We talk to Google about the future of Google in 2024

We’ve handled billions of ad dollars on the Google platform alone for our clients so it might not surprise you to learn that:

A) we’re deeply invested in what the future of Google advertising holds.

and 

Enter Qayam Sayani, a Strategic Agency Manager with Google, and Thrive’s main point of contact for all things Google. I sat down with him to talk about what the platform is rolling out in 2024, the privacy focused future, understanding the impact of your ad spend, and more.

Santana Blanchette: Hi Qayam, thanks for joining me today! What were the biggest changes in how brands interacted with Google products in 2023?

Qayam Sayani: Every year we announce new products and solutions within Google ads and we expect people to use them a certain way but we see so many brands and agencies innovating and using them in ways we didn’t anticipate. That obviously ends up making Google ads better. 

In 2023, we really saw brands lean into AI in two ways. The first was around reducing complexity and the second was around being more creative with how they use it which I think Thrive in particular has been really good about. 2023 was the year when the rest of the world started noticing AI but we've been saying at Google that we’re an AI first company since 2016.

A lot of people are surprised to hear that 80% of our customers are already using some sort of AI powered search ads within their campaigns and more than 25% of YouTube advertisers use some sort of automatically generated ad set. So it's been around and has been used for a while but I think this was the year where we saw advertisers lean into it and make the most out of it.

In particular for the agencies I work with, I saw a lot more agencies and advertisers adopting Performance Max as well as using those generated assets and AI tools. I would call 2023 sort of the breakout year for Performance Max and it makes sense because that's one of the products we integrate a lot of our newest AI improvements into. Advertisers and agencies were telling us as well they saw really good performance with Performance Max in the last year. We see in the data too, Performance Max delivers 18% more conversions at a similar cost to other campaigns.

What are the most exciting changes in Google Ads we can expect in 2024?

Qayam: Yeah, I mean I don’t think the answer is surprising. We talk about AI a lot but you can definitely expect to see more from Google when it comes to AI tools and solutions. In particular one tool we released at the end of last year was Demand Gen which is a more creative format similar to Performance Max. It runs across Google products but more of our most engaged channels like Shorts, YouTube, Gmail, and Discovery. Although it's a new product, many advertising agencies have access to the beta and Thrive was one of them. So we've already seen some incredible uses of the tool and for 2024 I'm just excited to see how people use it and get the most out of it as it evolves.

One other area that I'm excited to double click on is Demand Gen’s unique offering and how advertisers use Google ads to be more creative. We at Google think of AI as enabling and enhancing creatives and not replacing creative as a function. Some of the ways I've seen that is using AI to visualize ideas, text, image, and video tools. Imagine is one from Google that's in beta and uses AI to help you visualize ideas and helps create concepts and storyboards. We also see creatives using AI to maximize their productivity. So helping to write in Gmail and Google Docs, flesh out outlines, synthesize multiple points of view, and then things like Duet AI can summarize email chains and help provide next steps and all those sorts of cool things. Overall I would say Demand Gen and enabling creatives are two really powerful things to look forward to in 2024.

How should brands be thinking about adapting to the more privacy focused future?

Qayam: Chrome third party cookie depreciation is definitely going to be a hot topic this year and I think it's pushed a lot of advertisers to think more deeply about user privacy and how they use customer data. The reality is that people's privacy expectations are driving the platform changes and not the other way around. We're seeing increasing regulations at state and global levels and many of those are going to come to bare by the end of 2024. I believe Garner did a study and said basically 75% of the world population will have its personal data covered under some sort of modern privacy regulation by the end of 2024 so I think marketers that don't prepare now are going to be at a disadvantage.

The good news is there are ways to prepare for that like making better use of the first party data. Leaning into things like Google Analytics 4, with predictive audience modeling built in as well as data driven attribution. Using that alongside things like Google Ads data manager which integrates directly with data warehouses and first party data tools. Also using things like privacy preserving technology. So that's things like enhanced conversions, which I know Thrive’s spoke about before in a blog post. And using things like consent mode customer match, which really helps bridge the gap between the third party cookie world and the first party data world.

And then like we spoke about earlier, things like Demand and Performance Max. Those are AI powered solutions that run across Google channels and help smooth out the bumps and fragmented measuring landscapes through aggregation, lots of impressions, data, and conversions. Finally, the AI-powered solution area. We have a lot of privacy-centric measurement and tools built into existing audience targeting, existing modeling. So just by using Google ads, there are privacy state features built into those tools that will help bridge the gap when these new changes come into effect.

What tools will Google be providing to help brands understand the impact of the Google spend?

Qayam: I look at this question as going back to the fundamentals of having assigned data and measurement strategies. Things like matching your marketing KPI’s to the business objectives using proper first party data, matching in customer moments using data attribution across all communication channels and so on. When you have that foundation set up as a business, it's much easier to measure the impact of your overall marketing spend, not just your Google spends.

Obviously we have tools to make that easier though. So like I mentioned Google Analytics to Google Tag Manager. That's for all the marketing tools and not just to measure paid ads but also to measure organic channels, other paid media channels, and other types of marketing channels. Within Google ads specifically, one that I always love to talk about and I have spoken to Thrive before, is around using more testing strategies with campaigns so you can run A/B tests, conversion lift and brand lift studies in platform. You can measure incrementality without using sort of an expensive third-party research firm so yeah that's built into the tool and I think it just empowers agencies and advertisers to do their own measurement. Decide for themselves if a certain channel or strategy is working for them. It’s an area in general I'm excited to see how it’s used in 2024. I think agencies are really in the best position to lead on this and offer their guidance. You're the ones, helping clients adopt new tools and strategies pushing them to embrace new technologies. I'm really excited to see how Thrive so leverages that in 2024.