This framework elegantly rebrands the surrender of manual control as a strategic necessity for the AI era. It essentially packages algorithmic dependency as a sophisticated roadmap for modern marketing.
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Accelerate with Google Expert 2026Added:
[music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Hi, good morning everyone. Welcome to Accelerate with Google X but 2026.
So, I hope you managed to get your coffee and some snacks and I will take you through the program timeline and overview for today.
So, I am Renee. I am a account manager for the Singapore LCS team.
And let's go through what to expect for today.
All right. So, Accelerate with Google is an invitation only program for people like you, sophisticated performance leaders and practitioners from both agency and in-house performance team.
Firstly, you will get exclusive access to trends, insights and the latest product road maps.
Also, you will be hearing from the global product leads about best practices and innovations. Last but not least, you get to connect with people like yourself all over APAC.
Now, what you've been waiting for. The highlight of this program is that 15 of you Southeast Asia experts will earn an invite to an all expenses paid study to Google HQ in Mountain View, USA.
>> [snorts] >> So, sharing a couple of sneak peeks from the study tour, selected experts will start their journey in the Mountain View campus where they get to live a day in the life of our product engineers and see the action happen in person.
We will have a jam-packed session schedule from high-level inspiration sessions that could focus on the latest AI and outlook on how to evolve your modern marketing approach.
Hearing from product managers like DeepMind, the brain behind our Gemini models.
There will also be fire chats from VPs.
In the 2026 edition, they even managed to hear from Shocksy Tucker, who is a revolutionary VP in creating our Performance Max products.
The 2026 edition also has an exclusive demo on our AI tools that were never released to the general public yet. It was a scrappy unfiltered session, but you literally get to talk to the engineers and co-create Google products together that can help accelerate your work.
Now, a quote from someone from the ANZ team.
My favorite thing about the summit was cutting through the standard PR fluff and having direct unfiltered access to the visionaries shaping the product.
Now, if this doesn't excite you, I don't know what will.
All right. Now, I'll quickly walk you through the Southeast Asia Google X but program timeline. Our strategy is built on the global search narratives designed to create a consistent market drumbeat through two major temple events.
First, on April 21st, which is today, we'll explore the future of search with a deep dive into AI readiness and data strength.
Then, on July 22nd to July 21st, we pivot to value delivered focusing on the shift towards demand-led budgets.
Now, for this program, we're actually adopting a hybrid format to maximize impact where the core event will be anchored in Singapore with our global product leads live on stage. While the rest of the region joins via local offices watch parties. So, to ensure the message resonates, local agency partner leads and specialists will have the flexibility to layer in market specific and localization.
We'll follow these events immediately with a one-to-one global product lead meeting for our key clients and agencies.
Now, to keep that momentum high, we've structured two case study submission cycles. This two-round approach allows teams to refine their work and resubmit if they miss the mark in round one.
>> [gasps] >> We'll announce the winners in October leading to a study tour and a regional awards show at Mountain View in early 2027 where our local champions will finally take the stage.
Now, more on to the program information and tips. And this is important if you want to win your spot to the study tour in Mountain View.
All right. How can you earn your place on the Mountain View study tour.
First, all you have to do is make sure you attend the quarterly Accelerate with Google events.
Now that you're here, you're already halfway there.
Next, more on to the scoring mechanism.
60% weight will go to the relevant performance of the score recommendation, while 40% weight will go towards your case study submissions. Now, some important dates to take note of. Q2 deadline will be June 30th and Q3's deadline would be on September 30th.
>> [snorts] >> Okay. Now, let's take a look at the award categories.
Each award recognizes the unique ways marketers like yourself are using AI-powered solutions in Google Ads to drive both impact and innovation.
You are able to apply to one or more categories, but carefully consider where your impact really shines.
For round one awards, we will have one individual and one team to be selected as as selected as winners for the in-house awards and two individuals and one agency team will be selected as as winners for the agency awards.
For round two, two individuals and two teams will be selected as winners for the in-house awards and four individuals and two agency teams will be selected as winners for the agency awards.
Now, more on to the event details for today.
Today will be about the future of search and we hope that you're excited to meet your Google experts. These are the people that have flown in from all over the world and you will get to hear from them later today, so hang tight.
Now, whip out your phones to take photo of this slide because these are your must-know dates. Submissions will open on April 30th, entries will close on June 30th, and the first five winners will be announced on 21st July.
So, these are some important dates to note if you want to win your spot to Mountain View study tour.
All right. If you don't remember anything I have said the last 7 minutes or so, you are able to scan this QR code and access the Accelerate with Google ex- expert program handbook. At any point of today, feel free to use this as your guide.
Now, can I invite Samuele, the director of Google Ads solution and insights, to tell us more about the future of search?
>> [music] >> Thank you, Renee, and uh welcome everyone. My name is Samuele. I lead the the Google Ads solution team for Southeast Asia. And uh the team has asked me to talk to you about the future of search.
And when I think about the future of search, I think about what happened in the last 2 years. I still remember a time in 2024 where some LLM started to become very popular and there were articles like is Google search dead?
Well, that didn't age very well.
Today, we are seeing 5 trillion queries on Google search globally. 5 trillion is a 12 zeros, a five followed by 12 zeros and I assure you it's a lot of those searches.
And what we are seeing is that actually young users are the ones who use Google search more. Why? Because they're more curious, they're more online and actually the more they get familiar with the AI, the more they use the product.
And it's quite logical if you think about it. AI is the best thing that ever happened to Google search because it makes it more powerful. And when a product gets better, guess what happens?
People use it more.
But they use it differently. So, one thing we are seeing is that queries are getting longer and longer.
Uh I used to, you know, grow in a generation where search was like typing one or two keywords and trying to find the right result.
Now, people are getting into longer queries, four, five, even entire sentences because they're getting used to that mode of a more conversational uh session with search.
And just to set things straight, obviously LLM are getting more popular.
I'm sure that many of you use it. I personally use Gemini almost every day, pretty much every day actually, multiple times a day, but still the relative size of what you're talking about is completely different.
Google search serves a like more than 200 times the daily queries of other popular LLM. So, that kind of give you a sense of perspective of, you know, 200 times more and obviously it's a much more used product out there.
Now, the way that people are changing the way they use search is not only that they look for a longer queries, but also how they input their their queries.
More people are using a voice search, they just say it. Some people, like me, prefer to use images and videos. I was recently in Japan for the Sakura season and obviously, well, Japan is beautiful.
Uh but obviously there is a bit of a language barrier and so I was snapping around photos of menus, train stations, uh products, uh you name it. And all of those, it was super quick, super fast. Search in Japan works like beautifully. In fact, I've been to Japan the first time 15 years ago and I can't remember how I used to operate back then when smartphones were much less prominent, uh when search was not as powerful. So, I highly recommend you if you have ever and I'm sure you're traveling a lot, snap up your Google search, start taking picture around and you'll get everything you need.
Now, why I'm a big believer in Google and our capabilities with search? Well, because we've been a AI-first company since 2016.
