Today in Digital Marketing - BONUS: Google Marketing Live - Unofficial Tailgate Panel

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Tuesday, May 23rd, and welcome to a bonus episode. Today is a big day for the folks who run Google's ad platform. It is Google Marketing Live, their annual announcement fest. We'll have coverage today in our regular episode, which will be coming later your way, plus more analysis over the next few days as the industry reacts to the changes. But before this morning's big keynote, myself and four Google Marketing pros gathered for our second annual official Google Live marketing tailgate. Here is a replay of our live event this morning.

Starting point is 00:00:32 It's about 55 minutes long, goes into lots of detail about what they expect, what the last year was like on the ad platform, how TikTok is affecting the scene, whether the industry is ready for the removal of third-party cookies, and a whole lot more. So, enjoy, or just wait a couple of hours for our regular show, which will have the headlines. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Good morning. Good afternoon. Hello, wherever you may be in the world. I'm Todd Maffin from the Today in Digital Marketing podcast,

Starting point is 00:01:22 and welcome to the second annual Google Marketing Live unofficial tailgate. We did this last year. We're doing it again with even more brains and, at least in my case, probably better brains than I have. I'm going to run through the roster of the people that are here and then we'll get on with it. But welcome wherever you are in the world. If you are a marketer, if you're in paid search,

Starting point is 00:01:41 if you're in demand generation, if you're on the e-commerce side and you are wondering what today's announcements are actually going to mean and what the last year has meant, this is the place you want to be. So first of all, I'm Todd Maffin. I run an agency called Engage Few Digital. I host a podcast called Today in Digital Marketing, which is a newscast. We have a second podcast called Behind the Ad as well. Jill Saskengale, who might be here, here, here, or here on your screen, depending on where it landed for you. Jill spent six years at Google helping some of the biggest brands with their ad campaigns. Today, she runs Inside Google Ads, truly one of the best platforms for training and the most up-to-date programs in that space. Jill is in Toronto. Boris Becerich is an online marketing consultant

Starting point is 00:02:26 specializing in paid search. He's in Konstanz, Germany, which is just a stone's throw from Switzerland. Wit Norad is the director of demand generation for FlexDealer. She has more than a decade of experience in marketing and demand generation, which joins us from the Niagara region in Canada. We may or may not have a new Adegbola join us. If she does, she is a paid search account director at Marin Software, the founder of PPC Live UK and host of the PPC Roundup podcast. She spent 16 years specializing in paid search and is somewhere in London this morning, hopefully on her way to a computer. So welcome all of you. Thanks, Tom. Great to be here. Thank you. Let's start with this. What I want to do is

Starting point is 00:03:11 I want to do a recap. I want to talk a bit about predictions. I've got some questions we can talk a bit about AI, obviously. The chatbot worlds have been in there. There's lots of bricks and mortar stuff to talk about. But I want to start with a recap of what each of you thought were the most important changes that we saw in the past year and why this past year, let me put it this way, whether this past year was a good year overall for Google advertisers or meh or a bad year. So recap, what are the most important changes? Let's start with Jill, then each of you can weigh in. Last year was all about performance max, performance max, performance max, right? And that's something we've all been grappling this year, how to make performance max work for lead gen, you know, can you make it still kind of function like smart shopping or not? Recently,

Starting point is 00:03:57 Google announced a new, you can exclude brand terms. So performance max has really been all everyone's been talking about. Actually, last year at Google Marketing Live, I said the announcements felt like a reaction to TikTok and a reaction to Pinterest. And I anticipate this year it's going to be much more, of course, a reaction to ChatGPT. But that's about the biggest difference was this year is all of us kind of figuring out and nudging our way around Performance Max. And I think that will still be a focus. But I imagine a big shift this year, given what we saw at Search.io recently as well. Boris, what do you think? I actually want to second that, Jill. I thought last year's announcement was mainly about automation and PMAX and all the updates that Google had given us. There were a couple of

Starting point is 00:04:39 announcements that I thought weren't really relevant for the normal advertiser because you needed either access to DV360 or you needed access to a Google Rep, meaning higher spend for some of the announced features to be available to you. So I thought actually last year was about PMAX and the automation side of things. I anticipate that this year is going to be about AI and, hey, we've been an AI company all along. Look at us. It's about PMAX and the automation side of things. I anticipate that this year is going to be about AI.

Starting point is 00:05:07 And hey, we've been an AI company all along. Look at us. So that's what I'm predicting is going to happen today. Feel free to jump in, any of you. The more you jump in and chat, the less work I have to do. So jump in. I'm guessing the question was, what's the difference between what we're predicting the announcements are going to be? Yeah, basically, like, what do you think in the last year was the most important change to the platform that happened in the last 12 months? And then I think we'll talk about our predictions coming up.

