Meta Launches Threads: Advertiser Q&A

Meta Launches Threads: Advertiser Q&A

Instagram Meta Threads Twitter

In just five days, Meta’s Threads app has become the fastest-growing app in history, with 100 million users, and counting. Threads is basically a Twitter clone, and because it’s connected to a user’s Instagram account, so far both brands and people alike have been posting content that pretty much resembles what they’d post on Twitter and Insta. Let’s take a closer look at Threads by answering some commonly asked questions brands might have about it.

What exactly is Threads, and why does it exist?

As noted, Threads gives its user base a place to post the same kind of rapid-fire posts that they share on Twitter and Instagram. There is a 500-character limit for posting. Users can respond to each other’s posts, and they can link to photos, video, and external URLs as with Twitter. It’s one of a handful of Twitter rivals, including Bluesky and Mastadon, that have emerged to challenge Twitter’s long-established lead as a micro-blogging platform.

Interest in Threads has intensified in light of Twitter’s ongoing service problems and a reported rise in hate speech on Twitter, which has made the app less appealing for both brands and everyday users. Twitter has 354 million users – which is a sizable audience, making it tempting for a rival to create its own similar platform. But Twitter is a firmly ensconced platform. It would take someone with a lot of clout to rival the company. Meta has that kind of clout.

How do you sign up for Threads?

You need to have an Instagram account to sign up. From there, you download the app from your iOS or Android device.

Wait – I have to have an Instgram account to sign up for Threads? What are the implications of Threads being connected to Instagram?

Yes, you need to be on Instagram to be on Threads. Technically, Threads is in fact a stand-alone social network with its own app, but you need Instagram to sign up for it.

When you sign up for Threads, you can choose to auto-follow all of the accounts you follow on Instagram. This means that if your Instagram followers also sign up for Threads, they will automatically start following you back.

This is a great way to grow your Threads following quickly. However, it’s important to note that not everyone who auto-follows you will be interested in your content. So, it’s still important to post high-quality content and engage with your followers.

But what if you don’t want to be on Threads anymore? Well, if you decide you don’t like Threads, you cannot delete your Threads account unless you also delete your Instagram account.

If you violate Threads’s community guidelines and get your Threads account banned, your Instagram account will also be banned. To change your Threads username, you must also change your Instagram username.

How did Threads get so big so fast?

It’s all about the Instagram integration. Threads has instant access to Instagram’s 2.35 billion monthly active users. Meta made it easy for anyone to sign up through Instagram – and that’s not all. Meta also made it easy to import your Instagram profile. The auto-follow button, which allows your new Threads account to follow every account you follow on Instagram, created an instant Threads following for anyone on Instagram.

What kind of content should I post on Threads?

For now, businesses and people are posting the same kind of content that they post on Twitter and Instagram. So, what’s good for those platforms will be just right for Threads. Remember, your initial following comes from your Instagram audience – so it makes sense to be as visual as you can.

Social Media Manager Bri Reynolds suggests that you go grab your top-performing evergreen tweets, post one or a few as your initial Thread content. You’ve already proven they’re successful elsewhere.

Down the road, as Threads evolves, brands might develop a separate content strategy for Threads. But for now, Threads has quickly become a platform for cross-posting.

What caveats should I be aware of?

As noted above, if you want to delete your Threads, you need to delete your Insta.

Threads lacks a lot of functionality that users have become accustomed to on other platforms, including a lack of hash tagging and direct messaging capacity. There is no desktop version, and there is no chronological feed (although Instagram says a chronological feed will be coming soon).

Threads collects the same data as its parent company. This includes users’ physical addresses, health and fitness data, and sensitive information such as biometric and ethnic data. Twitter, on the other hand, does not collect these types of data.

Being present on Threads could become burdensome to your social media team. There is a tremendous amount of pressure for brands to experiment there. Make sure you have the bandwidth.

Is advertising coming to Threads?

Not yet. But as reported in Advertising Age, Meta is talking with ad agencies and brands about how the platform will work and has shared a presentation with several agencies outlining how Threads could potentially become the new Twitter. Meta has told advertisers that it will ensure brand safety by applying Instagram’s own community guidelines. If you want to get an early take on how Threads advertising will work, Instagram’s own ad units are a good place to start given the integration of the two apps.

Here are some specific examples of how Threads advertising may work (based on the Instagram experience):

  • Advertisers may be able to target their ads to users based on their interests, location, or demographics.
  • Ads may be displayed in the form of sponsored posts, promoted stories, or promoted video.
  • Ads may be placed alongside organic content in the Threads feed.

It is still too early to say exactly how Threads advertising will work, but one thing is certain: ads will come to Threads.

Contact True Interactive

At True Interactive, we’re following the rise of Threads closely. To succeed in the ever-changing world of online advertising, contact True Interactive. Read about some of our client work here, and learn about our social media services here.

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Will TikTok’s Visual Search Feature Create More Advertising Opportunities?

Will TikTok’s Visual Search Feature Create More Advertising Opportunities?

TikTok Uncategorized

TikTok is testing visual search in its e-commerce platform, TikTok Shop. The introduction of visual search could mark a substantial improvement in the platform’s e-commerce capabilities, although time will tell. With visual search, users may now find and buy related products by uploading or taking a photo. In TikTok Shop, visual search could improve the buying experience by streamlining the product discovery process and giving consumers an easier method to find and buy things that attract their attention. TikTok Shop aims to enhance traffic and engagement on the site by integrating visual search. This offers integration of e-commerce features that might boost sales and revenue.