We were developing AI before many of our competitors and other solution even started. In fact, we built the models that have empowered this entire industry. Uh we started from the infrastructure. We built our own chips, our TPUs. Uh if you wonder why sometimes it take a little bit, you know, for a query to process on AI mode or on Gemini, it's because there is a lot of compute capability that goes into that. And so, we build custom chips just to serve that. We built our own data centers, which cost a lot of money.
Uh we have our own research.
Uh Google has developed many of the fundamental innovations that have empowered AI like transformers models.
Uh we have a few Nobel uh prize awards, employees or former employees that have built all that technology and that has led into the Gemini family of models, which goes from all the way from the ultra all the way to the Gemma, meaning models for all sort of type of purposes from the more lightweight and fast on device all the way to the most powerful deep thinking models uh that that run on enterprise software.
And finally, and again, we go back to search, we have nine products with more than 1 billion users. So, it's important to develop AI, but it's also important how you bring it to users and we are doing it with the unparalleled reach of our products.
Now, the good thing is we are bringing that power of Gemini, what we call the Gemini advantage, to advertisers as well. And I think that's why you're here today. I hope that's why you're here today in addition to the Mountain View trips.
We bring it to the advertisers and we bring it to our most powerful campaigns, which are by now are all powered by Gemini.
Now, Gemini helps from to create, capture, and convert demand because you you know better than me how difficult it is to intercept user demand. Whichever vertical your company's or your agency operate in, it's very difficult. It's not it's no longer that linear model where people are are searching, are considering, are converting.
It's really a complicated model and so AI is the only possible response to that.
Now, in the next 10, 15 minutes, I'm going to guide you to what we call is the blueprint to power this expansive search universe.
And there are a few components that really are needed. I like this idea of basically I asked Gemini what could be a good analogy for a for a search in 2026 and this idea of the expansionary planet uh like inter- interspace travel came up and so I'm going to guide you through that.
And to me, the first part is uh AI targeting and creatives. Basically, your navigating system. It's difficult to go somewhere if you don't have a good navigating system. It's like a car, you know, your steering wheel, your navigation. But for a rocket, it's a bit different.
What is a navigation system for an AI-powered campaign? Is what help you find with targeting, connect with users with the right messages, and direct them to your properties because ultimately search is what brings users to your properties so that and to your business so that you can you can grow your business.
I'm going to talk into each of those in a little bit. There are my colleagues later who will go into excruciating details, and I'm sure you are all more expert than me because you are day-to-day using our products, but I'm going to try to summarize for you what we feel is going on beyond each of those words.
So, when I think of find with targeting, I think of two campaigns.
AI Max for search campaigns and PMax.
Because basically, whether you are into keyword search and our feature, which is search term matching on AI Max, or whether you are on keyword keywordless uh search on PMax, basically that gives you the full full choice.
And I still remember 10 years ago when I joined Google, we still had colleagues, you know, building campaign uh keyword packs. I don't know how many of you have been around. I think most of you are a little bit younger than me, but there used to be a time where Googlers and customers, they were building keyword packs. I'm going to send you Some of Some of you is remembering those times. I'm going to send you a 2,000 uh keywords in in a file, and then you can apply it to your to your account. That time is gone. We have uh search term matching on AI Max campaigns, and we have keywordless targeting on PMax.
And these uh they work like uh so well together. That's why we call it the power pair because they are really able to capture intent, but in an expansionary way because it's Sometimes it's difficult to understand what is the actual intent, and sometimes it goes beyond uh search.
Then, you need to connect with the users. Because it's so difficult to understand what they want, it's also very difficult to understand what's the right message for them, right? And so, again, building, you know, uh text assets, uh I always said it's not the most exciting activity. I don't know anybody who loved to build, you know, text assets for uh for search campaigns. But now, we have AI doing that, and guess what? AI does better than anybody out there.
And I also want to acknowledge that for some advertisers, they want to retain control. As much as I trust AI, as much as as I believe all of you should trust AI, especially from Google, with very responsible uh development. Uh it is true that sometimes we have certain constraints, or in certain industries which are regulated, certain industries that are very uh strict constraints of what we can or we shouldn't say.
And sometimes we have choices that we want to make. Do we want to focus on brand keywords? Do we want to not focus on brand keywords? And so, while our AI Max campaigns offer all this flexibility, they also give you control on what you care the most.
And that goes also in the last part, which is what we call URL expansion.
After you find the right users and you connect with them with the right text messages, what where should you direct them? Where is the landing page where they will convert the most? Well, again, AI does the exercise for you. And this idea of URL expansion means that they will not always want to land exactly where you plan to, but sometimes it's somewhere else.
I've been working with some of the marketplaces in Southeast Asia for a long time, and one thing I learned from them is that no matter how precise you think your advertising is, when a user land on your property, 90% of the times they end up buying something else.
And that's because it's very difficult to predict what they will actually intended to buy. And so, finally, URL expansion gives even more intelligence to direct the users to where they actually should go.
Now, that's for AI targeting and creatives. And don't worry, I'm going a bit faster, but my colleagues will again spend excruciating details sharing, you know, how these features work.
Now, bidding goals, that to me is the destination. We have a navigation system, but we also should know where we are going. I always plan my holidays uh 6 to 9 months in advance. So, I I'm finalizing my trip for Christmas next year.
And I'm thinking where should I go?
First, where should I go? Then later, how do I get there? So, that's why bidding goals to me are important. And uh bidding goals should relate back to the objective of your business.
No business is built on CPCs or click-through rate or CVRs. Businesses are built on making revenue, making profits, winning market share. And so, when I think of and when I talk to some of our customers, some of our CEOs, our CMOs, that's what's in their mind.
Our CFOs, especially those who unlock the budgets, these are the metrics that they care about. So, how do we connect our goals for our marketing campaigns into what your businesses really care about?
And that's through expressing your business goals. To me, that's one of the most important thing that a marketer can do today is Do you want new customer acquisition? Do you want to drive orders? Re-engage lapsed users? Acquire new users? What is it that you want? And many businesses kind of pivot between those. Maybe they pivot through their life stage. When do you start a business? When you have a more mature social media platforms, what we have seen over and over is that search drives more incremental value.
And why is that? I always When I Whenever I look at those results, I always think, why why is that the case?
And I go back to the fundamentals.
Search is an intent platform.
I also love social media. I spend a lot of time, probably too much time, you know, scrolling and watching and and and stuff. But when I want something, I go to search. And so, that intent is why it's just fundamentally a more incremental product for your business.
Going back to demand-led budgets, why you need that demand, as I mentioned before, if you have a fixed budget cap, and you say, "Okay, there is a new product launch, or there is a seasonal event, or there is a particular occasion in your product is flying off the off online shelf, and then, sorry, we finish our budget.
7:00 p.m., campaign stops spending because you ran out of the daily budget." And so, what happens to all that demand that comes after? Well, it's probably going to a competitor, or it's probably not coming back.
So, having that flexibility and not missing out on those opportunities is what really will maximize your ROI.
Lastly, data strength.
Data strength is not the most exciting uh topic. I don't know many people who wake up in the morning and feel like, "I'm going to improve the data strength of my Google Ads campaigns." But guess what? It's actually one of the most value-adding initiatives because think about it.
Once all AI campaigns are out there, what really differentiate a business from another are two things.
Business objectives and data.
