By Dyana Najdi, Managing Director, Google Advertising UKI
This year marks my 18th Googleversary, and according to Gemini, I’m officially a ‘walking library.’ Looking back, the most exciting moments weren’t the anniversaries, but the years where technology shifted under our feet, and our teams helped customers meet moments of change successfully. Luckily, that’s happened enough times that things never got too comfortable.
Last year, we celebrated 20 years of YouTube evolving from a simple video-sharing site into a global powerhouse redefining entertainment and sitting at the centre of where culture, content, and community unite. Yet, as we reflect on those two decades of progress, we’ve entered an entirely new chapter: in just the last year alone, we’ve shipped hundreds of AI products, maintaining a pace of transformation so intense it has effectively compressed a decade’s worth of innovation into twelve months.
Each product launch has been designed to make life a little easier, a lot more productive, and certainly more effective for businesses. Through all these moments of change, our north star principle remains true – solve for the user and all else will follow.
Gemini with its multi-modal superpowers has enabled Search to go from information to intelligence; with Google Lens enabling people to search what they see, now at 25 billion queries a month, alongside AI Overviews serving our boundless human curiosity as queries become longer and more complex. With all this change, the recurring question I hear from marketers is how do I remain relevant and show up across these new behaviours and search experiences.
In response to this shift, we introduced AI Max for Search, an ambitious promise that is now our fastest-growing AI-powered Search ads product. But as I look at the challenges that face marketers right now, AI Max represents something much more significant than just a product launch. It represents a necessary evolution in how we thrive in a digital landscape that has become too complex for the human hand to manage alone.
Moving Beyond the “Manual” Era
The way people find information today has fundamentally shifted; it’s more conversational, fragmented, and unpredictable. In fact, we are seeing that queries in AI Mode are three-times longer than traditional searches. This creates an incredible opportunity for advertisers to unlock many of the stronger signals of intent that we can now decode with AI.
Take Lenovo UK; a brand that chose to stop being the mechanic and started being the architect. Like many global leaders, Lenovo faced a universal hurdle: how to grow once you’ve already captured everyone searching for your name while searches pivot to needs, outcomes and comparisons such as “best laptop for video editing”.
The old playbook says ‘work harder’ by expanding manual keyword lists. Lenovo chose to work smarter. By embracing AI Max for Search, they moved from chasing specific words to capturing true consumer intent, in the key moments where discovery was taking place.
They utilised the full power of AI Max, with Text Customisation, smart bidding and Final URL Expansion – to dynamically match unique searches to the most relevant landing page on their site and ensure a seamless user experience. This allowed them to operate at scale seeing a 34% increase in conversions. Lenovo built a blueprint for a new era of best practice that is now being scaled across their global markets.
Human Insight at the Helm
What’s true for Lenovo, and many brands who want to benefit from the scale of AI without the compromise of losing control, is that ‘set and forget’ is a myth. High-performing marketing today requires a shift in role: from the person pulling the levers to the architect steering the ship.
This is why I’m excited about the newly introduced AI Brief. It allows you to provide the rich context that only a human can. You define the boundaries of the campaign through three critical pillars, all powered by Gemini:
- Messaging Guidelines (what your brand should and shouldn’t say),
- Matching Guidelines (the types of traffic you want), and
- Audience Guidelines. (who is most important to your brand)
This flexibility doesn’t come at the cost of brand safety – for those in regulated industries, the newly launched Text Disclaimers means you can maintain strict compliance even when using Final URL Expansion while still benefiting from AI directing customers to the most relevant landing pages.
Reflections on the Road Ahead
As I look ahead, the pace of innovation has no signs of slowing down, with AI Max expanding into new territories – including AI Max for Shopping and AI Max for Travel (both in closed beta for testing). These updates will help retailers meet shoppers during the discovery phase and allow travel advertisers to manage their entire inventory through Search campaigns.
So it seems, even after 18 years,there’s never a dull day in tech. And if anything, the challenges we face today – user fragmentation, complexity, data overload – will continue to act as powerful invitations to innovate. My hope for the future is that human creativity will take centre stage as the architect of what’s possible, letting technology take care of the rest.
The road is wide open. The destination may be unknown, however opportunity lives at every point in the journey – and I’m excited to see where it will take us.
