Transcription
Hey there, my name is Tim Stoddard, and in today's video, we are going to review Google's new AI advertising announcements.
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There's some brand new advertising features that are built into Gemini, Google's AI platform, and we're going to go through them. Let's get started.
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Google released a blog post making this announcement, and I think for this video, the easiest thing is just to go through the blog post. The blog post was released on May 20th. Today's date is June 2nd. So, it's about 10 days old. I've been in Mexico for the last 12 days. Sorry, I'm not sorry, but this is an important announcement. I want to go through it.
So, look, a new generation of ads for the AI era of search. I want to start by saying that I've always thought this is Google's competitive advantage when it comes to AI, is that Google is like a search and advertising platform first. So, there's not going to be any weird discrepancies in the same way that there would be with ChatGPT or Anthropic with the ads being built into it because it's not like it's just a standard LLM that ads are being sprinkled into like, no, Google is using AI to enhance its already existing advertising platform.
So, there's three announcements in this article, and all three of them, I think, are pretty freaking cool. We're introducing more helpful ads in AI mode. And most importantly, we're going to go through these conversational discovery ads. We're going to go through these highlighted answers, and we're going to go through the the shopping ads.
So, look, here's announcement number one. AI-powered shopping ads. Buying something big like a new fridge or TV can be overwhelming. People want to see exactly what they're looking for and why it's the best option. To make choosing easier, we're launching AI-powered shopping ads.
So, what's important to understand here is that these ads are not in AI mode. These are not part of the Gemini AI mode. These are directly in the SERP. So, SERP stands for search engine results page. Basically, when you Google something and hit enter, the results that you get is what us SEO nerds call the SERP. And so, these ads are AI generated, but they are already on the the standard Google SERP, what most of us are used to seeing. And so, this is basically just a a done-for-you kind of advertising platform, right?
Now, if someone searches for an espresso an espresso machine, Gemini will pull up your most relevant products and instantly write a custom explainer explaining why your product may be the right choice for them. So, the idea here is that people aren't just Googling standard basic searches anymore. They're asking long, nuanced, what we call long-tail questions, right? And so, in this example, you can't see the whole thing, but I need a compact espresso pod machine for a night out what for a party I'm throwing with my friends or whatever. It's like a really long-tail, very nuanced search. And so, this way Google can find your ad, custom write the content, and put it for the potential buyer directly within the search results. So, this is really cool. And this is I would say like the least exciting out of all the announcements.
This next announcement is pretty pretty cool. Business Agent for Leads. And also, I'm going to go out here on a limb and say that I don't really know how I feel about this one yet because I am still on the fence as to whether people are going to be as excited to talk to an AI bot as they would be to talk to a person. But, you know, let's go through the announcement.
When weighing important options, people want to feel confident before they commit. Business agent for leads built with Gemini puts a smart brand agent right inside your ad. Instead of filling out a static form, a student researching universities can click chat and get instant answers based on your website, turning a practical interaction into a valuable lead.
So, if we watch this short little animation, you know, this is an example of somebody on Google using the general all Google search function, not AI mode. And in this example, they're searching for best colleges, right? It's It's right here. Um here's the thank you page. One second. So, what are some of the top colleges for whatever, whatever. And if you saw, there was that little blurb that said ask a question. And so, when you type in ask a question, you can go to this section where instead of filling out a form, you just chat with the chatbot. Uh I think it's really cool. I'm excited about it, but I'm skeptical. I will definitely test these out, but for my agency and the leads that I generate, I'm still much more inclined to send actual form leads and more importantly inbound phone calls to the call centers that I work with.
So, this is really, really cool and exciting. Now, the third announcement is actually the first announcement in this blog post, but it's the one I wanted to save for last because it's the one that I think is the coolest. And it's the conversational discovery ads.
So, this is in fact in AI mode. I don't know if anybody can see this small little animation, but you can see at the top it's somebody in AI mode. And so, what happens is when people are researching, they want helpful suggestions. Now, when AI mode provides a list of recommendations, like the best language apps for an upcoming trip, highly relevant, high-quality ads are eligible to appear on that list as a highlighted answer.
So, again, if we watch this little video, you can see the example. This isn't the SERP. This is AI mode. This is an LLM. And so, now the ads right there are placed directly inside the content that is displayed inside the large the large language model. I think this is really cool because all the LLMs want to do this, right? ChatGPT has already caught There's that famous Super Bowl ad from Gemini about how ads are coming to ChatGPT, but nobody's going to care if Google does this because people are used to seeing ads on Google, and this AI mode is just it's just the best translation on where this could happen. So, this is a big opportunity for advertisers. And I think it's going to be completely accepted by users of Google because it's nothing that is is going to catch them off guard. And what's so cool in that little animation that you saw right there is that it looks just like other search results inside the LLM. It's the same kind of formatting, very similar to Google ads in the SERP. It's it's nothing that's going to stand out too much. It's just simply sponsored. And it's sponsored in a way where the result is completely in line with the question or the query that you posted in Gemini and in AI mode.
I think this is really exciting. As somebody that specializes in lead generation, I'm really excited to play with it kind of as a new toy, but I would like to end the video with my skepticism on how effective it's going to be. I do think that the in AI mode ads are going to be really effective. I don't think the chatbot ads are going to be very effective, and I personally don't think that the AI form ads are going to be very effective because I think if somebody is inquiring about a service business, they want to speak to somebody. That's my prediction. We'll see how it goes.
Thank you so much for watching. If you have any questions, please leave a a comment or a question. Please smash that subscribe button, and I'll talk to you tomorrow. See you.