We already talked about business objectives. Let's talk for a second about data, because that's really the differentiation for you. So, data strength is how we build that data, and Google data manager is a great platform to integrate all that data. How do we leverage it to Google AI campaigns to achieve the best return?
And there are a couple of ways. First off, connecting your data sources, whether it's your website, whether it's your apps, whether it's your GA4, your CRM. You got a lot of sources of data that you can connect in data manager.
Second, maximizing your signals. There are user signals, could be email addresses, could be PIIs, and all of those are obviously shared in an anonymized matter, in a privacy-centric matter. And then there are conversion data, conversion data that you can upload your GCLIDs with the value of the conversion. And so, all that data, user data, conversion data, adds additional signals to Google AI. And what do you What can you use it for? Well, for audience targeting, it's key. For bidding, it's super important, and that will get you the best possible ROI.
Now, we're almost at time, and we have a full agenda today, but this is the blueprint that I want to leave with you. Each of my colleagues will double click in some of the elements here with the goal to make you an even better expert and get even more value from our product.
As Renee mentioned before, there are two big events today, and through the day we're going to focus on AI targeting and creatives, and on data strength. And then in July, we're going to focus on what we call the value delivered, which is demand led budget and bidding goals.
I know it's a lot, but that's why we are splitting the program in two. That's why we have a full handbook, and that's why we invited all of you, because you are the real experts.
So, thanks for having me here today, and I'm going to hand it over to my colleagues, and in particular we'll go to Clara and Rohini, who will talk to you about AI targeting and creatives. Thank you.
>> [applause and music] >> Hi, good morning everyone. It's great to be here.
I am Clara. I'm the regional product lead for AI Max, and we have here Rohini. She's our global product manager for AI Max.
So, we've talked a lot about rockets, and I'm going to just continue that analogy.
All right? So, I have a son at home, and he loves puzzles.
He loves mazes like these. I actually created this for him using Gemini, Google's models now. And did you know?
So, Google's models have shown abilities to solve mazes through visual reasoning, and this was big in the news last year.
And because these are surprising abilities that have never been seen before. So, imagine you're completing this maze. You need to get the rocket to the planet. As I said, there's a lot of rocket analogies. We used to have to give very discrete instructions, like discrete, specific instructions. I don't know if anyone played games like these.
I I used to do this on the computer last time. Um and to specify every move and turn. Today, we only need to specify the end objective, get to planet X, and AI will find the most efficient way there.
Like genuinely, if you ask a visual reasoning model or video creation tool to do this right now, it actually can solve these kinds of puzzles. So, it's the same thing when it comes to finding and converting customers for your business.
Now, I know that there were a few um people who have, you know, nodded around like the keyword lists and stuff um just now. So, I just want to get Raise your hand if you've been using Google Ads for like a year.
As in like more than a year. Sorry. More than a year.
>> [laughter] >> I got a shock.
You guys are supposed to be like the the skilled, you know, uh performers. Okay, keep your hands up.
Keep your hands up. Keep your hands up if you've been using it for more than 3 years.
Uh oh, wow. More than 5 years.
Okay, let's let's double that. More than 10 years. Okay, we got some real oldies in the room. So, So, if you remember those days of meticulously building out these exact match keyword lists, you try to anticipate every single way someone is going to search. Uh we send you 2,000 um keywords, and then you update the copy based on the reporting results. So, it's very time-consuming, very manual.
And as user behavior became more complex as it is today, that maze only gets harder to solve. And so, that's manual steering.
Today, AI understands the true intent, like what kind of queries you are trying to target based on your assets and landing pages. Generally, you don't even need keywords anymore. So, we have moved towards autonomous steering.
As a side point, that means our jobs as marketers are at a critical point of change.
Um so, if you still think that your job, you know, it's about specifying every move, controlling every part of the ad, um I guarantee you you are being left behind. The critical skill now is to learning how to effectively prompt and guide the AI systems towards your business goals. And this You will see this theme everywhere. It's not just AI targeting and creatives, it's bidding, it's it's everything. Um and I'll let you in on a secret. So, you're going to see the same product direction come through at Google Marketing Live this year. This is going to happen more and more in our product releases. So, just I'll leave this here. You can remember this bit when GML comes out.
So, why is this becoming so critical?
Search is evolving beyond providing just information and links.
We've heard this before. It's becoming more intelligent, more personalized, more authentic. And consumers expect that now as a basic, fundamental expectation in their search results.
Um I just came from Shanghai, and there was this beautiful saying I learned.
It's called Run Wu Xi Wu Sheng. Does anyone know what that means?
I feel so poetic. It literally means a spring rain moistening everything silently.
And so, it's a metaphor for something that is so seamless, so unintrusive, that you don't even realize that it's working. That is your North Star when it comes to ads. Like that is what every your ads are evolving to become, your spring rain.
So, how, right? It comes literally in all our latest search product features.
So, search term matching, it understands the true intent of user search, matches it to your keywords and your landing pages, right? Text customization, it uses Gen AI to create in real time ads customized to that intent exactly. And then, final URL expansion directs them to the most helpful landing page to convert.
Basically, a customer that experiences this ad journey gets answers that are genuinely helpful, that are genuinely satisfying. So, in other words, it's the title there, the best ads are just answers.
And it's a win-win. So, yes, a better experience is great for users. Google, we serve users as well. But, we also serve advertisers, and this is a win-win because it helps you capture new customers and conversions better. How?
So, performing reach first, you're likely to be eligible for more auctions, more customers with intent, even those that you didn't think about. I'll give you an example. One of our earliest adopters of AI Max, Anchor, they were they were launching in the US. They didn't really know who their audience was going to be. They turned on AI Max, and they ended up taking those the terms that were matched there and using it to inspire their YouTube campaigns, because they were like, I didn't know that, you know, 3D printing could be used in this context and that context.
So, that was pretty cool. Second, click-through. So, with personalized relevance, you're going to input You know how quality score works. You guys are all experienced ad rank. So, it it drives improves your ad rank, drives up your CTR when it's more relevant.
And finally, in terms of website actions, when you are directing people to a more relevant landing page, they are more likely to take action and stay engaged or stay engaged on the page.
Now, if you put this aside for a bit, I know a lot of you are wondering how ads in AI or and AI I get this question a lot will appear.
Um so, here's the answer, my honest answer. We are running thousands of experiments at any point. And we are trying to see what best sticks with the users, um what delivers the most high-quality ads and high-quality traffic, sorry, um for your ads, for you.
And I will be honest, I still don't know where it's going to exactly land.
But, what I can tell you is that wherever it lands, your ad is going to look extremely out of place if it appears on organic organic conversational search looking the way that it does today. So, I'll give you an example. Someone is searching skin care for sensitive dry skin, and then you come up with get ready to turn heads. Like that is completely That's just not relevant to that person's query, right? So, your dry sensitive skin is going to get much better results. And so, you imagine this, but in a conversational search, and someone using AI or AI it's going to look even more out of place.
>> [snorts] >> So, text customization is key to showing up naturally, and FUE is key to bringing the user closer to purchase.
