You know the idea of AI has been around for quite some time. I just ran into a mention of AI in a novel written in 1988. But its use has exploded in the last couple of years, and Google has been a major factor in that.
Google has thousands of engineers and you better believe they’ve been working with AI for a long time. In fact they made one of the fundamental breakthroughs “transformers” in 2017. And they have been introducing increasing amounts of AI into their services. Google Translate has been using AI since 2016.
So it’s not surprising that AI now plays a major role in Google Ads.
Google Ads have been getting more and more complex for many years, to a point where they should maybe carry a warning “Don’t Try This At Home.”
The fact is that Google has long since recognized that most people, even most marketing agencies, are simply not competent to run their own Ads.
At the same time, Google has an enormous amount of information on website users. Information they can’t share for privacy reasons, but which they CAN use to enhance the eeffectiveness of ads.
Enter AI.
Once upon a time, running Google Ads was a very hands on activity, specifying each keyword and how much you are willing to pay to have your ad show for that keyword.
You specified where your ads would run but that’s where your control ended.
It’s not like that now.
Instead Google has rolled out a series of ways of running campaigns – some of them mere weeks old – which are highly automated.
Instead of being focused on keywords, a campaign may be built around audiences – such as people interested in interior decorating. Facebook ads have operated this way for a long time but Google as is often the case, does it better.
I don’t want to get into the technical details. I just wanted to make some key points on this:
1. These new ad modes are producing superior results. We’ve been rolling them out for our clients and they consistently outperform other campaigns when we run a test.
2.You need someone who is very familiar with and plugged into Google to run them. Most marketers just aren’t focused enough on Google Ads to learn what it takes. We can only do it because we have an Ads Specialist who does nothing except run Google (and other) Ads, and because we have a Google Representative who keeps us updated with what’s new, and provides recommendations.
As I have mentioned repeatedly, we are in a changed scene where more businesses need to lean more heavily on Google Ads. With these new AI driven Ad modalities, you have a better chance than ever of success.
And that’s a good thing.