Every year, Google makes major announcements each spring. For instance, one year it was Enhanced Campaigns, and last year it was Expanded Text Ads. This year, our very own Mark Irvine attended Google’s Marketing Next event in Mountain View to get the inside scoop on the latest changes and new features coming to AdWords. We’ve compiled a summary of all the updates here.

Google Marketing Next was an exciting event with major aesthetic updates, new audience features, and lots of buzzwords. The good news is that Google has given us a plethora of amazing new features that will enhance digital marketing strategies. The bad news is that there’s a lot to learn!

The main themes of the day (and the coming year) were user intent, data, and machine learning. I would also add another word: context.

The digital marketing world believes that keyword-centric advertising is coming to an end due to recent AdWords changes (like Exact-ish Match keywords). Instead, semantic and contextual information will be used to target audiences, not just clicks. Today’s announcements, including the rise of voice search (which reportedly accounts for 20% of mobile searches) and machine learning, suggest that a keywordless future is imminent. However, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Some of these features will make finding prospects easier while others will help meet their needs from the first interaction to the point of sale and beyond. Want to learn more? Let’s explore the 11 most compelling features and updates announced at Google Marketing Next.

1. AdWords Has a New Look

This is “the biggest change [Google has] made to how advertisers visualize and manage their campaigns in over 15 years,” and for good reason. The new AdWords UI is sleek and modern, unlike the outdated UI with its multiple shades of gray and hidden sub-menus.

Don’t worry about learning the new system yet. Even though millions of advertisers can access and switch between the old and new UIs, the “new AdWords experience” won’t be available to everyone until December. We’ll have a more detailed post about the new AdWords UI later this week, so stay tuned!

2. Life Events Targeting Comes to YouTube and Gmail Ads

Some things, like soap, snacks, or other common items, are purchased frequently. However, purchases for major life events (like weddings or graduations) are different. Certain behaviors usually indicate an upcoming life event. For example, if someone is searching for an apartment, updating their resume, and switching from cheap beer to craft brews, they might be graduating. Advertising to someone at this life stage could be mutually beneficial if your product or service meets their needs. Check this out:

Sonos, a smart speaker company, saw impressive improvements in ad recall and search intent by using this strategy. Now, AdWords will allow you to use Life Events as a targeting option for YouTube and Gmail Ads. Big, bold, targeted creative. What’s not to love?!

3. In-Market Audiences Are Coming to Search

Although machine learning was mentioned by almost every speaker, the most intriguing announcement was about in-market audiences coming to the Search network. In-market audiences, which have been available on the Display Network for a while now, assist advertisers in finding prospects who are close to making a purchase. Using a combination of search query data and activity analysis, Google can now identify these valuable target demographic subsets on the search network.

4. Location Extensions for YouTube Ads

Good: A random person watches your video on YouTube. Better: A prospect watches your video on YouTube. Best: A prospect sees your video, notices the location extensions below it, and visits your physical store to buy unique shoelaces, long-lasting chewing gum, or [insert your product or service here]. That’s the reality of today’s PPC.

5. Introducing Google Surveys 360

Account managers, this one’s for you! With Surveys 360, users can:

• Design a survey
• Find a targeted audience sample online
• Get results fast Why is this important? This tool promises to make A/B testing MUCH EASIER by allowing you to get customer feedback. You can better understand what works (and what doesn’t) by asking someone why they clicked your ad.

Our marketing services team was most impressed with this feature. Nic D’Amato, a Senior Paid Search Strategist, said, “It’ll be helpful with remarketing and ad copy testing; it has many applications, and I can’t wait to try it out.”

6. AMP Ads and Landing Pages for Search & Display

Mobile is crucial. (Obviously.) According to Google, every additional second it takes a landing page to load translates to a 20% decrease in conversion rate. That’s a problem, so you need fast(er) landing pages, and you need them now.

Google’s latest solution to improve page speed is AMP landing pages. But wait, there’s more. Google has also introduced Display ads for AMP pages, in addition to sending search traffic to AMP pages (as you can already do organically). These ads are said to load up to five seconds faster than regular Display creative, despite looking exactly the same!

7. Google Optimize: The Long-Awaited Landing Page Solution?

This could be the most interesting announcement from Marketing Next, besides the new UI. Google Optimize will now integrate with AdWords, providing advertisers with greater flexibility in the often cumbersome and time-consuming world of landing page testing.

According to Google: “With the Optimize and AdWords integration, you can quickly and easily create new versions of your landing pages and then apply them to any combination of AdWords campaigns, ad groups, and keywords – no coding or webmaster required.” Just think about that for a moment. Landing page variants that don’t require coding. It’s a PPC dream come true. Simplified landing page testing will give advertisers a considerable advantage, especially when combined with the new Quality Score reporting in AdWords, which allows us to view landing page experience independently. I’m very interested to see how this works in practice and use it on my own clients’ accounts.

8. Introducing Google Attribution

That’s right, another new product! The average customer journey can be quite complex, often spanning the digital and physical worlds. Most attribution solutions don’t make it any easier to track, leaving most marketers unsure “where that conversion actually came from.”

Google Attribution will give you a bird’s eye view of your digital marketing efforts’ true impact. And it’s free. Attribution modeling can be difficult (unless you’re a data scientist), and this will make it easier. How can you not love that?

9. New Landing Page Report

More updates for mobile. What a surprise. This is the most useful takeaway, in my opinion. The new AdWords UI now includes a sophisticated, updated version of the PageSpeed tool.

This new Landing Page Report will allow you to review a site-wide usability report, ask experts questions, and get suggestions for improving a specific page’s load time.

10. Google Assistant Makes Purchasing Simple

It would be amazing if there was a simple way for customers to pay for your products or services, wouldn’t it? What if they could do it from their phone using only their voice? If you think that’s cool, then you and Google are on the same page.

Mobile devices will provide customers with much faster checkout times, according to today’s announcement. (People are using multiple devices now, sometimes up to five in one day.) The coolest part is how Google Assistant will be integrated. Customers can be alerted to the exact quantity of a specific product available at your store in real time by uploading local inventory. While this feature has some limitations (customers must use Android Pay, the Play Store, or a payment method stored in Chrome), it’s the way of the future.

11. Meet Cookie the Dog

Last but not least, Bhanu Narasimhan’s dog, Cookie, stole the show.

Let me know in the comments if you have any questions about Cookie or how these updates and features will affect your AdWords campaigns. More Google Marketing Live content:

• Google Marketing Livestream 2021: What You Really Need to Know
• 9 Massive Changes Coming to Google Ads #GoogleMarketingLive 2019
• Mind-Blowing Statistics from Google Marketing Live 2018
• 11 Changes & New Features Coming to AdWords: What You Need to Know (2017 GML)