Starting point is 00:05:36 Yeah, I think the biggest, like, changes has been around, as Jill was saying, around the performance max, around doing it it's more stuff automation around BARD and also like how we're going to use BARD and us thinking about how Google is integrating that in. My also, I think, I also think it will be very interesting to see how much more they're going to announce around AI. And I say how much more, because I do feel like the likes of chat GPT did accelerate some of their plans I don't think they necessarily intended on announcing BARD as early as they did but because

Starting point is 00:06:14 of the you know the uptake of chat GPT and how everybody was like okay I'm going to use this chat GPT now thing for content they were like okay we need to get into the game and i wonder how much utmost stuff that they do have in their backlog that they're like you know what let's let's let's also now get in front of any other you know similar to chat gpt like software that might come out and let's actually show ourselves as the as the leaders in this area not just the people responding to somebody else coming into the space so So yeah, I feel that there will be even more AI stuff that's going to be announced just because of that reason. The thing that I'm hoping, it's a hope and a prediction at the same time, is that there's some version of an automation agent. And I think if anybody's in a position

Starting point is 00:07:01 to take advantage of that, it's Google, just because there's so many businesses using the entire Google suite as their primary ecosystem. That if we had agents that could, we could say X, do this with ads, X, do this with ads, and then have that happen, or then proceed to save copies of all of this in Drive, an agent would take all of these pieces to a whole different level. You know, Jill, and rightly teases me because I'm a bit of a curmudgeon on Performance Max, although I am coming around to it essentially. Performance Max, for those of you who don't know, is Google's answer to the kind of will-do-everything-parent-knows-best sort of approach where you give it your budget and generally speaking what your offer and product is, and then it decides everything else. And interestingly, what I thought was very interesting was over the past year, and Jill, you alluded to this, is that they've been kind of pulling back a little bit in the sense of giving us the tiny bit of more control.

Starting point is 00:08:01 Meta obviously going the same direction. Where do you see that level of AI integration in our ad campaigns where, like, when we're sitting here a year from now, will we all be bemoaning the fact or celebrating the fact that Performance Max has inevitably, as I think many of us believe it will, remove even more controls and yet perhaps give us better results. Will we see that as a good thing or a bad thing? It depends. Sorry to spoil that SEO. I think we PPC people use that phrase a lot. It depends. Some will complain some won't um yeah some i i i think there is going to be a level of work that will kind of dissipate away i think there's already a level of work of like more all the manual stuff who changes bids anymore really really, on a regular basis?

Starting point is 00:09:06 That will go away. And I think there's some people who have always loved thinking strategically that will flourish, who will be like, yes, my time to shine. And I think there will be the opportunity or the opportunists who will be like, OK, and this is and this is the way I think this is an opportunity for people who are strategic, who can approach those who aren't and be like, how can we help each other? How can I help you? Let's let me show you the way. Let me let me get you from the side of moaning that a certain level of work is gone and I can't really, you know, upskill, upskilling people. So there will need to be a

Starting point is 00:09:51 lot of like training also to be done into getting people to move away from that whole how things used to be done and the fact that we are in it already. I've already, it's been a long time I've pulled personally a PPC report and done data analysis and that kind of, you know, data weights. It's very automated system right now. I work for a tech company, Marin Software. So we do have to be very automated in how we do things.

Starting point is 00:10:18 But so I think it's, we are already in the stage. If I think that what we think is the future is actually already the present is actually how i see it what we actually think is that oh in five years time i don't think what i already don't think there's too much that is going to really change i think everybody's like oh next next five years i think we're already there we're already you have lots of companies that have literally completely obliterated that whole junior level search execs kind of roles where all they did was you know pull data and did the

Starting point is 00:10:50 analysis some of those companies it's the only strategic so it's all about who's going to survive in the next five years and who isn't in my personal i think we're much further like i think so much the change is still ahead of us and to me the bigger change this year i think isn't in my personal opinion. I think we're much further, like I think so much of the change is still ahead of us. And to me, the bigger change this year, I think isn't going to be as much performance maths, but keywords. Like I remember tweeting two years ago, you know, a keywordless future is inevitable.

Starting point is 00:11:17 It's not about if, but when you start preparing now. And now when you think about the queries are changing so much because of the way people are now going to talk to ChatGPT, these are not three, four, five word queries. These are are 50 word queries so it's like on the one hand you can't have a search term report talk about user privacy right so we're gonna have less transparency over what people are typing into that search box and on the flip side i think you know keywords have to go away even faster um performance max of course helps with that something like a dynamic search group really helps with that um so it'll be less transparency it'll be less control but so much more opportunity

Starting point is 00:11:50 like the stat that google always shares is every day one in five queries on google is unique so one out of every five queries has never been seen before by google which is pretty crazy when there's a billion searches a day and that that's going to become even more pronounced, right? When people are asking questions to BARD and getting responses back. So that's the space I think next year at GML, like we're going to have seen a lot of changes how keywords work.

Starting point is 00:12:14 Like you can't have exact match keywords anymore when you have queries that are 10, 20, 30 words long. So that's kind of my 2024 prediction. It's been interesting, I think, to see TikTok sort of change the landscape and pretty dramatically and pretty quickly as well. Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, I don't think it's any stretch of the imagination to say is once again terrified by the shadow of this technology, as he was for Snapchat, as he was for Instagram. And we've seen Meta incorporate to some decent level of success

Starting point is 00:12:46 reels into the product as well. TikTok is now, in the last month or so, running ads on billboards in big cities with the phrase, search it on TikTok. And they've been pummeling the media with news reports, with media releases rather, saying that, in fact, lots of people are turning to TikTok for search.

Starting point is 00:13:05 How big a threat is TikTok to Google's marketing business? Boris, what are your thoughts? And then maybe Witt to weigh in afterwards. First of all, I think I'll have to give the caveat that I really don't know a lot about TikTok and TikTok search. What I do think is that, yes, many young people have turned to TikTok to use it as a search engine. What I'm gathering is that it's probably not commercial driven searches, so more informational, I think. So that's the one side of the coin. The other side that I've been seeing, first of all, I've seen TV ads in Germany with that exact messaging.

