A non-profit professional organization, Paid Search Association (PSA), hosted an “AMA” event with Google Ads liaison Ginny Marvin.
The session via Slack allowed PSA members to ask Marvin anything related to paid search that was on their minds.
During the 1-hour event and with over 15 questions submitted, it was clear what was on everyone’s mind: AI and its role in PPC.
KLEVER, JumpFly, and AdAlysis sponsored the event.
Addressing Business & Personal Challenges With AI
The first question asked in the chat focused on business challenges:
One of the challenges when businesses go to use AI generated creative is legal claims and brand voice. What advice would you give marketers and customers who cannot lean into these tools for legal reasons?
Marvin provided a thoughtful two-part answer to the question. First, she addressed how generative AI will be used in asset creation (which was previously covered in Google Marketing Live).
- New conversational experience for Search campaign creation (opt-in). You can use natural language to ask Google Ads for ideas to quickly generate relevant keywords, headlines, descriptions, images, and other assets.
- The new asset creation flow in PMax quickly generates and curates high-quality text and image assets by just entering your URL.
- Automatically created assets (opt-in) to simplify and automate the generation of high-quality ads to achieve your business objectives.
She stated that Google is addressing the legal and brand tone concerns in several areas:
- All generated AI-created assets go through the standard policy checks as manually created assets.
- All AI-created assets are based on advertiser inputs, including website content and existing ads.
- Advertisers can review, edit, or remove automatically created assets in the Performance Max flow before they’re live to ensure the proper brand voice is reflected.
- Advertisers can review or remove any other automatically created asset types at anytime.
Another question around AI was asked, this time focused on the paid search practitioner role:
For those who love paid search but see how quickly AI is developing, should we be concerned that the paid search practitioner may one day cease to exist?
Marvin provided her opinion, emphasizing that her view hasn’t changed much in her 15 years of Search.
Marvin replied further on the practitioner role:
Change has been the one constant in this industry, and if you haven’t been open to learning, testing and evolving, you’ve risked getting left behind. I think the big difference now is that the pace of change and advancement in AI, and generative AI capabilities, specifically, will be faster. Features like the conversational experience will help make it easier for businesses to launch effective campaigns tailored to their business goals. I think marketers and marketing teams will be able to reimagine their workflows and where they’ll be able to work with AI to make the most impact for their or their clients’ businesses.
Addressing AI In The User Experience
More questions barreled in around AI, specifically about the practitioner user experience with Google Ads.
One PSA member asked:
Will AI be built into Google Ads Editor? The platform UI version isn’t something people could use at scale.
Marvin didn’t have a specific update regarding AI incorporated into the Google Ads Editor tool. However, she did note that the conversational experience is in its early days coming to the UI.
Another advertiser posed this question regarding the June 13 Google Ads interface announcement:
What is the new appearance and why are they doing in the interface? Why is it only available for some accounts and not others?
Marvin reiterated the Google Ads interface test that started in March and came to a conclusion. The winning design is currently being rolled out to advertisers throughout the rest of 2023.
Advertisers who have been served the new experience can toggle back and forth through the holiday season, noting that adapting to new interfaces takes time.
Other Advertiser Questions
A myriad of other questions from advertisers came in throughout the hour. These included topics such as:
- Dynamic Search Ads
- How should agency teams work best together
- The best part about working for Google
- Ad fraud
Summary
Ginny Marvin and the Paid Search Association provided a thoughtful and respectful space for advertisers to ask and receive honest and transparent topics.
These continued conversations make it clear that Google listens to marketer feedback and makes decisions accordingly.
A special thank you to the Paid Search Association for hosting the event, to Ginny Marvin for answering and addressing questions, as well as the sponsors of the event.
Featured Image: DG-Studio/Shutterstock
