Google has unveiled key developments in its AI-driven innovations that can transform how consumers and businesses use its Search and YouTube offerings to discover, and engage with information and products.
Dan Taylor, Vice President of Google Ads, told a roundtable that in his 20 years with the tech giant, he has seen and experienced different shifts that have impacted and shaped the industry.
“Each of these shifts has expanded what people can do with Google and has also led to great opportunities for businesses. I think we’re in the middle of one of those shifts right now with AI.”
Dan Taylor of the Vice President of Google Ads
AI-Powered Search
Google is bringing its AI innovation to infrastructure, research and scale to Google Ads, which the tech giant says helps them serve the right ad to the right person at the right time.
Taylor said early adopters of generative AI have reported that content generation is now up to four times faster and copywriting up to five times faster and called it a “real force multiplier for advertising”.
Google also announced that with the help of ImageN3, part of Gemini, advertisers now have the ability to use text prompts to generate images that contain people and faces across Performance Max, DemandGen, Display, and ad campaigns.
“This makes creating content and relevant advertising even easier for our customers.”
Evolving Consumer Behaviour
Taylor noted that consumers’ time spent online has become “predictably unpredictable and multimodal” as they multitask streaming with scrolling while searching and shopping.
“While these behaviours themselves aren’t new, consumers are acting on them in different ways thanks to new technology.”
He noted that traditional media and manual advertising tactics cannot keep up with the speed of consumers and that marketers need to reach consumers “across every possible moment of influence.”
Taylor said that Google is uniquely positioned to help marketers to reach consumers at scale. “We offer the business’s opportunity to connect with consumers across these different surfaces at different stages in their purchasing journey.”
YouTube’s Growing Influence
“Around the world, people are collectively watching more than one billion hours on average of YouTube content on their televisions,” Taylor said.
He noted that the interactivity of the platform and mix of content including short-form video, podcasts, and live streams, alongside sports, comedies, and talk shows.
YouTube Shorts has also proven to be a growing platform, according to Taylor. He said that it than doubled globally on connected televisions with viewers watching over one billion hours of content on their big screen daily.
Taylor added that ads were found to be viewed longer and are better liked, as they are seen as “more personally relevant than ads on other platforms.”
Search Innovations
Search is synonymous with Google and responds to consumer intent and anticipating intent earlier than ever in the consumer journey. The ways of searching has also evolved and the added layer of AI opens up new possibilities.
“We see more than five trillion searches on Google annually. Each day, 15% of the searches that we see on Google are new,” Taylor said.
New search innovations include AI Overviews, powered by Gemini. Taylor noted that people who use AI Overviews search more, are more satisfied with the results and visit a greater diversity of websites.
Google Lens is also helping people with searching and the fastest search type with usage reaching 20 billion visual search queries a month, according to the tech giant.
“The majority of these searches are incremental, and one in every four of these visual search queries done using Google Lens has a commercial intent, meaning they’re interested in a product or service when they’re doing this.”
Circle to Search is also a new feature within Google Lens where you can circle, highlight, or tap what you see without having to switch apps. Taylor noted that for advertisers, Circle to Search provides an opportunity to connect with users instantly when their curiosity is at its peak.
Google on its strong policies and rolling out AI-powered techniques
With all these innovations and developments in play, Mediaweek asked Taylor about what Google is doing to ensure ad personalisation remains both effective and ethical in light of rapid advancements of generative AI.
He said: “We are excited about the opportunity to improve ads personalisation in the generative AI age. Being able to generate creative or to predict intent in a way that helps connect the consumer to a business that satisfies their need more quickly is something we think is going to be a force multiplier for businesses and a key benefit to consumers as well.
“In terms of protecting consumer privacy, Google has the strictest policies on privacy in the industry. We never sell people’s personal information. We don’t show personalised ads based on sensitive information, and we also prohibit ad personalisation for consumers under 18 or on made-for-kids content.
“We have very strong policies that are in place overall on personalisation, and they certainly apply to any of the new AI-powered techniques that we’re rolling out.”