Recent Google Ads Updates: All You Need To Know

Google ads play a huge role in most businesses today. However, there are numerous things that go into crafting a well-received ad – more than anyone who doesn’t work in marketing may realise. There are many balances you have to ensure; between keywords, tone, readability, and bidding strategies, to name a few.

As a digital marketing agency in London, we understand the impacts and confusion caused by Google ads updates on small businesses. It is a priority to remain ahead of the game, to know precisely how to minimise any potential decline in traffic to your website.

If Google ads updates concern you or you would like to remain informed, we share the recent updates worth knowing below.

Google Introduces Data Exclusion For Smart Bidding

If you make use of smart bidding, you’ll know that it is a great automated tool for optimising conversion rates. Google has gone and made this machine learning algorithm even more advanced by introducing data exclusion controls.

Firstly, it’s important to note that when there are glitches in your website or other technical issues, your conversion rates can be inaccurate. If you are recording inaccurate conversions, using Smart Bidding to optimise them will be ineffective.

So, what are these data exclusions controls? This new tool will allow you to rule out any days that underreport conversions, due to a technical problem. Essentially, Smart Bidding will exclude the date range necessary, making your predictions more accurate, allowing you to still see which bids affect conversions the most.

Google Discovery Ads Grow In Popularity

When you think of Google ads, perhaps you envision the standard text-based ads found in SERPs, but the Discovery Ads are completely changing the way you advertise with Google.

Similar to Facebook ads, Google’s Discovery Ads will be able to include single images or carousels, creating ads that involve the audience more. The five headlines and five description spaces give you a lot of room to get creative too.

Additionally, these ads will adapt to search terms and what it is people are interested in. Google’s machine learning is able to identify which ads are relevant to which searchers, giving you a great opportunity of converting. Because of this, knowing your audience’s interests is more important for Discovery Ads, as keywords won’t hold much value in this case.

Advanced Audience Targeting When Setting Up Google Ads

Creating your target audience based on search queries alone is not going to get you the best results possible. With Google heading closer to being fully automated, advanced targeting is undoubtedly going to become essential.

This advanced targeting update gives you the ability to fine-tune your audience based on personalised factors like interests, past searches, and other websites your ideal customer would likely visit. 

The automation bit comes in when Google’s machine learning algorithm then finds you a greater audience, based on these factors, who are most probably going to follow through with your CTA.

Increased Automation Through AI And Machine Learning

As we just mentioned, Google is honing in on automation more than ever and it can be very beneficial for businesses who use Google ads for optimisation.

The positive of this update is that advertisers can spend more time on crafting the ads, to get the best possible results, leaving the automated bidding to Google. Because of this, understanding Google’s Smart Bidding is crucial.

Responsive search ads also fall into the category of atomisation. These ads will, essentially, let you create different copy to target distinct audiences. Google will choose and switch different headlines and copy to be shown to the audiences that are more likely to respond to that particular combination of headline and copy.

A Fresh Version Of Google Ads Editor

Finally, the last update we will mention is the updated version of Google Ads that allows everything we’ve just shared to actually take place.

Version 1.5 has tools that allow you to look into your ad strength for responsive search ads in more depth, offering you the opportunity to optimise and improve them. Additionally, you can also use this for checking the strength of an ad before you set it live.

You can see that there are many incredible updates taking place on Google Ads, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Like with everything else, as you experiment with the possibilities and tools available to you, you will quickly become more comfortable with using them.

If you keep in mind that Google is focusing on search intent and users’ interests, and the ever-expanding automation abilities, you will surely begin to see your ad campaigns thrive!