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Our VP of Client Experience, Francisco Lacayo, and our Head of Strategic Partnerships, Gary Garth kicked off last week by attending two of the biggest Google events of the year in San Jose, California: Google Marketing Live 2018 and the Annual Google Partner Summit. These events bring together leading digital marketers from around the world and truly shape the future of marketing. We are so proud to be a part of it!
A Quick Breakdown of our Three Days at the Event
Throughout the event, Francisco and Gary were able to meet several industry leaders and partners, and share insights on the upcoming industry trends. They joined a session specifically on the Automotive industry and the strategies that will be leading the expansion process in 2019. They also attended the main Google Marketing Live session on the second day, where all of Google’s new products and features were announced. Google unveiled a set of new ad formats powered by machine learning, which will certainly change the way we do advertising here at White Shark Media.
On the last day of the event, our team was able to spend some time with product managers within the sandbox, where they tested most of the new products that were announced during the event. They got feedback on best practices and how to embrace the transition towards the new features.
The White Shark Media team was also able to join several partner sessions, where ideas were shared with other partners and end advertisers. These sessions allowed them to understand the main areas of opportunities within the industry, and how we can take advantage of them.
Our Main Takeaways
After attending the event, our team there came away with some definite trends in the industry. It’s exciting to see how these changes will affect how we do business, and how our clients can succeed in their paid campaign efforts.
#1 Responsive search ads are becoming more complex. In the near future, advertisers will be required to provide headlines and descriptions for the ad copy, and Google will test different combinations in order to optimize them based on performance. This offers a huge added value to search campaigns and we can’t wait to put it into practice!
#2 Are you ready to take your YouTube ads up to another level? We are too! Now, Google is bringing about smart bidding for YouTube campaigns, which aligns with the rise of video ads across all industries. This will mean a boost in performance and overall brand awareness, something we have been waiting to get for a long time.
#3 Google has put an emphasis on local campaigns for several years now, ever since the Pigeon update in 2014, and 2018 is no different. Locally-based ads are designed to attract visitors to your brick-and-mortar store. Google will now be optimizing campaigns by measuring store visits and will use automation across different properties. This is an excellent upgrade for local businesses!
#4 The White Shark Media team feels that the changes to “smart shopping campaigns” is probably the biggest news from the event. Google will now allow for creating smart feeds by crawling websites, and it will also allow us to automate campaign creation and bidding strategies with a specific ROAS target. This will change the way we do shopping campaigns and will allow thousands of advertisers to jump into the shopping network!
Don’t take our word for it, though. Watch the YouTube video below and experience the excitement and knowledge of the event for yourself!