Starting point is 00:13:52 So it's not a Northern American thing. TikTok is really trying to polish up their image, get away from the bad news cycle that's been happening for them lately. They've been just banned one or two weeks ago in Montana, I think. Many public agencies in Northern America actually have forbidden their users or their employees to use TikTok on government devices. So they've become increasingly under pressure. I don't think that they're going to pose such a big threat to Google. Remember, Google still has 90% of the search market. I don't see this change moving forward, not with the recent chat GPT

Starting point is 00:14:38 developments, not with TikTok, not with any other search engine that may or may not emerge, Amazon or Apple. So that's my long winded answer of saying, I don't think TikTok is posing a big threat to Google Ads. Yeah, I will- I would mirror- Sorry, go on, go on. I would mirror that it doesn't pose a big threat, but I would hazard that it poses some level of threat.

Starting point is 00:15:06 And I think I've sort of lived through this unexpectedly. And where the crux of that really comes is how specific a user can be and what they're looking for on TikTok. And then matching that to both business answers and consumer everyday, almost a Google review type answer, where we've seen this shift through influencing and de-influencing and all of these different pieces. What the answers that you can get are a lot deeper than that first page of Google results, paid or unpaid. And the types of content that we're seeing be searched on TikTok don't necessarily match the types of content that we would be going to Google for perhaps in the first place. So yeah, I was just going to say that and which you said something that really matches what I'm about to say as well, because

Starting point is 00:15:56 someone very comically and said that, yeah, TikTok is awesome for places to eat. And my example of using TikTok is I was in New Orleans and I was in an Uber and I was like not sure where to go even the Uber driver was like search on TikTok go on TikTok and search for you know places to eat and he was very intuitive because I was like if I download TikTok on my phone I will do nothing else with my life so I never have TikTok downloaded you know so I downloaded TikTok again and I searched for somewhere to eat and it suggested somewhere and I had no regrets. It was, it was fantastic. So yeah, what, especially what Boris said, informational, but that is a large, that is a very large pathway to conversion for people.

Starting point is 00:16:42 A lot of people do a lot of research first. So I think it's not necessarily that it's going to take any business away from Google, but it's still going to be part and it's going to continue to be a prevailing path to purchase for customers, you know, path to somewhere. Maybe you search for something maybe something that you see maybe maybe from even um from partnering with good influencers in with actually doing good brand placements you can then lead people to then do a purchase some maybe on another channel or somewhere else so it will continue t, TikTok will continue to be the prevalent path to purchase, but whether they'll overtake Google, I doubt it.

Starting point is 00:17:29 I think it's interesting as well, because one of the things that we've seen Google do is react in the same way that all these tech companies, notably Meta does, is when the mobile web became a threat, they generated AMP. When Facebook was rolling out, they generated the now in hindsight disastrous

Starting point is 00:17:47 Google+. We've seen YouTube Shorts come on to some level of success as well. But it's been interesting that they haven't quite been able to nail it in the same way that Facebook or Instagram Reels have been able to. And, you know, I've certainly had my way flipping through a couple of YouTube Shorts and found that it's very much tied to just the creators that I follow on YouTube. And then when I go to subscribe to or follow the Shorts page, I'm actually following that account's entire YouTube account, which I don't really want to do. And I also haven't felt like there's been any sort of, as a marketer, any real benefit for me there on that side of things. It's curious to me anyway, why we haven't seen Shorts become being one of the most talked about things in the past year for the Google marketing team in terms of rolling it out and getting eyeballs in there.

Starting point is 00:18:40 Does anyone have any ideas as to why they might have dropped that ball? Well, I would just say that the YouTube marketing team would probably disagree with you. They've been trying really hard to put shorts, short form video and vertical video was a big deal at last year's GMO where they announced you can put ads on shorts now, videos coming into discovery campaigns, those videos can go into display campaigns. So they're trying to make it a thing. But I think the mistake there, it's not just that it's short form vertical video, the power of TikTok is in many things, but one of them is the algorithm right into your points, like subscribing to someone's long form YouTube content, really different than wanting their 30

Starting point is 00:19:17 second shorts. And I think the TikTok recommendation algorithm has just been so much better. Like I've tried watching YouTube shorts, it's just garbage, garbage, garbage, garbage, garbage, and I stop. But with TikTok, you spend five minutes there and like, boom, it knows you. So I think that's where, you know, YouTube may have missed the boat a bit. It just surfaced, that discovery is different. If you're just joining us, you are here at the second annual unofficial Google Marketing Live tailgate. In 40 minutes from now, Google Marketing's team will unveil what it has planned for the year. Certainly lots of speculation in there, which we'll get to. We have four big brains.

