time too, and target their search ads with more accuracy.
4.YouTube Remarketing Lists for Search
Long awaited by agencies and advertisers, it will soon be possible to create lists of users who have interacted with your video content on YouTube, knowing they’re interested in your products, and advertise to them in Google Search results as they make follow-up searches to buy your products.
Other new tools
Google also recently announced the addition of platforms aimed at making it easier for advertisers to interpret data and optimise their campaigns. These free platforms include Google Optimise and Google Attribution and we’d highly recommend hopping over to the Google AdWords blog to read more about how these can help you maximise your advertising success.
Final takeaway
Consumer expectations are higher than ever before (partly due to the shift in mobile and accessibility to data on the move) and businesses need to do everything they can to meet them – know your customers, their intent, interests and activities and ensure your message resonates with them when and where it matters. Business who get ahead of the curve and utilise these tools now will survive in what is becoming an increasingly customer-centric marketplace.