And so, uh Google leadership likes to say, you know, when things everything is changing, you have to focus on the no regret moves. So, your a regret move right now, I don't know where things will land, but your no regret move right now is opting into TC and FUE because that gives our systems the most flexibility in helping you show up, no matter what the format is. And there will be so many, like I was just looking at all the different formats we could come up with now, there're just so many.
So, this is exactly what we found.
On average, advertisers who use AI Max see 14% more conversions at a similar CPA or ROAS.
If you're using exact or phrase match, I hope not.
Um like primarily, you can actually see that conversion up list up to 27%.
And last week we published a new study that showed that if you are using search term matching already, going into TC and FUE, so text customization and final URL expansion can bring a further 7% conversion up list.
I personally think that that, given what we have talked about and where the product is evolving, that is very conservative because that's based on what formats we have today.
So, there's a lot on this slide, but as you can see, Shopee used AI Max. Um it's one of our biggest marketplaces, everyone knows Shopee. They turned on all the features, search term matching, text customization, final URL expansion.
Um just two things because there's a lot on this slide. First, to remember, they deliver two times more orders at 49% higher ROI.
Second is the quote in blue there from a profitability standpoint standpoint, the higher conversion value was a main driver of the GMV up list.
So, as you can see, with AI Max, we will reach and convert customers that you've never even thought of.
And we have seen this with many, many other customers as well.
Now, I shared the reasons why we built AI Max and reinforced the reasons why it works. By the way, as of last week, AI Max has finally moved out of beta. We know it works, that's a very clear sign of faith from the company.
We know many of you here are testing it already and you have questions.
Actually, raise of hands, how many people here have tested AI Max already?
Oh, great. Okay, so you can ask me questions as well if you guys have any that aren't Um and so we've gathered, but here what we have gathered is some of the biggest topics that you told us about why you might be hesitant about AI Max or to continue AI Max. So, we'll address these head-on today. I hope that they answer some of your questions at least for those people who have raised their hands. Those people who haven't, I hope they answer some of the hesitations you have. We also have some exciting feature rollouts to share.
Now, I'll just the first one first. A common question is you've got so many products, how is AI Max different from what I use today?
Here's a very nice chart to help you better understand what is available where.
Um it compares AI Max, PMax, broad match, and DSA.
And the takeaway here is that while tools like broad match or DSA give you specific parts of the equation, AI Max pulls them all together into one future-proof solution. It gives you the full benefit of text customization and final URL expansion along with the enhanced brand and location controls which we'll talk about next.
Um and that isn't available in standard search setups.
And as I said, AI Max is the bridge to showing up for more conversational queries.
Crucially, AI Max is built for search. I know there'll be questions for AI AI Max and PMax. AI Max is built for search, it's designed to help you capture every moment across the search inventory, whether that's traditional text, whether that's visual non-text formats that's coming out within the search landscape.
So, just remember this, PMax reaches inventories across like YouTube, display, Gmail, as well as search. AI Max keeps your focus winning on winning the search auction with maximum intelligence and control.
Specific to DSA, as of I every week we get so many updates. As of this week, as of last week, we are rolling out one-click upgrade tooling for you to convert your DSA and your campaign broad match, that means broad match campaigns as a whole into AI Max. So, this you can see where the product direction is going here. This unifies campaigns across keyword and keyword-less targeting. It allows you to benefit from those enhanced controls.
Um and it future-proofs your campaigns with AI-ready features.
So, if you have questions about this as well, make sure to talk to your account teams or you can find me afterwards um to discuss this announcement a bit more.
Now, the next question that we hear a lot about is with all this AI, am I losing control over my campaigns?
So, I am not the best person to talk about this, but today we have here our global product manager for AI Max. She is literally the globally the best qualified person in the world to tell you about our latest features in this space. She has flown in from Mountain View uh today to be with us. So, Rohini, the stage is yours.
>> Thank you.
Let's give Clara a round of applause.
>> [applause] >> All right, so yes, let's dive in deeper on what controls we're actually giving you in AI Max.
Um and they can be spread across a couple of different categories, right?
Targeting, brand controls, and creatives. So, on the targeting side, you will still have the ability to type in negative keywords, so you can give us your list of queries that you don't want us to target. And then we've leaned in very heavily in improving locations of interest. So, I know this was coming up quite often, but now if you are, you know, have users that are typing in things like hotels in Madrid, we're actually going to show them content that's relevant to that city, so relevant for Madrid.
Um on the brand control side, so this is designed to give you precise management over branded traffic. So, um as for most of AI Max, right, everything is fact-checked against your content.
We're always grounding in your landing page, that continues to be true for brand controls. And then you will also have inclusion and exclusion rules once again, so you can tell us what specific traffic you want us to restrict to, uh maybe specific brand queries you want us to target, or if you want to prevent showing your content alongside competitors, brand controls lets you do that.
And then on the creative control side, this is where things get very fun. So, you can use URL exclusions and inclusions to control final URL expansion. That ensures that we are showing users um your highest converting sites or sites that you know are the most compliant landing pages. And then text guidelines, we'll dive into that just in a just in a moment, but you can specify terms and basically provide us rules that we will follow when we're generating your ad copy.
Um but before we dive in deeper, I wanted to do a quick case study. So, I know Clara just went over Shopee, but let's look at trip.com for just a moment. So, um they're a leading global online travel platform. They service 39 different countries and regions, and they've also faced challenges on capturing complex user-seeking queries without sacrificing precision. So, I imagine maybe some of you might have similar problems.
They leaned very heavily into AI Max.
Like they turned on the full suite of capabilities. Um and they saw a significant, you know, up list. So, first um they leaned into um uh intent-based, you know, they they wanted to strengthen their intent-based marketing strategy.
So, even as AI was expanding their reach and reaching more users, they wanted to make sure that they were anchored to very specific destination cities, again because they serve basically, you know, 39 countries and regions across the world. So, they started with search term matching first. And this allowed them to capture high-intent queries such as best rooftop bar restaurant Bangkok.
And then um after search term matching, they utilized text customizations and final URL expansions, and that let them show the most relevant content to these users. So, in this case, actual best rooftop restaurants in Bangkok.
And then to preserve targeting accuracy and maintain relevance, they leaned in locations of interest, right, which I mentioned earlier that's been heavily improved. So, that made sure that users were actually seeing content for the relevant city. So, in in this case, Bangkok. And I think the results speak for themselves. So, of course, they saw a 24% increase in conversion from AI Max, a 19% increase in CTR, but the most phenomenal result by far is 80% reduction in location mismatches.
Um and so that ensured, again, when a user searched for something in a city, they were actually being shown content for that relevant city.
Um but to dive deeper now into the actual creative controls that we give you, the first thing is text guidelines.
So, if you are in a highly regulated industry, um or perhaps you want to represent your brand in a very specific way, you want to um non-negotiable things to show up or not show up, um or you just want more control, that's where text guidelines comes in. And so this is actually a two-part product. So, the first thing is you have term exclusions. So, if there are certain words or phrases that you never want showing up in your copy ever, you can put it into term exclusions and we will make sure that that never shows up in any of the ad copy, so in any of the headlines or the descriptions.
