Google Marketing Live 2022

The Future of Digital Marketing | Google Marketing Live 2022

On May 24, 2022, in San Francisco, the annual Google Marketing Live live conference was held in person, after two years of online-only events due to Covid-19 restrictions. Even if attendance at the Google Bay View campus was a fraction of the last GML in 2019 – only 800 people were invited this year, compared to previous crowds of thousands – the event was a resounding success. 

Among influential keynote speakers, insightful conversations and superstar performances, a standout feature was most definitely the campus’ new state-of-the-art sustainable ‘dragonscale’ roof which powers 90% of the innovative Bay View creative hub. 

To launch the conference on Tuesday morning, Philipp Schindler, Google’s SVP & Chief Business Officer, presented the opening remarks and outlined Google’s overarching marketing roadmap. Jerry Dischler, VP & GM, Ads at Google, then spoke about how SERPs will eventually transform into more complete and complex visual entities. 

With the integration of high-quality images and videos, the goal is to be more helpful than ever before, and allow people to search anywhere and in any way. These functions have had a soft launch thanks to Multisearch, a new update where you can in tandem take a photo and ask a question. Ultimately, the objective is to explore information intuitively by providing inspirational, natural helpful, & engaging content.  

Emphatically, Vidhya Srinivasan, VP/GM Advertising @ Google, distilled the essence of marketing in three goals:

1. Reach the right people. 
2. Deliver the best ad.
3. Maximize results. 

From the perspective of a performance marketing agency founder, the key takeaways from #GML2022 were undeniably that search is shifting toward an immersive visual experience, mixing organic & paid results together is optimal, and a deeper exploration of all stages of the customer journey is crucial. 

Realizing the impact and true shift towards Performance Max campaigns has also been a highlight of the event, as well as the fact that Broad Match + Responsive Search Ads combined with target ROAS equals 20% more conversions at the end of the day.

Some Insightful Stats Shared by Industry Leaders

• Retail stores rebounded by 8% in 2021.
• Online video views have gone up 34% YoY in 2021.  
• YouTube Shorts are on the rise with 30B+ daily views. 
• +10 pts in OptiScore increased 14% more conversions.
• By 2023, there will be 65% more coverage under modern privacy regulations online, so we have to start today already building resilience for tomorrow. 
• Browsing has blended with Shopping. Reimagine what is possible! Shopping for summer dresses has grown by 80% in the US just this year alone. 
• No two shoppers are the same or predictable. You can still plan for this. 
• The new Products tab will help identify issues with missing attributes within Google Ads for e-commerce clients. 
• Predicted 39% increase in programmatic investment in the next 12 months. 
• Take note of Peacock, NBC’s CTV platform, since CTV has a 93% reach in the US.

Upcoming Product Releases and Betas

• Video ads on Discovery are coming soon. 
• Google Audiences will be available for CTV (Hulu, Peacock, YT, etc.).
• Experiments will also be available on the new Performance Max campaigns.  
• The Google Business Messages (chat) ad extension is very successful in the B2B industry. 
• Deeper insights into trends through GA4 and Google Ads insights will be available. 
• A new privacy tool by Google – My Ad Center – will allow users to control the ads served to them.

The Future of Marketing

• Engage with customers where they are. 
• Brand your brand to create tomorrow’s demand. 
• Innovation is finding new solutions for old problems.
• Take action now to separate yourself from the pack!
• Marketers will drive agility and business results.
• Adoption of test-and-scale culture of experimentation. 
• Automation allows the algorithm the freedom to optimize. 
• Brands are thinking more and more of marketing as a percentage of sales; or MER – Marketing Efficiency Ratio = Total revenue divided by media cost. 
• Consumers are omni-channel, hence why it is important for cross-functional alignment; communication between e-commerce and in-store operations need to be clearer. 
• L’Oréal hired a Chief Marketing and Digital Officer to bridge the gap between both teams and share their learnings across the 2 traditionally fragmented teams. 

Case Studies to Learn From

• Zoe Financial uses Hubspot and Google Ads to integrate Enhanced conversions and has seen great success in terms of establishing proper reporting and 1 source of truth that is reliable.
• Levi’s, a 150 year-old business, Rothy's, a sustainable footwear brand, and The Ordinary, a Canadian beauty brand, have seen great ROAS with YouTube ads! 
• Monday.com spends 30% of its budget on Experiments to keep on learning and iterating.
• Kia went through a successful rebrand by enhancing their test drive booking experience online, especially through mobile devices, making it seamless for users to access this feature. 
• Hello Sunshine, founded by Reese Witherspoon, with Sarah Harden as the CEO, spoke about authentic authorship and women being at the center of the narrative. They also raised a great question that all brands can learn from: “How do you show up to the intentional viewer who is present across all platforms in a way that feels consistent to your brand and meets that expectation?”

Recommendations from Industry Leaders

• Be fresh, but familiar. 
• What got us here, won’t get us there. 
• Create authentic connections to scale your agency. 
• The CMOs that take risk, will be the ones that become rockstars. 
• Your outlook is as good as your inputs. The ads you put in the system will be judged & directly reflect on you.

Successful Agencies are…

• Often on the cutting edge as innovators.
• Scaling human expertise by designing experimental frameworks.
• Building more expertise around 1st party data as a must.  
• Adopting the virtuous cycle: agility and automation.

Privacy Keynotes

• Privacy = Trust.
• Build long-lasting relationships!
• No data = no useful experiences. 
• Users have done 300M data checkups with Google in 2021. 
• Earning trust will shape the future of marketing. 
• Trust levers: security, transparency, control, usefulness.

Think About Shopping

• Increasingly, browsing time is blended with shopping time.
• StockX focuses on the customers and shares value propositions with them.  
• Take note of Levi’s quality, inclusion and sustainability program that is driving change by offering to repair or exchange your pair of jeans.  
• People who browse through 5 channels spend 2x more making purchases online - referred to as a frictionless shopping experience. 
• CEO’s are making a note of: WFH, mental health, cash flow, ESG efforts, supply chain channels, and the fact that all kids need laptops these days.  

We would like to take the opportunity to thank Google again for making #GML2022 such a memorable and rich experience. Looking forward to attending again next year!