Google Ads newsletter - week 50

Welcome to the Google Ads newsletter. In this newsletter, you will read all the news about Google Ads from week 50.

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End of Year Sale

Good news! Instead of the regular price of €175, you can now get the Google Ads Playbook for just €150.

Don’t miss this opportunity to save €25 on this valuable resource for optimizing your Google Ads campaigns.

Act now – this offer is only available until 31-12-24.

For more information visit this link.

Google Ads news

New Interface

Zeeshan Ali discovered this new Interface for Advertiser Verification

New interface change

Goran Vuzem discovered that when you press a button you can now make new conversions and assets!

Display takes over

Spotted by Brett Bodofsky a display ads that takes over a big part of the screen!

Update annotations & Badge page

Google has updated the key annotations and badges page!

Video Asset test

Craig Graham discovered that videos are now added to assets!

Product Category values

Emmanuel Flossie discovered that you can now add Google Product Category values in Google Merchant Center Editor!

Brussels Probes Google-Meta Secret Ad Deal Targeting Teens

Arpan Banerjee just sent this article about that European regulators are investigating a secret ad deal between Google and Meta that bypassed Google’s rules on targeting minors.

Meta used Google’s internal data to reach teens via a group labeled “unknown,” circumventing safeguards.The campaign, run by Spark Foundry, began in Canada, expanded to the U.S., and was canceled after an FT report.

Google tightened policies, mandated staff training, and halted some collaborations with Meta.Both companies face escalating regulatory scrutiny, with ongoing antitrust cases against Google and pressure on Meta over child safety on its platforms.

NEW First order discount

Looks like the first-order discount is now live in the Merchant Center! Spotted by Arpan Banerjee & Chelsea Harding.

Payment methods

Emmanuel Flossie discovered that you can now specify what payment methods you accept in Google Merchant Center.

Product Studio Expands to New Countries

Product Studio, the AI-powered tool suite for creating and enhancing product images, is now available in 15 new countries:

- Czech Republic

- Denmark

- Finland

- Greece

- Hungary

- Ireland

- Mexico

- New Zealand

- Norway

- Portugal

- Romania

- Slovakia

- Sweden

- Turkey

- Ukraine

Default opt-in

Thomas Eccel discovered that for Demand Gen campaigns the video enhancement is now by default opt-in.

Relaxing language policy

Starting December 2024, Google is relaxing the language policy to allow some differences between your product feed and website languages.

Product details in a different language from your feed are allowed if most data matches the feed language.

However, performance may be limited as information might not align with user expectations. Checkout elements must match the feed language to ensure an informed purchase process.

GTM update

First-party mode via automated setup with Cloudflare is now available in Tag Manager.

CSS Response to Google's DMA Claim

CSS Response to Google's DMA Claims Comparison shopping services challenge Google’s claims of compliance with the Digital Markets Act highlighting three key issues:

- Misinformation: Google misrepresents CSS concerns.

- Dividing Stakeholders: Google shifts focus by pitting industries against CSSs.

- Non-Compliance: Self-preferencing persists, CSS traffic suffers, and transparency is lacking.For the full story read the letter.

Debugging log

Anirudh P V messaged me that Google forgot to remove their debugging log commands from the Google Ads Google Tag source code. Picture from Simo Ahava.

Shopify Ads

Shopify has expanded its ad tool to all merchants, allowing them to purchase ads on platforms like Meta and Google directly through Shopify.

This service, introduced earlier this year, is designed to simplify customer acquisition for brands by managing ad campaigns on their behalf.

With this expansion, all Shopify merchants can leverage automated ad buying to enhance their marketing reach and target potential customers more effectively.

However, these ads do not direct traffic to merchants' own websites, focusing instead on the Shop App.

Newly Announced Features for CTV:

Direct Payments for Open Bidding:

- Introduced a new capability where publishers can establish direct billing relationships with third-party exchanges, unlocking new demand and reclassifying supply paths in Sellers.json for greater efficiency.