Starting point is 00:19:57 You can see their captions and their information down below. And if you have any questions, please feel free to throw them into the comments on whatever platform you are watching us on. I want to ask each of you what you think in the last year on the Google marketing platform entirely. The ad side, search, whatever, has been the most understated tool or tactic or strategy, what is the thing that you're holding back as a secret for your clients or your brand that you haven't told anybody that's performing so freaking well, you'd never tell anyone

Starting point is 00:20:33 except if some jackass Canadian podcast host asks you on a live broadcast, which I just did. What is the thing that is working phenomenally well for you that you really don't want to tell anyone else? I'll take the first punch on that one. And I think it comes from probably a different place where in automotive, I mean, 90% of our clients are in automotive and that final purchase doesn't take place online. So in the two cohorts of really truly brick and mortar business versus the e-com business, ironically, the thing that has the most impact, maybe not ironically, is brand. And when we pull through a full funnel, it's the same thing. It's not sexy, but it works. And in such a specific industry, it can be really difficult to get brands to buy into this full picture, to run display campaigns where there's no, we didn't get a lead immediately one-to-one map to this.

Starting point is 00:21:33 And then the dealers that do participate in branding efforts and awareness-based campaigns and display across all different platforms, they're the ones that are seeing the most dramatic increases in their business overall and it's not a hard correlation to make so brand would be my long-winded answer there for you no one else is going to go their secrets come on i'll give out a secret well i've shared this secret on social before but i think one of the most underutilized google ads features especially for people newer to the platform or business owners trying to do it themselves, is doing custom segments around things people have searched for on Google. And so what that is, it's an audience you can create. We are targeting people who have searched for certain things, but you're not targeting them at the moment they search. So let's say I'm trying to advertise my Google Ads course. If I try to run Google search ads for people searching Google Ads course, you're looking at $20 CPCs. It's just insanely competitive, right? And competing against Google

Starting point is 00:22:29 itself. But, and I've actually done this. If you create a custom segment of people who have recently searched for Google ads course, learn Google ads, become a Google ad specialist, et cetera, then you can show ads across discovery YouTube. I like to use the discovery campaign to do this to people who have recently searched for those things as they're doing other things across the internet. And so it's such a great way to get much lower CPCs than search, but know that you're reaching

Starting point is 00:22:53 that super high intent audience with a format like Discovery, where usually you're not able to get as high intent as what the person has searched for. And I actually love as a user as well, I get served some discovery ads and I know before I go check like, oh, they're using a custom segment right now.

Starting point is 00:23:10 And then I go check and sure enough, you can check why you're served a certain ad and it'll tell you that. So custom segments based on searches, which only works, like I mentioned, when you add it to a discovery campaign, it works a little differently on display. That's my favorite tactics. Well, on PMax, you don't get to choose your own audiences. when you add it to a discovery campaign. It works a little differently on display.

Starting point is 00:23:25 Can it work on PMax? Well, on PMax, you don't get to choose your own audiences. You only provide an audience signal. But yes, you can provide an audience signal based on a custom segment like this as well. So cheaper in terms of per click cost, but how does it perform against live searchers? Tends to perform very well. Like discovery, across the board,

Starting point is 00:23:44 discovery, I see very strong conversion rates. Probably, I guess, third only to search and shopping when you use the very high intent audiences. So I find CPCs are much lower than search. Conversion rate generally a bit lower as well. But like NetNet, you can achieve a very similar CPA, ROAS, whatever you're measuring with a tactic like this because you're going after those high intent audiences.

Starting point is 00:24:07 And discovery is in the Google app. Discovery, is it not a sort of display ad network as well? Give us a- Discovery is one of those like totally things people forget about. Even Google forgets about it all the time, I think. It's like a display ad, but it's sort of the opposite of the display network.

Starting point is 00:24:21 With a Google display ad, your ads are running on millions of websites and apps across the internet. With discovery, it only shows up in three places, and they are three places that are owned by Google. And that is Gmail, YouTube, and then the discover feed, which is like the Google News feed. And so my theory about why this works so much better than display is because discovery campaigns only run on Google-owned properties. Those are all Google-signed-in users.

Starting point is 00:24:48 So Google knows exactly who they're serving ads to and every single thing about you. Whereas on the display network, those ads are serving on other websites. And so Google just doesn't have the same level of data on all those users across the display network because they aren't necessarily those Google-signed-in users

Starting point is 00:25:04 on a Google-owned website at the time. But again, that's personal theory, not insider information. Whit, I want to pick up on something that you alluded to briefly when you were chatting earlier. And I want to talk a bit about the bricks and mortar side of things. What do you think, from your experience, is available in the ad landscape for brick and mortar businesses that are not available to e-commerce businesses and then everyone else can weigh in but wait what you sort of alluded to that in your side what are those things yeah so usually automotive is about a year behind everything else in terms of what's working and things tend to work almost in two

Starting point is 00:25:44 year cycles is what I've is what I've garnered. There's two years and then something will switch and it changes everything. I think the piece that's really missing, there's been a lot of talk about attribution, and it's really, truly difficult if you think about it. Somebody goes on this full buyer's journey to buy a car, the second biggest purchase most people make in their life. They are doing so much more research than I'm doing for a pair of shorts to go for a run in. And that goes across many different properties. It encounters many different ads.

Starting point is 00:26:16 It's not just a Google system. So even if at the point of them purchasing a vehicle, I mean, a car dealer has every single bit of information that they possibly could on these users. And many fail to capture that and use that in their marketing. So actually creating and there is some nuance with credit where people finance vehicles, but many dealers fail to use this data in any meaningful way to generate additional opportunities for themselves. And I think this will go across all brick and mortar businesses where even if you have something as simple as an email address, you can leverage that across different platforms, taking the data

Starting point is 00:26:55 that you have available to you to reach people. Like you mentioned, Jill, with different audience segments and things like that, there's so much opportunity there and it's left on the table because it's boring. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Let me ask you guys this. What was the worst thing that Google Ads did last year? I want to answer me. Not just Google Ads, the whole platform.

