• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, July 10, 2018

Google on Tuesday announced several ad tools built on artificial intelligence, aimed at helping marketers automate and develop more effective advertising campaigns. The idea is to let artificial intelligence fine-tune ads.

The automation will now be integrated into every form of campaign management, from bidding to dynamic headlines, as well as creative and targeting.

The tools unveiled for Google Ads at a Google Marketing Live event range from responsive search ads that use machine learning to mix, match and optimize content to optimizing ad performance on YouTube by automatically adjusting bids.

Google VP of Product Management Jerry Dischler in a blog post explained that the growing complexity of platforms far surpasses the ability of marketers to design ad highly effective advertising campaigns. He wrote that marketers will have the ability to choose from up to 15 headlines and four description lines, and Google will do the rest by choosing the best combinations. Google learns which ad creative performs the best for any search query by testing different combinations, so people searching for the same thing might see different ads based on context.

The new tools also include Local Campaigns aimed at getting more consumers into physical stores by optimizing where ads appear across various Google’s services such as Search, YouTube, Display, Maps and more.

Advertisers provide information such as business location and creative ad pieces. They also must set a budget and the ads are generated automatically based on the creative elements input into the system, similar to Smart Campaigns, which Google introduced for small businesses in June.  

Then there is Smart Shopping -- a slight update from a previous version -- which optimizes campaigns based on criteria and goals selected by marketers.

Shopify is Google’s first e-commerce platform integration that allows businesses to set up and manage Smart shopping campaigns without having to switch between platforms. Marketers with a Shopify account can set up Smart shopping campaigns natively onto their platform.

GittiGidiyor, an eBay company, is using Smart shopping campaigns through the Google Ads platform to simplify how they manage their ads and gain better results. GittiGidiyor was able to increase return on ad spend by 28% and drive 4% more sales, while saving time managing campaigns.