Ad Review Center Enhancements:

- Custom Creative Labels: A new feature to categorize and streamline the review of programmatic creatives.

- Upcoming Video Review Features: Allow review of ads based on transcript and volume levels to block unwanted or excessively loud ads.

Server-Side Unwrapping (SSU):

- A new tool to streamline tag-based VAST integrations by reducing errors and latency in ad serving. Testing showed an 83% error rate reduction.

Fill-Rate Optimization Tool:- A newly introduced feature to help publishers prioritize inventory segments, such as focusing on prime-time live traffic over lower-value traffic.

Expanded AI-Powered Features:

- Revenue Per Second (RPS) Optimization: Maximizes ad revenue while maintaining user experience through improved controls like expanded frequency capping and competitive exclusion (in beta).

- A/B Testing for Ad Rules: A new capability to experiment with different ad break structures to optimize revenue and engagement.

What’s Promised soon:

- Enhanced video review tools in the Ad Review Center.

- Upcoming new CTV ad formats and performance-driven demand tools in the New Year (2025).

New Looker Studio Update:

New Filter Options for Date/Time Dimensions:

Report editors can now specify a value and time unit for enhanced filtering conditions such as "Is in the Last," "Is Before," and others.

Looker Connector Update:

A new "Matches (advanced)" filter is available for date/time dimensions in Looker data sources. Search Ads 360 Field Name Changes: To resolve naming conflicts, some fields were renamed:"Conv. value" → "Client account conv. value.""Conv. value / click" → "Client account conv. value / click."

Partner Connectors Added:

Several new connectors were introduced in the Looker Studio Connector Gallery, including integrations for Heureka.cz, Shoptet, LinkedIn Page Analytics, Pinterest Ads, BigQuery, and more.

Google upgrade recommendations

Google is upgrading the UI for the recommendations in the SERP!

Pmax negative keywords

No access to the PMAX negative keywords beta? No worries it will keep expanding in 2025.

Insights from Google's DMA Hotels Test

To comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), Google made significant changes to Google Search, satisfying many stakeholders.

However, some intermediary sites demand further changes that could harm user experience.

To assess the impact, Google tested removing hotel features from Searches in Europe.

Findings:

- Users were less satisfied, took longer to find hotels, and often gave up.Traffic to hotels dropped significantly (over 10%), affecting hundreds of thousands of European hotels.

- Traffic to intermediaries remained flat.

- Due to these negative effects, Google has ended the test.

The changes they already made have shifted traffic from hotels to intermediaries, raising costs for consumers. Removing these features entirely would harm both users and businesses.

Generate reports

More people are now seeing the generate report beta! Looks like a further rollout.

Ad Strength

Thomas Eccel discovered that Google Ads Pmax assets show now a new disclaimer adding information on how to reach an excellent ad strength!

Search Interest and Product Category Insights

Dario Zannoni discovered that Google recently introduced two interesting features in the Products tab of the Ads interface: Search Interest and Product Category Insights.

New Section in GA4: Consent Settings

Michele Pisani discovered that the "Consent Settings" section is starting to appear in the GA4 Admin panel for some properties:

Pros: It provides a quick overview of consent signal reception across different data streams.

Caution: A green light only indicates that consent signals are being received. It does not confirm that the configuration is correct or compliant with legal requirements.

Want to check if consent mode is installed correct? Check this article from Cookiebot Web CMP by Usercentrics.

🆕 in Google Ads

You can now use the information in your custom columns to set up automatic rules in! Discovered by CrackPPC - Digital Marketing Agency - Google Shopping & Merchant Specialists

2 Days to Go! Countdown to Our Big End-of-Year Webinar

Join Miles McNair, me, and Thomas Eccel as we dive into what happened in 2024 and share our predictions for 2025 for both Google Ads and LinkedIn.

Date: December 17th, Time: 6 PM (CET)

Where: Live on LinkedIn

Register for free.

Week 50 finished

That's all the news from week 50! If you want to read all the news, check my website.

Want to sponsor the newsletter? Send me a message or mail to info@adriaan-dekker.nl