Starting point is 00:27:44 The whole Google marketing platform. It can be search. It can be search. But it has to be part of the Google marketing side of things. What was the worst thing they did last year? I think genuinely one thing that I would say in the community that we keep complaining about, I think is quite valid. And I feel like in other ways, Google have listened to our moans when this area there just seems to be no movement SMBs and B2Bs you know like like every every year like

Starting point is 00:28:17 the the likes of um oh what's her name I'm not gonna try and say it because I'm gonna say get it wrong um and did she she worked she used to work for merkel but she's on job hunt now because they can you guys know who i'm talking about right um michelle i believe is her name um anyway let me know and and yeah yes melissa melissa thank you mckay that's it thank you melissa mckay and you know it's there is just not enough. And even Julie Virginia as well, there's not enough that's done for SMBs. Like automation is the big thing.

Starting point is 00:28:52 Automation is where really Google focuses all its efforts in. Where has it failed on really creating any bespoke solutions for, you know, SMBs, small businesses, and especially B2Bs. That is where, well, I feel, its biggest fail is. And there's a comment here on YouTube. Fraser Andrews is saying, search query is going. Search query is fading.

Starting point is 00:29:12 It has been a big knock to advertisers' concerns. Absolutely. Jo, what do you think is the worst thing that Google did? The worst thing that Google did? I don't know if it's the worst. We're kind of picking up on Anu's thread that Google doesn't do enough to serve SMBs. We all know how dumb smart campaigns can be. You know, performance max is the thing and the way of the future. And so a change that happened

Starting point is 00:29:36 with the Shopify Google integration, which is how thousands of e-commerce stores run Google ads, is it used to be when you connected your Shopify Google channel to Google ads to run ads to your store, it would help you automatically create a smart shopping campaign. And now that process gets you to automatically create a performance maps campaign. And at least it's my opinion that when you're a small business owner who knows nothing about Google ads, I mean, even trying to do smart shopping is one thing, but trying to do performance maps where you need all these different creative assets and understanding of audiences and on and on and on is insanely complicated. As part of the performance maps launch, you know, Google got rid of smart shopping, but also local campaigns. And I'm not going to say local campaigns were the best thing since sliced bread, but it was really the only easy to use solution which you could do with a low budget that local brick and mortar businesses

Starting point is 00:30:25 could use. And it just doesn't exist anymore. So I agree, especially having worked at Google, that Google does come out with like the sexiest new AI features that work really well if you have a ton of budget and data. And the more we go towards that, the more small businesses get left out because they don't have a ton of small budget and data. So the automated solutions don't work well for them. So the takeaway is Google ads don't work. And it's just such a vicious cycle. It might be more of a complaint that a feature doesn't exist, but it would be amazing in some way if there was a way to better manage the cannibalization between standard or dynamic search campaigns and shopping or in the instance of my ecosystem,

Starting point is 00:31:06 vehicle shopping ads, or vehicle listing ads, where you're really paying too much attention to the management of the budget between the two, because they're creating such cannibalization. And that's not unique to automotive. But as these products become more dominant, obviously, at the top of paid search, there needs to be a way to better manage this. So the fact that that didn't get created somewhere along the line would be the worst thing that they did or didn't do to me. Boris? I'm going to have to go ahead and say it's PMAX. PMAX has been the worst thing they did, and it's also been the best thing they did last year.

Starting point is 00:31:44 I'm going to have to say that. It's the worst thing for an advertiser who doesn't know how to do things from a technical perspective because you're going to have to know how to set up conversion tracking. You're going to have to know how to produce a shopping feed if you have stuff like that.

Starting point is 00:32:00 You're going to have to know or you're going to have to have a source that is going to give you great creatives, videos, banners. Setting that all up might seem like it's an easy task, but actually structuring the thing according to your business needs and goals is incredibly hard. And I also want to reiterate something that and goals is incredibly hard. And I also want to reiterate something that Fraser said in the chat. Also think the lack of information around PMAX has been concerning. So that's the whole insights level of Performance Max where all the data obviously has been there all along,

Starting point is 00:32:42 but Google wouldn't give it to us. So we've had to rely on scripts that have been written by Mike Rose, for instance, that surfaced some of that visibility again. So I think they could have done that better. But that's my answer. Yeah, PMAX is the best thing and also the worst thing that Google did last year.

Starting point is 00:33:04 JOHN MUELLER, I want to get into predictions of what each of you think Google will announce at its event today in 26 minutes from now. But before we do, let me just ask you this sort of a question. What have I not asked that you think we should be talking about? What have I missed in this conversation so far that we should be getting into? I don't want us to be like ending it and then at the end I'll be the one that'll be like, oh I should have asked them this, we should have talked about that. What's missing in this discussion so far we should be chatting about? Well actually, Kevin in the chat mentioned something a while back that I think is worth discussing about Amazon as a threat. You know,

Starting point is 00:33:43 earlier we spoke a lot about TikTok and what that means. We've spoken about AI and ShaktiPT and Barn and what that means. But we haven't really spoken about Amazon. And I know at least historically, Amazon of course has been top of mind for Google. This is an old stat, but as of a few years ago,

