Today in Digital Marketing - What 2025 Holds for Google Ads and AI

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

Today, our Google Ads correspondent Jyll Saskin Gales tells us what’s in store for Google Ads in the coming year..📰 Get our free daily newsletter🌍 Follow us on social media or contact us📈 Advertising: Reach Thousands of Marketing Decision-Makers.GO PREMIUM!Get these exclusive benefits when you upgrade:✅ Listen ad-free✅ Back catalog of 20+ marketing science interviews✅ Get the show earlier than the free version✅ Member-only monthly livestreams with TodAnd a lot more! Check it out: todayindigital.com/premium✨ Premium tools: Update Credit Card • Cancel.MORE🆘 Need help with your social media? Check us out: engageQ digital🌟 Rate and Review Us🤝 Our Slack.UPGRADE YOUR SKILLSGoogle Ads for Beginners with Jyll Saskin GalesInside Google Ads: Advanced with Jyll Saskin GalesFoxwell Slack Group and Courses.Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on Vancouver Island, Canada. Associate producer: Steph Gunn.Some links in these show notes may provide affiliate revenue to us.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hello and welcome to the Tuesday Deep Dive edition of the podcast. Today we have Jill Saskengales, our Google Ads correspondent with us. You used to work at Google. You spent six years in Google Ads helping brands there. You've got a pretty good view of the whole scene, especially now that you do inside Google Ads, the podcast, the training program and so on. Your head is in the game, as they would say. I want to pick your brains for the next 15, 20 minutes and find out what you think 2025 holds for Google ads. We know that one of Google's big areas of focus this year is Gemini. That's Google's version of chat GPT,

because a lot of people don't realize that yet. And that is what Google wants to change. So expect to see a lot of buzz around Gemini, Google trying to encourage people to install the app on their phones and use Gemini. However, in my opinion, it's kind of a little bit too late. You know, we make Google things instead of searching things, but I don't hear anyone saying, you know, I'm going to go Gemini that. No, people say, I'm going to chat GPT that. I'm going to use chat GPT. What is Gemini? It's the ChatGPT from Google. So Google is trying to play catch up on that front, but that's a tough hill to climb. You drink the Google Kool-Aid, so I know you've been using Gemini and like the paid, the pro version of Gemini. Aside from like

advertising stuff, can we just talk a bit about Gemini? Like how have you found it in terms of doing things like producing marketing copy and all that kind of stuff compared to ChatGPT and Perplexity and Claude and all those? I can't speak how it compares to others because I haven't used others. I've been a Gemini beta tester for almost a year now. So they give me kind of the free premium version. I get access to features early. So I really enjoy it. I use it in a lot of places in my business, especially around repurposing content. So I won't go to Gemini and say, write a blog post for me. But every week when I do a podcast episode, I give the transcript to Gemini. I have a whole custom gem I've built out. That's Gemini language for a custom GPT. And it turns it into blog posts. And then I turn those into scripts for videos. And then I turn those into Instagram posts. And I reuse stuff a lot using

Gemini. And I love it. I think it's great. I'm sure that many of the other tools have similar capabilities. And how do you find the copywriting in Gemini? My experience with all the other tools is that it's a little bit kind of like breathless in its use of adjectives. You know, it's sort of like instead of just saying, Google introduced a new asset library, it said, it'll say something like, Google revolutionized the industry by, you know, it's like that kind of thing. Have you found that you've had to do a lot of editing

to the copy you've asked Gemini to do? Or does it do a fairly good job? I found that when I'm more specific in my prompt and the more I'm editing my gems, the better it gets at that. So definitely the first time if you just say, write me this, in our ever-changing digital landscape, like it's terrible. But I have used it a lot.

I use it every day in my business and use it enough that I'm constantly refining the gem. And I have a list of words where it's like, never use these words. And what's funny, one of the words I tell it not to use is unlock. And sometimes it'll use the word unlock and then it'll say, one of the words I tell it not to use is unlock. And sometimes it'll use the word unlock. And then it'll say, by the way, I know I'm not supposed to use the word unlock, but I thought it just went really well here. And I'm like, come on, Gemini. That's awesome. All right. Well, so we see Gemini sort of from a user point of view and a marketing

point of view most frequently inside Google search results, do we not? Yeah, so that's the AI overviews, whereas Gemini is sort of like the consumer-facing chatbot version. AI overviews is we're really seeing this generative AI in search results. And so right now, you know, Google is still really just in the early days of testing, even letting advertisers into those AI overviews, assuming we do want to be there in that real estate. They've been talking about it for nearly a year now, putting search, shopping, performance, max ads into AI overviews. But I haven't seen that in the wild. I haven't seen many reports of it in the wild. It's really tricky. Like, how do you do

keyword advertising with an AI overview where the query may have been, you know, 20 words long? You just can't anymore. Yeah, I haven't seen any screenshots or anything. Have you seen like any of that stuff leak out? I haven't, no. We know it's going to roll out in the United States first. And it actually seems like those shopping and product-based queries are a better fit for it initially than just your general search queries. But no, other than the one example of a stain remover that Google keeps telling us about,

I haven't actually seen any real people sharing any screenshots of actually seeing ads in their AI overviews. It will be sort of interesting, you know, back in the day when I was giving keynote speeches, I talked about location-based marketing and how, you know, in the future, mind you, remember this was 20 years ago

when there were no smartphones, but I would say how you'd pass a store, and it would text you a coupon for a product that never came to pass, of course, although arguably, we do sort of similar things in marketing today. But the phrase that I used about that sort of technology was it was a database that you must be in as a business, because if you don't, your competitor will be. Is that where we're going toward once these ads in the AI overviews? Because people do a search, you know, best children's shoes, and the AI overview will be at the top, presumably. It's the only place I think consumers will probably look like the majority of consumers. Is this not one of those, you're kind of going to have to be there purchases as an ad buyer? I mean, the same way that you, you know, do you have to be there with Google ads at the top of regular search results? Like, no, you don't have to be there.

