By Alina Pruteanu, Digital Development Director, The Grove Media
Since its rollout in the US a couple of months ago, AI Overviews has created quite a stir, to put it mildly. Google’s new search functionality provides an AI-generated snapshot with key information and links, pulling in results from the wider internet. However, AI Overviews hit the headlines for some of its, frankly, crazy results, including adding glue to pizza sauce to improve the flavour, recommending you drink urine and suggesting Barack Obama is a Muslim.
And not surprisingly, what’s being viewed as the transformational over-reach of AI, is causing concern in the industry. Publishers are understandably worried. Press Gazette found that AI Overviews was pushing organic links to publisher articles farther down the page – if this was to be reflected in an equivalent drop in search rankings, it would have a significant impact. And SEO specialists are questioning what it means for search as we know it and for their work and future.
AI Overviews is now being tested in UK, and at Marketing Live, Google said that would include adding ads into the panel. It’s paused on ads for the time being – wanting to ‘get it right’ first. But make no mistake, it is coming. And whether you like it or not AI-powered search is the future.
AI powered search enhances the accuracy of search results, providing contextual relevant results based on user needs. It saves time and simplifies the research process and, importantly, it can personalise results based on user’s location, their behaviour and preferences. As AI technology evolves, people will increasingly embrace more conversational search experiences. In turn brands will need to leverage image, video, voice to enhance the user experience.
Google says that advertisers are all set to benefit from AI Overviews – existing Performance Max, Shopping and Broad Match campaigns will all be eligible. That maybe the case, but it doesn’t mean that advertisers don’t need to do anything to be ready for AI-powered search. Far from it.
There are several important things that advertisers can do to be ready for AI Overviews and to be in the right place to leverage AI-powered search.
First, define the problem statement: is it scaling up sales, improving the quality of your traffic, identify new audience segments? Defining the problem will help you come up with a clear action plan and to prioritise action points. It will also enable you to deploy resources efficiently and engage with your internal stakeholders and key partners. It’s important to focus on progress and not perfection. Test often, evaluate and then roll out to scale.
Consider broad match and Performance Max
Adopt broad match and Performance Max to drive scale and identify new audience segments. Broad match and audience targeting will identify potential consumers based on their intent and behaviour. As Google has improved its search algorithm and takes into account more signals than phrase or exact match keywords, the adoption of broad match keywords will allow advertisers to reach a wider audience at scale without the need to build extensive keywords lists and campaigns. Used strategically, broad match will allow you to test new ideas and reach new consumers. In addition, broad match has been found to be more cost efficient than exact match as it has the lowest CPC. Powered by smart bidding strategies, broad match campaigns can drive the lowest cost per conversion. To really multiply your conversions across all Google’s channels adopt Performance Max campaigns. These AI-powered ads have the objective to drive incremental conversions.
Deploy AI support creative production
Use AI to help develop creative assets, from text through to image and video. And with AI-powered tools you can generate ad variations automatically. Particularly for smaller advertisers, using AI can really help to tailor creative for scaled audiences, improving the relevance of messaging based on users’ preferences, behaviour and intent. And advertising optimisation can become easier using AI.
Upgrade your tracking and measurement
It’s important to ensure your tracking and measurement is suitable for a privacy-first world. While Google recently rowed back on cookie deprecation, this could change again in the future and the other major search engines ditched cookies, so you need to ensure your ability to collect data isn’t impacted. There are a few things that you need covered. With robust site-wide tagging, cross-domain linking and enhanced conversions you will be able to gain deeper insights across your web properties and apps. However, your strategy should evolve beyond tracking. Make sure you assign values to your conversions, adopt customer match to differentiate between new and returning customers.
Focus on the quality of first party data
Invest in a first party data strategy to power your ads. AI models are as good as the data used to train them, therefore, to drive meaningful results at scale you will need to automate and integrate your data into your ad platforms. Optimal targeting equals ROI, so focus on real-time automation of your data.
Data quality is vital, so make sure you invest in this area. Focus on the right KPIs beyond clicks and users. Clean and categorise data to understand your consumers and their intent. Build lead-scoring systems and conversion propensity models and assign values to your most valuable consumers. A robust data strategy will enable you to devise a clear ads strategy based on your customer segments and you can start optimising your campaigns for every part of the funnel. Think of your data as the gears of a conveyor belt – it acts as a foundation for prospecting strategies and driving growth by identifying new customers.
While some advertisers will understandably be concerned about the inevitable loss of control as the market moves away from exact match keywords to the powers of the algorithm, AI-powered search is the future. By making the rights changes now and focusing on the key areas of future focus and investment, advertisers will be well positioned to reap the benefits of AI Overviews and AI-powered search more broadly.