Starting point is 00:34:00 you know, 50% of commercial queries, like retail queries in the US began on Amazon rather than beginning on Google. So right away you take like 50% of commercial queries, like retail queries in the U.S. began on Amazon better than beginning on Google. So right away, you take like 50% of those queries, boom, they're Amazon's and Google and everyone else has left to fight over the rest. So, you know, historically, Amazon has always been a threat to Google. Of course, they still are. But that's something, yeah, I'd be curious to to hear others perspectives on kind of the Amazon effect on Google and on Google ads and and whether we think that's going to be a focus at all this year or if it's just going to be generative AI generative AI generative AI it's gonna be AI

Starting point is 00:34:39 and I think the fact that Amazon in itself runs Google ads gives all the context I need to make that call. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I agree with that. And especially for the fact that like for some of our clients at Marin who use Amazon and I know like Amazon as the platform trying to advertise on Amazon and using Amazon as a search engine, it's two different things. But, you know, I feel that there's an interlinking aspect to it. And because their platform for advertisers, Amazon, is terrible. It's the data integration. It's nowhere close to what Google have done. So I do think that Google do not see them as a threat.

Starting point is 00:35:25 And I think for a little while, they can get away with not really focusing on them as a threat. And also, let's not forget that some of the big retail players out there are also picking. Everyone talks a lot about Amazon being the e-commerce business. But boy, you'd have a big fight with the people running Walmart's retail ad business, which is doing gangbusters. CVS's retail network, which is phenomenal. Even Instacart, which is the delivery service. Just a quick little quiz here. How much do you think they make each year in ad revenue?

Starting point is 00:36:02 I'll give you a hint. The number's measured in millions. I want each of you to guess. How many millions of dollars each year do you think Instacart makes in ad revenue? A hundred? A hundred million? Okay.

Starting point is 00:36:17 Ten. Ten million? I'll one up Anu and say 101. If the price is right i'll go i'll put a space wait did you did you log a guess in here i'll go 103 just so we have 10 million dollars we have 100 million 101 and fact, in 2022, Instacart made $740 million in ad revenue. That is 30% of the company's overall revenue. The $103 million was closest, technically. We will ship you the Ginsu steak knives as your prize, absolutely.

Starting point is 00:37:04 And I think we forget that these are also big players in the space, you know, and especially now with some of these TV networks continuing to merge, we're seeing things get bundled together. I believe it's Walmart has bundled with with now it couldn't be prime, but perhaps with HBO Max, you know, they're all sort of merging in together and creating a fairly compelling case for consumers. And when they are collecting those eyeballs, of course, and they have that sweet, sweet first party data, don't forget, right? Of course, because those loyalty programs tracking everything they buy, we are not too far away where even, and there's been tests of this, where there's directional audio that can target individual consumers in the physical aisles of stores with individualized, personalized messages. And this just on the heels of an announcement, I believe it was yesterday, that Spotify has started to experiment with having host-read ads generated, the voice of the host generated by AI. Spotify, of course, being one of the few podcast platforms that has the first name

Starting point is 00:38:13 of the listeners in its database. So you could have Joe Rogan addressing you by name on a scale basis. Huge developments all sort of around them. I mean, Google certainly can't stop running, which brings us to prediction time. You know, Google's big marketing event is, what is it, 22 minutes away from now? Let's do a roundtable, starting with Jill. What do you think we'll see today at the Google Marketing Live event? What do I think we'll see today? We're going to see a lot about search and AI. You know, previous Google marketing lives, they always make a big effort.

Starting point is 00:38:48 We have to have our video announcements and our display announcements and our shopping announcements and nothing about B2B or local. But I think this year, unlike last year, it's going to be much, much more focused purely on search. Of course, AI is the big elephant in the room. Okay, I'm going to put a stake in the ground.

Starting point is 00:39:05 We can see if I'm right or wrong. I think the way match types work with keywords is going to change even more. We lost broad match modifier this year. We know broad match has seen a lot of improvements. Even your biggest broad match haters are starting to say, you know, nice things about broad match.

Starting point is 00:39:21 So I think match types as we know them are going to go away or fundamentally change. And I think they won't announce it today, but that keywordless future that we all sort of talk about much closer than we thought. So alongside that, I predict we're going to have to see

Starting point is 00:39:38 some new features announced around how dynamic search ads work or how feed-based ads, whether it's a vehicle feed, a shopping feed, a hotel feed, work in order to let Google monetize all these super long queries that are coming. Those are my predictions. Can I go in before everybody takes some of the good answers? I feel like something's up. I was like, ah, Jill took my AI answer. And yeah, the match type answer I've also got in.

Starting point is 00:40:08 I think we're going to hear some stuff about how PMAC might cannibalize other product types. So I think we're going to get news of like how dynamic campaigns, DSAs, dynamic search ads are going to be washed, you know, less utilized. I can't believe that hasn't been announced yet. So I'm

Starting point is 00:40:32 putting my stake in the ground that that's my claim of what I think is going to be announced, what's going to be going away and how PMAX, what more they're going to do with PMAX and it's just going to be an announcement of how PMAX is going to just swallow up some other of the solutions that you're used to. Also more on AI, that's what Jill said on AI is my other second one as well. But yeah. Yes, so basically all the

Starting point is 00:40:58 answers I was going to give are already taken. Obviously, I think the big one is going to be PMAX, the announcement of new features inside of Performance Max campaigns. I'm thinking new customer acquisition, some experiments. So obviously, something is going to be announced there. I agree on the match types going away in the not too distant future. Not so sure about the timeframe, but yes, I see a future where at least broad match is going to be the only match type available going forward before eventually I think we can agree on the fact that it's gonna wash away entirely.

