Great read. Your comments on AI impact on the paid loop are spot on...my team at Google was beta testing many of the new AI features in our ads product last year. Some additional context / points:
a) I personally don't think there is much risk of ads losing real estate. The SGE rollout was intentionally quite limited (only to users who opted for Labs mode). The recent pivot to Bard (now Gemini - lower tier option) being part of a Google One subscription offering vs. rolled out in the search experience for all (which would then possibly conflict with ads business model) also indicates that they are trying to separate the two.
b) Yes, predictive / analytical AI has been deployed in performance marketing for many years - primarily in targeting & bidding (audiences that have higher propensity to convert - either volume or value) and smart creative (responsive search & display) across Meta and Google. And yes - the wave of Generative AI does bring in net new creation (responsive ads were more permutation / combination vs. net new). Completely agree that advertisers can get lost in a sea of sameness, so our hypothesis was that the 'big creative idea' [with human influence] is even more (not less) important and Gen AI can take on a lot of the long tail production or versioning [eg. seasonal / promo creatives or vernacular use cases - i.e. cases where it's likely more cost efficient than a creative team doing this].
c) The other pain point that small advertisers (without agency support) have with setting up campaigns on Google / Meta is that it can be a complex, heavy lift to get campaigns live with the right settings. I know both platforms have also launched AI assistants to streamline this process...remains to to be seen if this either brings in new advertisers or speeds up their 'aha' moment of activation [reminded of the Reforge acquisition session a few weeks ago].
Great read. Your comments on AI impact on the paid loop are spot on...my team at Google was beta testing many of the new AI features in our ads product last year. Some additional context / points:
a) I personally don't think there is much risk of ads losing real estate. The SGE rollout was intentionally quite limited (only to users who opted for Labs mode). The recent pivot to Bard (now Gemini - lower tier option) being part of a Google One subscription offering vs. rolled out in the search experience for all (which would then possibly conflict with ads business model) also indicates that they are trying to separate the two.
b) Yes, predictive / analytical AI has been deployed in performance marketing for many years - primarily in targeting & bidding (audiences that have higher propensity to convert - either volume or value) and smart creative (responsive search & display) across Meta and Google. And yes - the wave of Generative AI does bring in net new creation (responsive ads were more permutation / combination vs. net new). Completely agree that advertisers can get lost in a sea of sameness, so our hypothesis was that the 'big creative idea' [with human influence] is even more (not less) important and Gen AI can take on a lot of the long tail production or versioning [eg. seasonal / promo creatives or vernacular use cases - i.e. cases where it's likely more cost efficient than a creative team doing this].
c) The other pain point that small advertisers (without agency support) have with setting up campaigns on Google / Meta is that it can be a complex, heavy lift to get campaigns live with the right settings. I know both platforms have also launched AI assistants to streamline this process...remains to to be seen if this either brings in new advertisers or speeds up their 'aha' moment of activation [reminded of the Reforge acquisition session a few weeks ago].