SEO, still very much a thing. And what's interesting is like SEO practitioners and Google ads practitioners, we're all kind of freaking out and not knowing what's going to happen with these AA overviews. It affects both of us. And what also really affects both of us is the importance of your website and whether or not you're getting crawled not just by Google, but by all these different large language learning models. You know, I'm seeing more and more people talk about getting referral traffic from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini. You know, that's not purely an advertising problem. That's just like a marketing. Do we want large language learning models to learn from our content? Do we not want them to learn from our content?

What does click-through look like? So I don't have an answer for it, but it's definitely something that not just Google Ads practitioners, but all kinds of search practitioners are really thinking about. And frankly, I don't even think Google knows the answer. 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. All right, so 2025 is here. What do you think we should be as Google Ads advertisers, practitioners? What should we be paying attention to in the next 12 months? My best piece of advice is actually to stay away from like the shiny AI object syndrome. There are so many of these little changes, little incremental improvements,

little features that, of course, are nice to have, but I think can really distract practitioners from what matters. Like, sure, having AI image editing in the Google Ads interface, cool. Having brand restrictions, like, cool. These are game-changing things. I'll, of course, continue to share Google Ads updates with you, Todd, as we chat each month. But I think that the bulk of your time and energy and effort as a Google Ads practitioner in 2025 should really be focused on the foundations, the foundations of marketing, which haven't changed since, you know, 20 years ago when you were giving that talks. Maybe some of the ways that works have changed, but really kind of three key things that I'd recommend you focus on, and they're probably things you've been focusing on already for the last 10 years, are accurate conversion tracking, you know, letting the Google ad system, the AI algorithms know what's driving results for your business and what's not. Customer data, that first party data, more important than ever, one of the most important inputs you could possibly give an AI system to understand who to target next.

And then compelling ad creative. You know, that's the place where AI is not there yet. Will it ever get there? I don't know. But writing effective, engaging text, creating effective images that don't give you the heebie-jeebies, creating effective video content, like that's what we humans still do well. So that's what I'm advising my coaching clients, my Inside Google Ads course members to really focus on conversion tracking, customer data, ad creative.

Hopefully they all start with the letter C. And if you just focus on those fundamentals in 2025, then all these new AI bells and whistles will work well for you because you have the right foundation in place. I have a side question for you. Have you heard about Kagi? Kagi? K-A-G-I. Kagi.com.

It sounds like a kind of Japanese food I might like. It does, doesn't it actually? It is not. It is a search engine that you will like, but perhaps the Google people won't. It is a completely ad free and it is one of the first paid search engines. I never thought I would pay for a search engine. I have started to pay for Caggy now by the month. And what's cool about it is that aside from no ads, and this is not a paid promotion of any kind, I'm just kind of excited by it, is you can block certain domains from showing up. So I don't know if you've had this experience in Google where you're typing in some sort of search and Pinterest, for whatever reason, shows up really high in a lot of searches.

And when you go there, it's crap. It's just pins. And like they've somehow gamed the SEO. You can just block Pinterest. You can just say, just never show me Pinterest in the results. You can turn off AI overviews. You can turn off the box. It's it's really quite incredible.

So anyway. I don't see that ever becoming me. I mean, you're someone who reports on marketing news for a living. I think a lot of people are going to try to come in there with new ways of search, new ways of that. I don't see any of these taking off and becoming mainstream. But if you love it, I'm very happy for you, Todd. I do love it. I love it. All right. Thank you, Jill, as always. Thank you. That's Jill Saskengale. She is our Google Ads correspondent. She's here every month on the Tuesday Deep Dive episode. You can learn more about Jill and her training program about Google Ads and her podcast and her forthcoming book and all sorts of stuff at todayindigital.com slash GA.

That is our affiliate link. Again, it's todayindigital.com slash GA. That is our affiliate link. Again, it's Todayindigital.com slash GA. If you miss the daily podcast, don't forget our newsletter is still every single workday. It comes out at 5 o'clock Eastern Time. It is free to sign up to. Just go to Todayindigital.com slash newsletter. Try it out for a day or two. We've worked really hard on the format.

I think you'll like it. It's an easy read and keeps you up to speed the way we used to. All right, that's it for the Tuesday episode. I'll see you on Friday for a wrap up of the week's news. What can we expect from Google this year around AI? We know that... Oh, wait, first of all, sorry, first of all, hello, Jill. I forgot the hello. I'll just clip it from another one of your hellos no sorry we can go back and start do the hello it's cool i just all right we gotta do the hello okay hello hello don't put this in like you did that one time what oh no I wouldn't do

would I do that I would like I would never do that