Starting point is 00:41:39 And then I have a contradiction to Jill actually. I predict that dynamic search ads is going to get axed. We've seen, Anu, I think we agree on that. We've seen unheard talks from people in the industry saying that miraculously or mysteriously, rather, DSA has started to bleed performance starting sometime in March, I think. And also in a community I met, I mean, someone wrote, Google told me today they're doing a pilot program to help clients upgrade their DSAs to PMX in the lead gen space. So we exactly upgrade.

Starting point is 00:42:25 So I think all those signs point actually towards DSA going away. I wouldn't be surprised if that got announced today. Yeah. I mean, that would solve some of my problems. But as far as predictions, I'm holding on to my hope of some type of AI agent, whether that's for the user side or for the paid media side. You know, I'm still mad that they took away referral data from Google Analytics like 40 years ago or however long that was. Remember, we used to be able to see every single website

Starting point is 00:42:54 where people came from and now it just says, it doesn't say not found or what is the phrase they use? Is it not found or go to hell, Todd? Not provided. Not provided that's it. You need to get over that Todd. I watched the tailgate you did last year and you said the exact same thing. Hey I'm a one-trick pony what can I tell you? Certainly that's that's something you linger on. I do I hold grudges let me tell you. But on the serious side I mean mean, you know, part of the reason that they gave for that was privacy, which I think had maybe 10% of truth in there. But privacy is also the big thing that one of the sort of topics that peculiarly has not come up yet in our discussion, which is the great cookiepocalypse.

Starting point is 00:43:39 The removal of third-party cookies from Chrome, which I think was scheduled a while ago, has now been pushed out to, I think was scheduled a while ago, has now been pushed out to, I think, next year. However, it is underway already. Google announced last week they're testing it with 1% of Chrome browsers. Let me ask each of you, are we ready? Is the ad industry ready for the removal of third-party cookies from the world's most used web browser? I don't think so. We've seen, we've known that this was going to come since a couple years back already. But we've been so overly reliant on dropping cookies everywhere.

Starting point is 00:44:19 That's because also we educated our clients on the measurability of everything. We can measure everything. We can measure everything. We can attribute everything, which turns out has been not a giant lie, but it's been bending the truth a little bit, I think, because attribution was never a real thing that can be solved by any tools that are out there. So I think we've been overly reliant on cookies. I think we are unprepared. Most advertisers are very unprepared of what's to on cookies. I think we are unprepared. Most advertisers are very unprepared of what's to come.

Starting point is 00:44:48 And I agree with you, Todd. We are not seeing the beginning of the cookie-pocalypse. Is that what you said? Yeah. But we've lived through it for the last couple of years, at least for the last year. Things can't be measured as well as they used to we had the ios 14.5 thing happening to us so that all are signs of things to come and we need to do better can i also say from a consumer perspective and as someone who uses social media and the internet i actually advocate for more privacy and for cookies going away i think it's a great thing and i think companies

Starting point is 00:45:32 should have been preparing much better than than how they did um yes that just means everybody else now knows how it feels to work in automotive that's what will happen well you made a great point earlier with that like you've had to educate clients about the importance of brand you can't just be like hey buy a car there's a lead done like there's this whole journey that has to happen and you know what how lucky are we as an industry that we've been so spoiled over the last decade that we could measure a lot of the stuff or think we can measure a lot of the stuff. It's been great. It's been a heyday. Things are going to change.

Starting point is 00:46:11 We're all going to bitch and moan. And you know what? We're going to deal with it. The performance and capabilities are still there. AI is going to be able to plug a lot of the gaps for us. But transparency has been going away. We'll continue to go away um and uh and so as always those who are willing to adapt embrace potentially not know where every dollar is going potentially see some performance

Starting point is 00:46:32 dips until they figure it out with that longer term view will be successful but there are going to be a lot you know a lot of people who won't because they hold on till the bitter end and haven't given themselves enough time to adapt and i don't know about you guys but like amongst all the nonsense cold dms i get in my linkedin a popular one a popular one is that you know you see somebody saying that you know i can give you a list of names of leads and names and email addresses of qualified people from your your your targets sorry do you understand and what data privacy means i even now more so before when i just be like oh that's nonsense now i'm like dude that's illegal i've got is is there like someone monitoring this network and trying to catch me out? And what makes me nervous is about, you know, no matter what makes me nervous is that because these guys are doing it, if I'm seeing it and if these people keep on doing it, it means some people are falling for that.

Starting point is 00:47:38 It means there is a 1%, even if it's a 1% conversion rate on those ridiculous emails. There are some people who will see that and will be lazy enough and go, sure, let me quickly get some third-party data that might get me a few leads and just cut corners. And yeah, that scares me. But yeah, it's something. You know, I'm testing a personal data removal tool. That's where we are now in this industry, where there are now SaaS providers that for a monthly fee will on your behalf go and pull your data out of these large repositories.

