A nonprofit professional organization, the Paid Search Association (PSA), hosted an “AMA” event with Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin.
The session over Slack allowed PSA members to ask Marvin anything that was on their mind related to paid search.
During the hour-long event and with over 15 questions submitted, it became clear what was on everyone’s mind: AI and its role in PPC.
KLEVER, JumpFly and AdAlysis sponsored the event.
Overcoming business and personal challenges with AI
The first question asked in the chat focused on business challenges:
One of the challenges in leveraging AI-generated creativity for businesses is legal claims and brand voice. What advice would you give to marketers and clients who cannot access these tools for legal reasons?
Marvin gave a thoughtful two-part answer to the question. First, she covered how generative AI is used in asset creation (which was previously covered in Google Marketing Live).
- New conversational experience for creating search campaigns (opt-in). You can ask Google Ads for ideas using natural language 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 just by entering your URL.
- Auto-created assets (opt-in) to simplify and automate the generation of high-quality ads to achieve your business goals.
She explained that Google is addressing the legal and trademark concerns in several areas:
- All generated AI-created assets pass the standard policy checks as manually created assets.
- All assets created by AI are based on input from advertisers, including website content and existing ads.
- Advertisers can review, edit or remove auto-created assets in the Performance Max flow before going live to ensure the correct brand voice is being reflected.
- Advertisers can review or remove any other auto-created asset type at any time.
Another question was asked about AI, this time focusing on the role of the paid search practitioner:
For those who love paid search but see how fast AI is evolving, should they fear that one day the practitioner of paid search may be gone?
Marvin offered her opinion, stressing that her view hasn’t changed much in her 15 years at Search.
Marvin further responded to the practitioner’s role:
Change is the only constant in this industry, and if you weren’t open to learning, testing, and evolving, you risked falling behind. I think the big difference now is that the pace of change and advancement in AI and in particular generative AI skills will be faster. Features like the conversational experience make it easier for companies to launch effective campaigns tailored to their business goals. I think marketers and marketing teams will be able to rethink the way they work and collaborate with AI to create the greatest possible impact for their business or that of their clients.
Dealing with AI in user experience
More and more questions were popping up around AI, especially on the topic practitioner User experience with Google Ads.
A PSA member asked:
Will AI be integrated into Google Ads Editor? The platform UI version is not something that people could use at scale.
Marvin didn’t have a specific AI update built into the Google Ads Editor tool. However, she noted that the conversational experience is still in its infancy and making its way onto the UI.
Another advertiser asked this question in relation to the June 13 Google Ads UI announcement:
What is the new look and why are they doing it in the UI? Why is it only available for some accounts and not others?
Marvin repeated the Google Ads interface test started in March and came to a conclusion. The winning design is currently rolling out to advertisers throughout the remainder of 2023.
Advertisers who have been offered the new experience may switch back and forth over the holiday period, bearing in mind that adapting to new interfaces will take time.
More questions from advertisers
Over the course of the hour, countless more questions were poured in from advertisers. This included topics such as:
- Dynamic search ads
- How should agency teams best work together?
- The best thing about working for Google
- ad fraud
Summary
Ginny Marvin and the Paid Search Association provided advertisers with a thoughtful and respectful space to request and receive honest and transparent topics.
These ongoing conversations make it clear that Google is listening to marketers’ feedback and making decisions accordingly.
A special thanks to the Paid Search Association for hosting the event Ginny Marvin for answering and answering questions, as well as the sponsors of the event.
Featured image: DG Studio/Shutterstock
