Google This Week: Google Marketing Livestream Updates & More

It’s been a massive week at Google This Week with a major, unconfirmed algorithm update and many announcements coming out of the Google Marketing Livestream event, including image extensions now available globally, new travel products, more eCommerce options and new ways to increase in-store sales with online ads, plus a new consent experience in Tag Manager.

ICYMI, here’s what happened at Google This Week.

• Unconfirmed Major Algorithm Update
• Google Announces Dynamic Ad Insertion Pod Serving
• OGG Support In Display & Video 360
• Assign Tracking Ads to Audio Placements
• Assign HTML5 Creatives in Campaign Manager 360
• Google Rolls Out News Showcase to Desktop
• Google Sunsets Rich Result Search Appearance in Search Console
• Changes to Adobe Integration in Search Ads 360
• New Accessible Maps Tools Rolled Out in Sydney
• Image Extensions Now Available Globally
• Travel Product Updates Announced
• New Ways to Increase In-store Sales With Your Online Ads
• Google Adds More eCommerce Options, Plus Free Integration for WooCommerce, GoDaddy and Square
• Google Unveils New Consent Experience in Tag Manager

Unconfirmed Major Algorithm Update

There appears to be a large algorithm update going on since the weekend with all tracking tools showing major fluctuations. According to Barry Schwartz,

“This is at the levels of a core update or the old Penguin and Panda updates.”

However, an update has not been confirmed by Google. Have you noticed any changes?

Google Announces Dynamic Ad Insertion Pod Serving

Google Ad Manager’s Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI) provides TV partners an end to end solution to deliver personalised ad experiences for ad-supported video content. Now, Google has announced DAI Pod Serving, which simplifies OTT streaming complexity by integrating with your existing first or third-party streaming workflow.

Partners will no longer need to send their content to Ad Manager – they own their entire streaming workflow. Ad Manager provides them with “ready-to-stitch” ad pods they can stitch into their content. With DAI Pod Serving you can integrate Google’s ad decisioning technology into your first or third-party video streaming service.

OGG Support In Display & Video 360

You can now upload OGG assets for audio creatives in Display & Video 360 and Campaign Manager 360, starting this week.

Assign Tracking Ads to Audio Placements

Soon, you’ll be able to assign tracking ads to audio placements in Campaign Manager 360 and assign them to YouTube audio creatives in Display & Video 360 as well as third-party ad served audio creatives.

Assign HTML5 Creatives in Campaign Manager 360

Next month, you’ll be able to assign HTML5 display and rich media creatives to default ads in Campaign Manager 360. Currently, you can only assign image creatives to default ads.

Google Rolls Out News Showcase to Desktop

Google has announced a few new features for News Showcase, including the rollout to desktop.

“Most people will see News Showcase panels right on their Top Stories page, the first page they land on in Google News. Here, right below the top stories of the day, we’ve added a new carousel containing the latest News Showcase panels from publishers they already follow, as well from publishers they might be interested in.”

Google is also enabling publishers to add context around their stories with linked bullet points in their panels.

Google Sunsets Rich Result Search Appearance in Search Console

Google has decided to sunset the Rich result search appearance in the Search Console Performance reports. A few years ago Google created a generic “Rich results” search appearance group which included multiple rich result types, however, Google believes this is no longer required with breakout rows for most rich result types.

Changes to Adobe Integration in Search Ads 360

Adobe has announced that it plans to deprecate support for OAuth 1.4 next month. To avoid issues in Search Ads 360, advertisers using OAuth 1.4 to integrate with Adobe Analytics need to switch to Adobe JWT for authentication.

If you’re using OAuth 2.0 to integrate, you won’t be impacted, but we still suggest switching to JWT for a better authentication experience.

New Accessible Maps Tools Rolled Out in Sydney

Google has launched a number of new Google Maps features, including indoor Street View imagery for 130 train stations and a dozen metro stations in Sydney. Google is also bringing detailed navigation directions for accessible routes across 70 complex train and metro stations across Sydney to Google Maps.