Starting point is 00:48:18 The one that I use is called Incogni. I think it's like five bucks a month or something. Now, you have to trust them, which I more or something. Now, you have to trust them, which I more or less do. But you have to trust them by giving them basically all of your personal information. And then on your behalf, it goes out to I think it's 57 different data brokers, BidSwitch, Fetcher, Fourleaf, Growbots, PitchBook, PushHint, a whole bunch of these sort of aggregators, and files removal requests on your behalf. And the interesting thing is that you can watch, there's a dashboard, you can watch the responses

Starting point is 00:48:51 from these platforms. And when some of them respond, some of them respond and say, we don't have any data on your customer. I'm sorry. Some of them say, yeah, we found some data on your customer and we've removed it. And by the way, here here it is and it's an enormous list of hundreds of interests that it thinks i have maybe 10 of which are accurate you know which i've always found was very funny on the meta side on the google side every time i go in and i always do this what do you think you know about me it says you sure like hedgehogs i don't know we're like how do you think i like you watch one video like maybe 10 years ago and it's like this dude likes exactly i mean one thing for sure though that i i don't think anyone will doubt is that this industry the google platform will continue to be more in depth

Starting point is 00:49:41 it will continue to be get more. And as many people here have already said today, more confusing for the SMBs, for the small marketers. Google has a sort of scaled down version of a campaign type known as Google Smart Campaigns. Jill, of course, is its biggest supporter. Jill thinks Google Smart Campaigns are the best. I'm sorry, I read that wrong. Jill does not like Google Smart campaigns. They're ironically named. Are we going to have to be in that position soon where this gets so complicated with AI, with all of these changes,

Starting point is 00:50:18 that they will have to produce a new version of kind of a scaled back, like Google ads for dummies, Google starter edition. It exists, Todd. It exists. Smart campaigns. Is that what you're talking about? Well, when you create a new Google ads campaign, you're automatically in smart mode and you have to choose to go to expert mode to do any of the stuff we've talked about today.

Starting point is 00:50:42 But none of that covers off what we may be seeing, right? None of that covers off, I mean, that will get you onboarded fairly soon, but there's no simple mode for adding your product catalog feed from Shopify and three other hooks in. How do we get, will we get to a point where it will be easier, I guess, is the question. It's always the tension, because the easier they make it, the less they make it, the less control you have. And then people hate they don't have control. So they want to have control and transparency,

Starting point is 00:51:09 which makes it all the more complicated. And then we're like, this is too complicated. So there's no, you know, it's really easy to crap on Google about this stuff. But if you go from Google's perspective and the millions of different kinds of advertisers they're trying to serve, like they can't, Google ads can't be everything to everyone. And the complaints and wishlists that we all have here, like we are the minority

Starting point is 00:51:28 people who live our lives in Google ads. Most of the people who use Google ads are not like us and don't care about the things we do and don't know what a match type is and don't know what a dynamic ad group is and don't know what a shopping feed is. So that's what I try to remind myself of sometimes when we get all caught up in this on PPC chatter. It's like most Google ads users don't care about this stuff which is why we feel like Google ignores us. Cause like we don't matter as much as we think we do. And there, that's my soapbox.

Starting point is 00:51:55 I'll get off it now. We should all leave fairly soon as this event is starting. Very quickly in a parting shot, each of you please tell us a bit about your business. 10 seconds, plug your website, and then we will say goodbye. I'll just call people out here.

Starting point is 00:52:12 We'll go in the order that I see you all on the screen. Jill. I'm Jill Saskengale. I'm a Google Ads coach, and I have a course inside Google Ads that will help you become a Google Ads expert. You can learn more at jyll.ca. Boris.

Starting point is 00:52:28 I'm Boris Petcharic. I'm in Germany. I'm a Google Ads expert. You can learn more at jyll.ca. Boris. I'm Boris Beceric. I'm in Germany. I'm a Google Ads freelancer. You can find me on LinkedIn or on borisbeceric.com. Please don't DM me now because I'll be on vacation for the next two weeks. Anu. Hi, I'm Anu. I work for Marin Software and I've been in paid search for over 12 years and I love chit-chatting a lot about paid search. And so I started up an event called PPC Live UK, where we meet every couple of months and I get speakers to come and share their knowledge about paid search with the industry. So yeah, if you want to join an event and you're in the UK, go to ppcliveuk.com. We'd love to have you in two days' time. Wit.

Starting point is 00:53:08 You can find me almost anywhere at witnorad. And at FlexDealer, we primarily work with car dealers and we keep about 10% of our portfolio to keep us sharp everywhere else. And you can find us at flexdealer.com. And our podcast is a marketing news podcast. It comes out every day. It's very short.

Starting point is 00:53:24 It's about seven minutes long. It's called Today in Digital Marketing. You can find it at todayindigital.com. We also have a podcast called Behind the Ad. Yesterday, we released our second version. It is a 20-minute documentary behind the scenes on one of the world's most talked about ad campaigns of all time. The ad campaign was called True, but you probably know it as What's Up? It's a great list and the team did a great job of it. Jill and I will be hosting a conversation for our respective premium subscribers for her Google Ads course, me for our premium podcast subscribers on May 25th. That's two days from now at 9 a.m. Pacific Time, noon Eastern Time. Google Marketing Live, the official event, starts in five minutes, so go watch it. Thank you to each of you, Jill, Boris, Anu, and Wit,

Starting point is 00:54:12 and most importantly, thank you for watching, and good luck out there. Thanks for watching.

Today in Digital Marketing - BONUS: Google Marketing Live - Unofficial Tailgate Panel

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