Google Sends AI Growth Plans to Advertisers

Google Ads is rolling out new personalised guidance to business advertisers, encouraging them to embrace AI-driven solutions and broader targeting strategies for improving campaign performance. These personalised plans are designed to help advertisers enhance their ads over a three-month period, providing clear steps for improvement.

The emails, titled “Personalised action plan for growth,” are being sent to business advertisers and include a structured, weekly improvement plan. According to an X post by Govind Singh Panwar, the emails also contain a progress tracker to monitor completed and pending actions.

The guidance places a strong emphasis on improving ad strength, with clear calls to action aimed at helping businesses enhance their ads’ performance. Google claims that improving ad strength from a “Poor” to “Excellent” rating could result in an average 12% increase in conversions.

While this new initiative offers a comprehensive path for advertisers to enhance their campaigns, critics argue that it may primarily serve Google’s own interests. By pushing AI and broader targeting strategies, Google could be positioning itself to gain more control over the advertising ecosystem, potentially benefiting from increased reliance on its tools and services.

The new Google Ads campaign has introduced a series of emails designed to guide advertisers towards improved campaign performance using AI-driven strategies. These emails, which come with the subject line “Personalised action plan for growth,” aim to provide business advertisers with a structured three-month improvement plan. The emails are intended to assist advertisers in optimising their campaigns over the span of the next few weeks, helping them navigate the process step-by-step.

Each email includes a progress tracker that allows advertisers to track their completed actions and identify any pending tasks. The progress tracker ensures that the steps outlined in the improvement plan are followed methodically, keeping advertisers on track. Additionally, the email includes clear calls to action that focus on improving ad strength, with the promise that improving ad strength from “Poor” to “Excellent” can lead to an average 12% increase in conversions.

However, there’s more to these emails than just helpful advice. The guidance pushes advertisers towards strategies that are heavily influenced by Google’s own preferences, effectively nudging them into adopting AI-based and broader targeting approaches. This includes enabling “personalized recommendations” through Google’s AI, adding broad-match keywords to campaigns, and creating Performance Max campaigns, which are known for using Google’s black-box AI technology.

The suggestion to enable personalized recommendations points directly to Google’s AI suggestions, which are designed to optimise ads automatically based on data-driven insights. While this could lead to improvements in some cases, it also means that advertisers would be giving more control to Google’s algorithm, reducing their influence over ad targeting and management.

The recommendation to add broad-match keywords, a practice which is often associated with higher ad spend, raises concerns about how these suggestions could affect a business’s budget. Broad-match keywords are known to increase ad spend, as they trigger ads for a wider range of search terms, which can sometimes result in less precise targeting. This means that advertisers could end up paying for clicks that are less relevant to their products or services.

Another key suggestion is the creation of Performance Max campaigns, a campaign type that uses Google’s AI to handle everything from ad creation to targeting and bidding. These campaigns are often described as “black-box” because advertisers have little visibility into how Google’s algorithms make decisions. The lack of transparency can make it difficult for advertisers to understand exactly how their campaigns are performing or why certain decisions are being made.

The combination of these recommendations represents a clear push by Google to encourage advertisers to adopt its automated solutions and more expansive targeting options. By promoting these strategies, Google is effectively trying to standardise the way advertisers operate within its ecosystem. The “personalized” plans sent out to advertisers seem to follow a templated format, which could lead to more homogenised advertising approaches across businesses, even those in competing sectors.

What’s more concerning is that as more advertisers follow these recommended practices, those who choose not to may see their performance suffer. Google’s algorithms are likely to favour advertisers who follow the company’s preferred strategies, potentially giving them a competitive advantage. This could create a situation where businesses that don’t embrace Google’s AI-driven recommendations struggle to maintain the same level of visibility or engagement.

The emphasis on AI-driven tools and broader targeting options means that advertisers who choose not to invest in these services may be at a disadvantage. By encouraging the use of tools like Performance Max campaigns and broad-match keywords, Google is effectively steering advertisers towards solutions that require larger budgets and a greater reliance on its technology.

At its core, this email campaign represents Google’s effort to promote its automated systems and broaden its targeting capabilities. While the recommendations are presented as personalised action plans to improve performance, they closely mirror Google’s own objectives of increasing the adoption of its tools and services. As businesses embrace these solutions, they are likely to spend more on ads, thus benefiting Google’s bottom line.

In the long run, Google’s push for broader targeting and AI-powered tools may lead to a more uniform advertising environment. As more businesses adopt these tools, the competition among advertisers may intensify, particularly as many will be following the same set of recommendations. This could reduce the overall diversity of advertising strategies across the platform, making it harder for smaller businesses to stand out or differentiate themselves.

However, the question remains: will advertisers continue to adopt these strategies, or will they begin to look for alternative solutions? Google’s dominance in the digital advertising space has already led many businesses to rely heavily on its platform, but as more of its recommendations push for bigger budgets and greater automation, some advertisers may begin to question whether these strategies are truly in their best interests.

In conclusion, while Google’s new email campaign is framed as personalised guidance, it heavily promotes the adoption of automated solutions and broad targeting methods. These strategies are designed to benefit Google by encouraging more ad spend and reliance on its technology. For advertisers, it’s important to carefully consider whether these recommendations align with their goals or whether they should explore other, potentially more customisable approaches.