Um additionally, if you have rules that you want to give us, that's where the messaging restrictions come in. So, you have up to 40 rule you can give using free-form prompts, and uh you know, that can be defined um specific tones that you don't want us to have or like specific, again, phrases you don't want us to include or things from your landing page you don't want us to talk about, um that's where messaging restrictions will come into play.
Um but again, I want to hone on this one more time, which is text customizations is always grounded in your landing page.
So, if there is words that don't show up on your landing page, they're never going to show up in your ad copy. So, there's no point in even talking about it or listing them in term exclusions or listing them in restrictions. Like, focus on things that um maybe are related to your uh to your landing page, but again, like we're never going to just make stuff up and and show that.
It's always grounded in your in your landing page.
So, think of this as a way of steering AI Max. It gives you a little bit more control um and it lets you you know, leverage the full uh capabilities that AI brings you.
Um, also one more thing to note about text guidelines is that it's available um globally and uh launched recently to API and editor as well.
Um, quickly want to touch on our 2026 roadmap. So, we have lots of good things in store this year. We've heard a lot of feedback um especially across all you know, various industries and I just want to call out that we're investing heavily in the feedback that you've given us and um expect a lot of good things this year. So, please keep keep in touch with your account teams to hear about all the launches that are coming up this year.
Um, another thing is text customizations asset previews. So, one thing we also hear repeatedly is the need for more transparency. Like, show me what AI Max is actually doing behind the scenes.
They don't want to just turn it on and then you know, trust you guys that you're doing the right thing. So, that's where asset previews will come into play.
So, this is like a total game changer tool. It really removes that black box element when it comes to generating ad copy. So, given a URL, you can give us a very specific URL, we will actually show you a sample of assets that we will generate and serve live. And so, this gives you visibility into what's actually happening behind the scenes um and then you will have the option to reject um headline if you don't like it and we'll take that into consideration.
So, now it's no longer as much of a black box, right? You're seeing what's happening and then this combined with text guidelines, you can then control um the copy that we're generating for you.
And this will actually be launching next month. So, um again, keep uh keep in touch with your account team so you can be informed when this is available.
Um, all right. So, we went over what controls we give you. But another common question that we ask is, how do I know if it's all working for me?
And this is um where we want to touch on how you can actually try AI Max. I know a lot of people raised their hands, but want to touch on one more point, which is the most effective way of doing this. We highly highly highly recommend AB testing over doing a pre and post test.
So, a pre and post test would be that um I know what my results look like and then I turn on AI Max and I do a comparison after. We really don't want you to do that because that can be heavily influenced by so many different things um you know, like seasonality or just differences happening in the market. Um, that also requires you to set up a new campaign and copy everything over and then your new campaign has a cold start. So, please don't do that. If you want to continue testing, we recommend that you use the AB experiments feature. And so, this is literally one click. It sets up the whole AB experiment for you and so, it'll show you know, it'll divert traffic across your control as well as um for AI Max and that will give you the most, you know, statistically significant test on how AI Max is um you know, working in your environment.
So, we highly recommend that you do that.
Um, reporting again continues to be something that advertisers frequently ask us about how we're showing to them what AI Max is doing behind the scenes.
And so, once you have turned on the AB tests, you can go to the reporting part within Google Ads and we'll show you detailed reports on what has actually happened. So, this will include incremental conversions. Um, we'll show you additional queries that AI matched that AI Max was able to match to and then um you know, headline, landing pages, things like that that were generated behind the scenes.
And reporting is something that we're continuing to evolve especially as feedback comes in. So, again, if you have um feedback to give us or if you'd like to see additional things being added to reporting, like please let your account team know and they'll let myself or other product product managers know about that feedback.
Um, one other thing. So, for those of you who have tried AI Max, you might notice that your CPA looks a bit different when you have it on versus not. Um, and you may notice that it's a bit higher and so, I wanted to debunk why that's not a problem.
Um, so let's look at an example. Let's say that you have your target CPA set for $10.
And then normally with exact match, you would get seven conversions at 857 each.
Pretty good, right? I'm under $10, great. And then I turn on AI Max and I see although I got 13 more, it's 1077, which is like exceeding my $10 that I had set. And sometimes at this point people look at this and and they freak out. But, what we want you to do is look at the entire ecosystem as a whole. So, although you got 13 more at 1077, it actually still averages out to 10. So, at that point do you do you want the seven at 857 or do you want 20?
Right? At the $10, which is still under the 10 that you had set.
I think 20 sounds better to me. So, um again, we don't want you to freak out when this happens. You want you to look at the entire campaign as a whole um and realize that the conversion value really comes from the cost of incrementality.
So, AI Max is designed to to deliver the incremental volume and value, things that like exact match will not give you.
Um, that's where AI Max is going to come in. And so, you'll notice that the conversion might be a little bit higher as a result. But again, nothing to freak out about because overall, it all works out the end.
So, hopefully that was um you know, a little teaser into some of the common questions that we get on what AI Max is actually delivering to you, what controls that we're giving to you so it's not just entirely a black box and how you can make sure that it's actually working well in your environment. Um, feel free to come up after to ask me your uh Clara more questions.
>> do have some time. So, if anyone from the floor wants to ask Clara and Rohini a question, please let us know. We'll pass the mic to you.
If you have feedback to give also, but maybe okay la, look for us afterwards.
>> Yeah.
Yeah.
We just have a lot of AI Max experts in the room.
>> [laughter] >> That's okay. I mean, feel free to find us afterwards. Um we're here and and happy to help in any way.
Yeah.
Also, uh so yeah, without further ado, I will now pass the time to Erman, our head of measurement for APAC.
Erman, please.
>> [music] >> Hi everyone. My name is Erman. I lead the APAC measurement go-to-market team and today I'll talk about data strength, your AI booster.
Think of your journey to better ROI as a space mission. And if you watch Interstellar, the movie, you'll know that this is a hard journey. There are a lot of obstacles. And probably a standard engine wouldn't be enough to reach your destination. You need something stronger.
And it is what data strength is. It is your AI booster.
And it does this in two main ways. The first one is like a rocket booster. It enhances the power and efficiency of your Google AI, propelling you to your destination.
And the second thing is provide resistance to what we call the measurement black holes. These are the privacy changes, browser restrictions, or consent regulations.
But what is exactly data strength?
So, it is the comprehensive data setup that ensures that your Google AI has the necessary input to deliver the best ROI for your business.
So, the data you feed into Google AI directly impacts the ROI you get out of it.
And in a world where all the advertisers have access to the same AI models, the unique rich data that you bring to Google, it is what makes it work for your business. So, it becomes your competitive advantage.
And in a perfect world, I wouldn't be in stage today talking about data strength because you will have 100% data strength from day one.
We would have the complete view of all the customer interactions and conversions and we would use that data to optimize the AI.
But unfortunately, we are not living in a perfect world. All those measurement black holes that I mentioned earlier are creating signal loss.
And this is diminishing the impact of our our AI campaigns.
So, what shall we do? So, to mitigate the signal loss, the first crucial step is Google Tag.
It helps, but it is not the silver bullet. And it is definitely not sufficient to create that complete view.
So, to have that complete view, we need to build data strength. And this includes two main upgrades.
The first one is connecting all your data sources. So, this includes your website data via Google Tag Gateway, your CRM, your app data, your CDPs, and any data source that has valuable customer data.
