Automation of Google Ad Campaigns: What It Means to Agencies
Google is bringing their ‘Ads Experts’ to manage campaigns. “We’ll focus on your campaigns, so you can focus on your business,” says the email Google sent to some advertisers in the last week of January.
Before we start getting paranoid about AI and machine learning taking over the advertising agencies, let’s understand more about this new feature and how it may change the advertising ecosystem.
- The Opt-out Option
Although advertisers are auto opted-in to the program, Google will give them the option to opt-out and be in full control of their ads. This feature is useful as agencies are better integrated with their clients and therefore more in tune with their needs.
- The Multi-channel and Cross-channel Marketing
Apart from Google Ads Campaigns, agencies manage multiple other channels for their clients like Facebook, LinkedIn and programmatic ads, to name a few. So, agencies need a broader view of how their clients’ ads are performing across channels. The integrated reports from multiple channels allow advertisers to gauge the overall performance and decide whether to pause, activate or increase the exposure of these ads.
- Siloed Approach
Companies relying solely on Google’s recommendations will have a siloed approach to digital marketing. And as Google has carefully mentioned, “advertisers are still responsible for the results of their campaigns.” Agencies are far better equipped to control the performance of the ads as they work closely with their clients and have access to their entire marketing portfolio.
- Less Grunt Work, More Strategic Thinking
Google indicated that their experts will help identify the structural changes to ad groups and modify the keywords to adjust bids and ad text for greater impact, without touching the budgets. This means the agency’s roles will evolve into focusing more on strategy and less on time spent on day-to-day repetitive tasks.
If Google’s words are anything to go by, they have clearly stated that they do not “guarantee or promise any particular results from implementing these changes”, so agencies still have complete ownership of the campaign and its results and while the recommendations from Google will be helpful, they should not place complete faith in the optimization efforts.
- The announcement might have given a bit of a shock to agencies initially, and the changes could potentially lead to some organizational restructuring at their end, but the future is clearly a lot more worry-free, strategic, and impact-oriented for them.
