Google Ads news - October recap

Welcome to the Google Ads newsletter. In this newsletter edition, you read a recap of the biggest Google Ads updates from October.

Partnership

This newsletter is sponsored by ProfitMetrics the company of Frederik Boysen.

ProfitMetrics enables e-commerce businesses and agencies to optimize maximum profitability with POAS© bidding and get the best possible outcomes with server-side tracking.

For more information check their website where you can book a free trial or demo.

Turn off Google Signals

This new GA4 option is really useful! You can now turn off Google signals in your reporting identity. With this option users that use blended or observed reporting identity will have no or less impact of data thresholding.

Roll out Demand Gen Ads

Google has officially announced that the Demand Gen campaign is out of beta. That means that from today on the rollout will start for all advertisers. Existing Discovery campaigns will be migrated to Demand Gen campaigns in early 2024.

Some features of Demand Gen:

- DDA

- bid strategies max clicks, conversions, or conversion value- more inventory with YouTube shorts and in-stream

- new measurement tools like brand lift and search lift

- lookalike audiences

- you can use product feeds

- you can segment per format

For more information read the latest blog of Google.

GA4 conversions fixed

Arpan Banerjee sent me this message at the beginning of October telling him that the GA4 conversions that were set to primary in Ads are now fixed! If you already put those so secondary you don’t need to do anything.

Twitter Placement Google Ads

I have had a look into the placements and the beginning of the month and I saw that you can directly focus on the X app. I did not see the website when I searched for it. You can add that manually but I have no idea if that works.

Automatically adds products in Merchant Center

A month ago Arpan Banerjee sent me this new tool where Google automatically adds products in Merchant Center.

Denie Geertzen just tagged me in the latest post from Martijn Beumer where he tells more about this feature.

One of the interesting things is that Martijn sees a gradual expansion of this feature across more and more Producthero Merchant Centers.

So this new feature is something you should keep an eye on. For more information. For Martijn's post read this article.

New Google Ads Data Manager

Google has launched Google Ads Data Manager.

With this product, Google will help businesses manage and use your 1 party data in one place.

This tool will for example simplify the enablement of enhanced conversions for leads and Customer Match.

Google Ads Data Manager is rolling out and will become generally available in Google Ads in early 2024.

Next year, Google will bring this solution to additional Ads products to continue streamlining the management and use of first-party data.

For more information read this article.

New Ad Format: YouTube Spotlight Moments

YouTube has introduced Spotlights Moments! With Spotlight Moments advertisers can server ads next to the most relevant and engaging content associated with the moment. For more information check this article.

Performance planner Demand Gen

Thomas Eccel found out that you can now use the performance planner for Demand Gen!

EMEA Product Kick-Off Recap

Below you find a recap of the EMEA product Kick-off. This recap only shows the new updates for the full list check this post.

List:

Measurement & Pmax: 

- Enhanced conversions for web in open beta for SA360 for all implementation methods - Enhanced conversions for web now support standalone phone number matching 

- Conversions lift based on geolocation traffic based on geolocation for video, display, and apps( available by default) 

- Closed beta PMax vehicle ads in the UK, planning to expand to France and Germany

Apps:

- Deep link impact calculator 

- Deep link validator

- Deep link page 

App Retail:

- Use promotion assets for apps(beta)                

- Seasonality adjustment

- Custom detail pages( closed beta)

- App campaigns for engagement( alpha)

Retail:

- you can highlight shipping speeds(launch in France and United Kingdom soon) - Pick up later out of beta soon ( new beta Romania and Czech) - Third-party pick-up pilot

Video, display, and YouTube:

- Shorts only campaigns

- Boost short videos in your ads

Blocked by Google

Mike Rhodes and other users found out that some scripts are being blocked by Google. Google knows about this problem and is trying to fix it.

API Data Quality

Frederik Boysen just found this beta in one account named API Data Quality!API data quality is a diagnostics tool that shows users potential errors when sending data to the API.

Updates Google Analytics 360

- In the next few weeks, Google will give users the ability to assign customized reporting experiences to different roles and teams in the organization

- add the ability to link subproperties and roll-up properties to Display & Video 360, Campaign Manager 360 and Search Ads 360

- later this year, Google will introduce a faster and more complete export type to BigQuery, our cloud data warehouse

- launch of a service legal agreement (SLA) that makes your insights available for export at the same time each day

- introduce a new way to programmatically upgrade users Google Analytics 4 properties to Analytics 360 via the API

All these new features are only available if you’re using Google Analytics 4!

V15 Google Ads API

Google has announced V15 of the Google Ads API. For all the changes check this announcement.

Interaction YouTube

Emir Bayutmuş found this new campaign type for YouTube!

Dynamic Overview Carousel

I already posted about this change a few weeks ago but now more and more people are seeing the new Dynamic Overview Carousel! Credits to Anthony Higman.

Roll out new admin section

Himanshu Sharma got this new pop-up of the new admin section. Looks like the new admin section is slowly rolling-out.

Google Ads excluded themes

Arjan Schoorl found this new feature excluded themes! With excluded themes, you can exclude the following themes:

- Content suitable for family

- Games (fighting)

- Games (mature)

- Health (sensitive)

- Health (source undetermined)

- News (recent)

- News (sensitive)

- News (source not featured)

- Politics

- Religion

These themes are replacing the content label: content suitable for families.

Launch AR Beauty Ads

Google has launched AR Beauty ads for lip and eye products. Beauty ads offer a tool that lets consumers preview what different products might look like on themselves.

Pmax search themes

Thomas Eccel & Navah Hopkins just released that Google has increased Pmax search themes up to 25 per Audience Signal and launched new best practices.

Search themes only work for Google Search. In the image below you can read how this works.

Google Vacation Rentals update

Rudolph Dekker found out that Google has introduced a new feature to enhance the vacation rental search.

When users search for vacation rentals on Google and click on a property, they’ll be able to see multiple sites.

Rudolf stated that his new feature will roll out in most parts of the world by November 2023, with more updates planned for 2024.

Enhanced CPC still works?

No, even if you have Enhanced CPC on it should not work anymore(for shopping). It will just operate the same as manual bidding. So if you have it on it should now work anymore. Curious when Google is removing this function from the UI.

Google Merchant Center Update

Valentinas Buzas found out that Google has launched a new feature called Chrome browser. With this feature products can be displayed to users on the Chrome desktop browser in two locations:

- Chrome New Tab page

- in the Chrome address bar when a shopper is on your website

For now, this feature is only available in the US.

New the Ads Privacy Planner

Google has launched a tool called the Ads Privacy Planner. With this tool, you can answer a few short questions about your Google Ads setup, and Google then recommends measurement solutions to power a privacy-first ad strategy.

Google TV Setting

Thomas Eccel found a new default network setting in his Video Campaign called Google TV. This setting is for now US-only. The ads from Google TV can appear in video streaming apps available with Google TV.

Content Exclusion tab

Thomas Eccel found this content exclusion tab on campaign level for his Pmax campaign! The tool does not work at this moment but that could be changed soon!

October recap finished

That's all the news from the October recap! If you want to read more news check my website.