And second, is bringing all the signals that is available to you.
So, this is going beyond basic transactions and bringing richer signals like IP addresses, PII, GCLID, and session attributes.
And if you do this, too, you will have the complete view and optimal performance for your search and YouTube campaigns.
But, we know that you have a lot of data sources, and it is not easy all the time to assemble and manage them.
And that's exactly why we built Data Manager.
It is your centralized hub where you can connect all your data sources, bring all your signals, and activate that data across all the platforms with native integrations.
So, let's start with connecting your data sources. One powerful way to connect your website data is Google Tag Gateway.
So, we launched Google Tag Gateway last year.
It is a solution that shifts your measurement to your own infrastructure.
So, historically, we served Google Tag from third-party domains, Google servers.
But, with Google Tag Gateway, you can serve them from your first-party servers.
And when you serve the tags from the first-party contexts, they become more durable, and you can protect it against the browser restrictions.
And this upgrade really works.
Advertisers that have implemented Google Tag Gateway are seeing on average 14% more conversions.
And we see new advertisers every day benefiting from Google Tag Gateway.
Some recent examples are Next and Horeca. After implementing Google Tag Gateway, they've seen significantly higher conversions. And Room AI, which increased their weekly users.
And it is easier than ever to implement Google Tag Gateway thanks to our one-click implementation partners such as Cloudflare, Google AI, and Akamai.
And when I say it is as easy as ever, I really mean it. All right? So, this is an example from the Cloudflare.
You can implement Google Tag Gateway with a toggle in the Cloudflare UI.
Just a toggle, and you get 14% more conversion.
Not a bad deal.
But, you might be thinking now, this is all great, but what about the compliance and data privacy? We know that those are top-of-mind priorities for you.
That's why when we build our data strength solutions, we try to make it as easy as possible to help you comply with those requirements.
And that's why what why we build what we call the confidential computing, which is a hard level way to encrypt your data while it is being matched.
And Google Tag Gateway incorporates confidential computing with a technology called trusted execution environments, or in short, TEE.
So, this technology limits the usage of your data and provides you additional transparency and auditability to the matching process. And this technology is available also for all the data imports that uses Data Manager.
So, beyond the tag, you can use Data Manager to connect all your other data sources.
So, in the past, bringing your data imports was a technical lift. It required a lot of IT resources, and it usually took three to six months to finish a project.
So, we built what we call the point-and-click implementation in the UI to address that. So, this is the easiest and simplest way to bring your data, and it is specifically built for marketers.
So, we have native integrations with some of the largest CRMs and CDPs such as Salesforce, which enables you to bring your data from those platforms directly in the UI with a few clicks without the requirement of technical resources.
If you have more enterprise-level needs or custom integrations, we would recommend Data Manager API, which we have significantly simplified.
So, partners like Treasure Data, for example, who have used the Data Manager API compared to our previous APIs, have seen significantly faster onboarding time as well as reduction in their engineering efforts building those APIs.
Okay, so I talked about connecting your data. So, upgrading to the Google Tag Gateway and connecting your other data sources via Data Manager.
So, the next step is maximizing your signals.
As I mentioned earlier, this is about bringing richer signals beyond basic transactions such as IP addresses, transaction IDs, and customer data such as email addresses.
And this really helps your AI to perform better.
For example, advertisers that included IP addresses in their Data Manager conversion imports have seen 10% more conversions for their YouTube campaigns.
And this is especially important for view-based upper-funnel conversion measurement.
Lastly, on the product roadmap. So, we continue to invest on data strength so you can get better ROI from your Google AI.
And in 2026, we'll be focusing on three main things.
The first one is on the Google Tag Gateway. We will be increasing the one-click implementation partners so we make the implementation easier for you, and we will be enhancing the built-in privacy features.
On Data Manager, we will be simplifying access to the Google Marketing Platform.
And we will be launching features on store sales and Google Analytics conversions.
And lastly, on the signals, we will be streamlining the signal integration.
So, if you want to boost your ROI today, please go to Data Manager, upgrade to the Google Tag Gateway, ideally using our one-click implementation partners, connect your additional data sources, and maximize your signals.
And as always, thanks for partnering with us on this data journey.
And before we move to the next topic, I'm happy to answer any questions if you have.
Any questions? Could be hard questions, too.
Okay.
If no questions, I'll pass it to my colleague Kailang to talk about Demand Gen.
>> [music] [music] >> Hey, hi everyone. So, I'm Kailang. I'm actually the APAC go-to-market for Demand Gen. So, you've been here for like an hour or so already. I'm here to talk about Demand Gen best practices. It sounds something that is really simple and fun fundamental. So, how am I going to make sure that you stay attentive throughout like the next 20 minutes or so? Let me try to convince you.
Um The key thing to know is that adopting Demand Gen best practices can really boost your campaign performance. And just by adopting three out of four DG best practices, you can see that advertisers actually saw a 40% increase in conversions and a 30% increase in higher conversion value.
And this is something that we have looked like far and hard across all of the Demand Gen campaigns that have that have been running. So, this is a really really powerful stat. It's simple, but it's really going to be effective in boosting performance.
And this is not just sort of like theoretical stats.
The key things as well is that as we look across some of the real-life examples that we have, we saw that advertisers saw an increase in 50% ROAS.
They saw a 349% increase in purchases, and also a decrease in 66% cost per store visit. I hope this is compelling enough for you to really stay attentive with me throughout the rest of the session.
Uh let me go through a high-level overview of what they are, just to make it catchy. You can call them the Demand Gen ABCDs. So, they are A for audiences, B for budget or bid, C for creative, and then also D for data and measurement, which is actually what Erman has actually covered quite comprehensively.
Uh with the exception that we are we are recommending advertisers who have an app to also bid towards bidable app conversions. Definitely, you want to be able to value as many conversions as possible.
So, um audiences. The main key principle here is um you know, really to make sure that you can reach high-intent audiences as efficiently as possible. Uh and the key thing here is that you want to first uh think think about this as sort of like a two-step process. So, first, you want to bring your own first-party data, your customer match list or like your remarketing list. And the reason behind here is that this is really the most powerful signal that you can give to a Demand Gen campaign to really tell them, "Hey, how does a potential converter actually look like?" So, post having this first-party data, you want to then layer on or like mix and match any of these three AI-powered audience features that we have, either optimized targeting, look-alike audiences, or new customer acquisition. And this is really dependent on what use case you you you you have. So, let me sort of like describe what are these use cases. Uh so, for optimized targeting, think about it as a use case where you just want to have as many conversions as you want and you really don't care who or where these conversions come from, use optimized targeting. It will leverage the first-party data signals as sort of like a signal to supplement it because it can tell them because the first-party data signals basically tell optimized targeting, "Hey, this is how the converters actually look like, so help me look for more."
The next thing the next sort of like AI-powered feature here is look-alike audiences. Basically, think think about this as a control expansion. So, you know a set of audiences or like a user that you want to be able to like reach to. For example, you looked at, you know, internal data and you realized that, "Okay, someone who has purchased a green hat and plaid and black t-shirt with me has a very good has a very high lifetime value." So, you want to look for more of these users. So, what do you do? You use you you use your first-party data, supplement it with look-alike audiences, and then allow Demand Gen to really expand beyond the seed list. So, that's sort of like use case two.
