Spicy Web Heads to Silicon Valley.

This year, Spicy Web was invited to the Google Marketing Live Conference in California, and I was lucky enough to travel all the way to the USA to be there. While the first hour of the conference was the only part without an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement), there is still a lot of information I can fill you in from this fantastic event.

Google has moved out of being a mobile-first company to an AI-first company. I know that everyone likes to use the word 'AI' because it’s cool and sounds really futuristic and complicated, however, the truth is that we are now primarily talking about machine learning, not necessarily self-aware robots. Google is now using all the data it has from its various properties and all the signals from the use of mobile devices we now have to make automatic decisions. This is specifically important in terms of Google because it’s so much easier than doing everything manually.

Now, Google did start with and touch on how proud they were of allowing users to choose what data is shared and how they can change this. Let’s be honest though, this was just a dig a Facebook after all the data privacy controversies that have been trending lately. If you are reading this, you most likely wish to advertise to make money and the more data you have the better. Let’s just accept that everything on the internet is essentially public.

I have been saying for years that Google AdWords—now Google Ads—would become fully automatic and that agencies would instead be focused on creative and strategy. This year we are seeing this starting to become a reality, and an example of this is responsive search Ads.

Responsive Search Ads

Consumers today are more curious, more demanding, and they expect to get things done faster than before because of their mobile use. As a result, they expect your ads to be helpful and personalised. Doing this isn’t easy, especially on a large scale. That’s why Google’s introducing Responsive Search Ads. Responsive Search Ads combine your creativity with the power of Google’s machine learning to help you deliver relevant and valuable ads.

Simply provide up to 15 headlines and 4 description lines, and Google will do the rest. By testing different combinations, Google learns which ad creative performs best for any search query. So people searching for the same thing might see different ads based on context.

Google knows this kind of optimization works. On average, advertisers who use Google’s machine learning to test multiple creatives see up to 15% more clicks. Responsive search ads will start rolling out over the next several months, and we're excited to use and learn more about them.