And in a world first, Google is sharing these navigation directions with Transport for NSW which will be published to the NSW government’s Open Data Portal to allow the transport industry and app developers to access the information.

Image Extensions Now Available Globally

Google has announced that image extensions are now available globally. Image extensions can complement your Search ad with relevant visuals. Early results have shown, on average, a 10% increase in click-through rate when image extensions show in mobile Search ads.

You can also opt-in to dynamic image extensions. Dynamic image extensions are currently available in English and will roll out in additional languages over the coming months.

Travel Product Updates Announced

At Google Marketing Livestream, Google shared its focus areas as travel begins to reopen. Three new products were highlighted:

1. Vacation rentals in Hotel results
2. Hotel booking extensions in-text ads
3. Enhancements to commissions (per stay) bidding

With more interest in smaller, local destinations, Google will begin showing vacation rental listings within the Hotel results page for a given destination.

Google recently introduced hotel booking extensions, which automatically surfaces Hotel Ads feed data within Search text ads extensions. Google will begin showing this experience for select advertisers and will open it up more broadly in the coming weeks.

Google is making commissions (per stay), which was introduced last year to eliminate the risk associated with cancellations, easier to use. There’s now a per-booking report in Google Ads and see post-cancellation performance metrics. Later in the year, Google will also be introducing bid adjustment support for commission (per stay) campaigns and Google will be enabling credit card billing and additional currency support.

New Ways to Increase In-store Sales With Your Online Ads

Google has announced new ways to increase in-store sales with your online ads, including new inventory to reach nearby customers in Google Maps. Google has added three new ways for Local campaigns to show up on Google Maps.

1. Auto-suggest ads show your nearby location to users searching for businesses like yours
2. Navigational ads promote your business while people are using Google Maps to navigate
3. Similar places ads show your business location to people searching for similar businesses nearby

Outside of Maps, you can now show your location-specific product inventory in YouTube ads and later, this feature will be expanded to Search and Maps ads. Google is also expanding Local campaigns measurement. Later this year, you’ll be able to understand sales driven by Local campaigns vis store sales reporting.

You can also now highlight what’s available for pickup nearby. In your local inventory ads, you can show products that are available for immediate store pickup, pickup later or curbside pickup. And if you’re not yet on local inventory ads, you can use your existing Shopping ads feed to power pickup later (in beta).

Google Adds More eCommerce Options, Plus Free Integration for WooCommerce, GoDaddy and Square

Last week at Google I/O Google announced a new Shopify integration, and now Google has announced that retailers on WooCommerce, GoDaddy and Square will soon be able to integrate with Google easily and for free.

To help build your brand on Google, Google has also announced new tools to help you connect with your customers. You’ll be able to curate how your brand appears on Google through videos, rich lifestyle imagery and interactive story formats.

Google is also piloting a merchant loyalty program integration so users can see your loyalty pricing and benefits when they first start shopping on Google. And, later this year you’ll see a deals results page on Search and the Shopping tab, plus new real-time, deal optimization reporting is coming to Merchant Center.

Google Unveils New Consent Experience in Tag Manager

Google has unveiled a new consent experience in Tag Manager. Users of Tag Manager and Tag Manager 360 are now able to directly integrate with Consent Mode and easily incorporate user consent into the behaviour of all tags on their website.

Now, consent management solutions can build tag templates directly into the Community Template Gallery using a new set of sandboxed JavaScript APIs that work with Consent Mode.

Google is also introducing a new trigger type, Consent Initialization, which enables tags that require user consent choice to fire before all other tags. In Tag Manager, you can now also see and customise each tag’s consent settings and Google is adding new consent types as well.

To get a complete view of the consent settings across all the tags in your container, you can now enable a new Consent Overview from your container settings. These new capabilities are available in beta in all Tag Manager and Tag Manager 360 accounts today.

Thank You for Reading

Have you noticed any changes from Google this week?

Check back next Friday for the latest from Google This Week.