The third use case is where you really This is something that's actually launched new on Demand Gen last year and it's called new customer acquisition.
The concept is really simple. You know, go after all of the new customers that you can find in the market. The first-party data signal here basically just tell them, "You know, these are existing customers, so don't go look for them. Look for something that is beyond all of these existing users." And we have seen that customers who actually use the NCA only mode so that on average their new customer ratio improved by 11.5% and with a minus 3% reduction in acquisition for new customers. So, use your first-party data, layer on with one, two, or any of this combination of these like AI-powered audiences depending on the use case that you have.
The second thing is on budget. This sounds really simple, but it's actually often times something that customers actually overlook, but really simple to implement. And the principle behind it is is that you know, AI, as you know, is powered by data.
In order for it to learn, in order for it to know, you know, what's good, what's bad, you need to give it enough data. And therefore, you need to give it enough budget. So, this will actually this If you give it enough budget, it will help you to avoid scenarios like cold start where you have, let's say, high volatility in early stage performance or that you don't see many conversions in your campaign. So, setting enough budget will actually help set up success in like the long term. Uh the two key principle here is that if you're using sort of like a target kind of bid strategy like target CPA, make sure that you are using 10x TCPA a day for any of like your max conversions kind of campaign, you want to give it like at least $100 a day. So, this will help you make sure that you don't go into sort of like this cold start early stage kind of like performance fluctuation. So, something really really really simple to set up and probably something that you can do um right right away.
And as we talk about budget, um I'm sure that, you know, every time you increase budget on a campaign, you always get questions.
"Okay, I increase my budget, how many conversions does that mean? You know, what what you know, what is the CPA actually look like?" So, what you can do then is that, you know, you can use Performance Planner, which is something that's integrated into the Google UI, and that basically gives you sort of like a what-if scenario planning. You know, if I if I were to 10x my TCPA from, let's say, 30 to 300 because, you know, I went to a Google event and someone told me to do that, this actually means that you actually get, you know, let's say, you know, three 3,000 conversion at an average CPA of six $6.86. So, something that's really simple for you to hit hit into the UI to find out more.
The third thing is on creative. And this again is one of like the key aspect of the best practices and there's a lot of reasons for it. If you think about Demand Gen, we have we cover across a lot of inventories from in-stream, shorts, Discover, in-feed, so on and so forth. So, you want to make sure that you have enough asset variety so that you can show up across all the available inventories that Demand Gen is eligible to show up on. And not just that, think think think about it as well. Different types of creative is going to work well on different surfaces and for different users. So, for example, a vertical video is going to show up a lot better and perform a lot better on a shorts inventory. A horizontal video is going to show up a lot better and perform better on an in-stream inventory. So, in order to make sure that we have the best creative asset that we can pick at auction time for the right user, you need to make sure that we you have asset variety and and diversity.
Um so, the simple thing to remember is that for video, make sure that you have one aspect ratio each. So, you have one horizontal, one vertical, one square video. For images, make sure that you have three x each. So, it's three horizontal, three square, and three vertical. So, that that should cover most of the campaigns on Demand Gen. Uh let's say you use Demand Gen for other objective, you know, you really just want to test like a shorts only campaign cuz you're really interested to make sure that your ads are up there, you then obviously make sure that you have one or more vertical video in the campaign because vertical video is where, you know, shorts perform the most. And then if you are looking to test partnership ads, make sure that you have video linking enabled. This will actually help you to This will help you to ensure that your partnership ads has sort of like this organic flavor to it so that it shows up like it can actually resonate better with your users.
The last thing is data strength, which to be honest, Herman covered a lot about it already, so I'm not going to deep dive into it more and to like dwell in the details on this.
Those are sort of like the ABCDs of Demand Gen and hopefully you will be able to remember, you know, like the key principles behind the audiences, budget, creative, and data strength. Let me just quickly cover sort of like campaign strategy on Demand Gen cuz there's These are sort of like fundamental things that we want to go through as well.
So, the first thing is about like testing framework. If you think about, you know, if you have a case where you want to be able to test Demand Gen, we think about like a simple sort of like a five-step framework that looks something like this. So, first, you when you launch Demand Gen, make sure that you implement the ABCDs that I talked about just now, that's like a must at least three out of four because you get 40% more increase in conversions, right? And then as you kick start your campaign, make sure that you are delineating learning period with the actual campaign period because the campaign is sometimes to learn.
And so, you want to make sure that you give it enough time for it to learn before it goes into the actual campaign period where it really needs to perform.
And to end the signal to exit learning period is sort of like 50 plus conversions.
We recommend the campaign period to be at least like six to eight weeks.
And before you actually do any kind of performance evaluation, make sure that you are accounting for some kind of conversion lag, which is something that is that you need to determine, which is unique to the nature of the business.
And of course, take into any learnings that you have learned from the the test and then scale it as always on. Two key things that I want to point out here that is like very common pitfalls that we see from advertisers, which is one, making adjustment bid adjustment that is way too huge. Second, making too frequent adjustment. And when I say way too huge, really it's that the the AI doesn't learn as well if you actually make adjustment on something that's like more than or less than 15%. [clears throat] Which means that if you want to make an adjustment to your TCPA by, let's say, more than 50%, you want to do it in stages. So, you sort of like want to increase it by a 10 to 15% and then another 10 to 15% so that you actually reach the TCPA that you desire. Because if you if you if you were to actually apply a 50% increase in TCPA, you actually give the algorithm a shock to the system, and it's actually going to be really difficult for it to learn effectively from then on. So, don't get into that.
You know, be a little bit patient.
Uh and then the second thing is, you know, making frequent adjustment. Again, this makes it very very difficult for the algorithm to learn and very often is the cause of like performance volatility, so definitely avoid it.
The second piece I would just wanted to go through as well is sort of like a campaign structure. So, sort of like three key principles to think about.
One is make sure that your Demand Gen campaign have at least 50 plus conversion in the last 30 days. If you don't have 50 plus conversion in the last 30 days, think about campaign consolidation because again, the algorithm is not going to learn very effectively. So, make sure you have enough conversion is one of the key thing that I want you to walk away with today.
The second thing is that even if you're optimizing for deep conversion, track all of the available conversion as much as possible, even the shallow one, even page visits, even clicks because that will actually paint a picture of like a conversion journey for the AI and then that will actually help us learn a lot better to optimize towards deep conversions.
The third thing as well is think about ad group structure. So, of all the ad groups in your campaign, think about what is the right structure to have and we really recommend you to tailor it to a some kind of like a thematic structure so that you can actually tailor your ads to two different ad groups. So, in this example, you know, let's say for a travel industry, you want to think about, let's say, having your ad group set up as the Let's say one for like very high value affluent travelers because you probably want to tailor your ads differently from someone who's like a budget travelers, right?
So, definitely set up according, you know, these key principles.
Uh third, that is your bidding strategy.
There's so many bid strategies that you can actually choose from on Demand Gen.
That's the beauty of it. That's the flexibility of it. Um but, pick the bidding strategy that fits your goal.
So, if you have a strict target ROAS or target CPA, use the Use target CPA or TROAS. If you're thinking about drive volume, um use max conversion to quick to quickly ramp up with, you know, as as minimal a learning period as possible.
So, if you if you have a strict TCPA, don't use max conversion because we don't know what kind of like uh CPA or ROAS uh expectation that you that you have. So, pick the right one.
The The The last thing is um on CPA. So, let's say you have a um you know, you're setting a net new Demand Gen campaign.
You don't know where to start. So, definitely take a reference point from your social campaigns.
Uh use your search PMAX data, for example, and you can set it sort of like a 30% higher than what your search PMAX is. Uh of course, if you have a existing DG campaign, you can also use that as a reference point.
Um the last section that I'll quickly go through as well is something where we also seen uh as boosting Demand Gen performance. This is relevant for mostly the travel and retail vertical. Um so, first is performance feeds. Uh sorry.
First is product feeds. Uh what we have seen is that, you know, the capability of product feeds on Demand Gen is the ability to sort of turn your video into a storefront. So, the example that you've seen here is that you have a video, and then with the video it's sort of like a carousel or like a UI where you where users can swipe, it can interact, it can click on a specific SKU. And on top of that, we actually personalize this feeds based on um some of like the history, the web history, or like the browsing history that they have on on your site. So, it really It really helps to boost engagement and uh interaction with the user and therefore conversion rate.
We have actually seen that attaching a product feeds to a Demand Gen campaign saw 33% more conversions. So, it's something simple. If you already have a merchant feed center set up, on the Demand Gen campaign set up is really just a click. It's really just um selecting which product feed that you want to um attach it with.
And then the last piece is um for travel advertisers, there's something that we launched uh just very uh s- relatively um re- recent, somewhere like late December last year. So, it's It's heavier is that it's not something that's available across all the inventories right now. It's on some of the key inventories that Demand Gen have, but we are already seeing very good results from um this travel feeds where we have plus 4% conversions. But, um of of course, the plan is to, you know, work through the road map and make sure that we have this available across all inventories.
Okay, that's really it. So, I hope that I'm leaving you guys with a lot of ABCDs to go through and a lot of actionable items that you will have, you know, uh post today.
I'm uh Right right now, you know, I'm I'm I'm done with all of this content, so I'm happy to sort of like take any questions that you guys have.
Uh Under the audience slide, right? There was a note at the bottom. It says that lookalike audiences not supported by NCA.
So, I just wanted like get more sense on what was it about.
>> [snorts] >> Yeah, so if you were to set up, let's say >> Uh yes. Yeah.
So, the recommendation is that, you know, if you are to set up, let's say, a new customer acquisition campaign, it is a bidding strategy. So, we don't recommend um actually I I I don't think it's uh possible as well to actually turn on optimized targeting at the ad group level.
Um so, they are not compatible, so you you you cannot use them together in one campaign. Uh but, if you want to use optimized targeting and NCA, you probably have to set up like different campaigns.
question Hi.
Uh I wanted to check about the product feeds. You mentioned that product feeds It's Obviously, it's a good feature for personalization, but in Demand Gen we're limited.
Right? In terms of the types that we can support.
Yep.
Yes. So, in Demand Gen, if you talk about the product feeds, especially for the ODA clients, uh we only have hotel center feeds. Any road map or any idea when the flights is going to come in?
Yep, it's definitely something that um like I don't actually know when it will come, but that's, you know, um travel feeds actually it's something that's very very very new. And as you can see, the priority right now, to be honest, is to make sure that the feeds uh is supported across the inventories. So, that's the key priority right right now.
I think that's something that, you know, we are definitely hearing advertisers um wanting this feature of having like flights included uh as part of the travel feeds as well. So, that's probably something that is like, you know, we are looking into, but I I I don't have like a specific timeline on that. So, like do you have any recommendation on any product or any way we can go into product personalization, something similar to how GMC has supported in past? Yeah, so So, again, this is something that's on the road map for like travel feeds to enable uh personalization as we mentioned uh here for product feeds. So, this is enabled for retail customers. But, I think something that we need to build into is for travel.
Okay. Yeah.
Any ETA? No, not yet.
Any ETA?
I I I don't have the ETA. Sorry.
>> [laughter] >> Yeah. And sorry, just to quickly come back to the optimized uh targeting question as well. And the reason why it's not compatible is that optimized targeting is is like like I mentioned, supposed to go after like um maximize conversion as much as possible.
So, it's sort of like it goes um there's a bit of like conflict between uh new customer acquisition where we are saying just uh get new new customers. Uh but, optimized targeting will will not care.
So, that's why we uh make sure that it's actually not compatible with like uh both features.
Any last question?
Okay. I think All right. Thank you so much. Hope you guys have a lot to work on after this.
Hi everyone. So, my name is Thu and I'm I'm actually the program lead for Accelerate with Google expert across SEA. So, before we're closing off, uh just a few next steps on what you can do and how you can win the trip to Mountain View, right? So, I think before that, let's just I would just want to share this quick one slider of everything that we actually learned today. So, these are the three key things that we want you guys to take away with. First is AI targeting creative. Second is data strength. And last but not least is DG best practices. So, this will be the key blueprint that will help you actually drive ROI for your performance campaign.
And in July, we're going to dive into bidding goals and Demand Gen budgets.
So, now the key question I believe everyone actually has, how do we win a spot on your MTV study tour, right? So, I believe that Winnie has already mentioned earlier on, but I think just a few key next steps. So, just to bring back on the scoring mechanism, there are two key things that can go into your scoring mechanism. One is that the 60% weightage is actually on performance optimization. So, this is where you will closely with your account team to ensure that you move that performance metric.
And the second part is actually on the case study submission.
So, with the case study submission, uh submission will open on 30th April. So, after today, you will receive all the training material in your inbox. The second step is that you can sub access the submission form uh with all the detailed instructions on 30th April. And the deadline to submit your case study is by 30th June.
So, I think I'll pause here if anyone has any questions.
Okay, I think we're good and it's pretty clear and comprehensive. Um just a few key things on what are the key evaluation criteria we're looking for, right? So, I think in the case study, there are three key components we're looking at. The first thing is uh whether you state clearly the challenge and the KPI. So, what is your business challenge? What is the KPI goal? Second is your approach. How you actually um arrive at the approach to actually drive the results. And throughout all of this, we will look at how you clearly demonstrate how all the Google performance ad solution were utilized.
And I think for all the best practices, we have three um kind of like key best practices here. One is that to always prioritize that business impact. Second is to be concise. And last but not least is to be to have a very comparing compelling narrative. And on the right-hand side here, we have the QR code where you can download the external handbook. In this handbook, there is actually all the details on case study submissions, the best practices, and also uh a few examples of what is a good or like successful entry looks like. So, you can download. Uh we will also share that with you after this training, but feel free to just download and keep it handy.
And I think before we release you for lunch, uh we just uh want you guys to spend just 3 minutes to do this feedback form. And after that, we'll just take a group photo before you guys are free to have lunch. And then we'll invite your Google accounts team to drop by and say hi to you guys as well.
Thank you, everyone.
>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Woo.
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