Boosting Sales and Brand Growth with TikTok Shop

TikTok Shop was introduced in November 2022 as an e-commerce choice to increase sales and promote brand expansion. Thanks to this service, users can search and purchase goods from their favorite creators and companies inside the TikTok app. This is an important way that TikTok hopes to generate revenue for itself and businesses.

How to Use Visual Search

The visual search feature is brand new, so it can be puzzling to figure out. Users access it by clicking the camera icon in the search box, which leads the platform to display the message “Take a photo or upload an image to find similar products.” Using visual signals, the latest advancement promises to make it simple for users to find and buy products, which TikTok says will streamline the shopping experience and raise conversion rates.

The Present Test Phase

Before expanding the feature more broadly, the platform may gather data, analyze user input, and adjust tweaks. That way, TikTok manages the risks involved with a vast audience, but it also means that the visual search functionality within the TikTok Shop has yet to reach its full potential.

Challenges

According to early reports, TikTok Shop’s performance does raise some concern. Although TikTok has ambitious goals, there are questions about the feature’s return on investment (ROI) for e-commerce companies. These worries are reminiscent of the difficulties faced by other social commerce sites, including Instagram and Pinterest. For instance, Instagram recently dropped its “Shops” feature because of low user interest. The difficulties these platforms have had making money through social commerce show potential problems that TikTok Shop might encounter.

Advertising Opportunities

TikTok’s visual search has significant consequences for advertisers looking to increase brand visibility and successfully connect with their target audience. Advertisers can take advantage of TikTok’s improved product discovery capabilities by utilizing this feature, making it easier for users to find and explore their items. Advertisers may develop appealing ad campaigns that align with the preferences and interests of their target audience thanks to visual search, which offers a more immersive and intuitive purchasing experience.

The success of advertising on the TikTok platform can vary. Despite TikTok’s enormous popularity, there is still debate over the return on investment for the platform’s ad campaigns. While other advertisers have had inconsistent results, some have reported satisfactory results and success in reaching their target demographic.

Data-Driven Insights

As TikTok improves its e-commerce capabilities, agencies should carefully track user activity and growth. Visual search interaction data breakdown can offer critical insights for improving marketing tactics, recognizing trends, and improving audience targeting.

It is still too early to assess the full usefulness of TikTok’s trial use of visual search. Although the potential advantages appear intriguing, there currently needs to be more conclusive proof of visual search’s efficacy. Understanding the effects of visual search in TikTok’s Shop feature will require ongoing observation. During this trial, digital marketing agencies and e-commerce businesses should pay special attention to customer behavior and feedback to learn more about its potential advantages. It’s crucial to view TikTok’s trial of visual search with a cautious sense of hope and to keep evaluating its success as current information becomes available.

Contact True Interactive

To succeed in the ever-changing world of online advertising, contact True Interactive. Read about some of our client work here.

Apple Increases the Stakes in the Consumer Privacy Wars

Apple Increases the Stakes in the Consumer Privacy Wars

Apple

Apple’s 2023 Worldwide Developers Conference generated a lot of news coverage because Apple unveiled its long-anticipated mixed reality headset, VisionPro. But the device won’t hit the market until 2024, and only early adopters with $3,500 to spare will use it (initially). Meanwhile, Apple announced something more impactful to the advertising world: a new privacy control.

Coming Soon: iOS 17

Apple’s iOS 17, the company’s newest operating system, will add greater protection for private browsing, both from trackers as a user browses, and from people who might have access to a user’s device. Advanced tracking and fingerprinting protections go even further to help prevent websites from tracking or identifying a user’s device. Private browsing will lock when not in use, allowing a user to keep tabs open even when stepping away from the device.

Apple will also add link tracking protection in Messages, mail, and Safari browsing. The default setting is private browsing, but the feature can apply to all browsing if it’s turned on under a user’s device settings.

Link tracking protection could have some major impacts. Some websites add extra information to their URLs in order to track users across other websites. Now this information will be removed from the links users share in Messages and mail. This information will also be removed from links in Safari private browsing.

Digging Deeper

Advertisers and analytics firms employ a method of tracking user activity across websites by adding tracking parameters to links. Instead of relying on third-party cookies, they append a tracking identifier to the end of the page URL. This approach evades Safari’s intelligent tracking prevention features that block cross-site cookies and other forms of session storage.

When a user visits such a URL, the analytics or advertising service at the destination can access the URL and extract the unique parameters. These parameters are then associated with the service’s backend user profile, enabling the delivery of personalized ads.

To address this practice, Apple is taking measures to curtail it across its operating systems this year. Safari will automatically identify the identifying components of the URL and remove only those parts, leaving the remaining URL intact so that users can still reach their intended web page.

This process occurs during browser navigation in Safari’s private browsing mode, as well as when clicking on links in the Mail and Messages apps.

As a partial solution, Apple has introduced an alternative method for advertisers to measure the success of their campaigns. Private Click Measurement, available in Safari’s private browsing mode, allows advertisers to track conversion metrics without disclosing individual user activity.

Implications of iOS 17

What are the implications? Well, iOS 17 won’t hit until likely September 2023, so no one knows for sure yet. But based on what we know, the new feature could disrupt the audience creation process on platforms such as Meta, Google, and Microsoft due to the parameters being stripped, but aggregated metric data will likely be OK. Apple will not be able to kill those nor the little redirects as they’re necessary for the marketplace and part of the auditing process.

But iOS could disrupt email marketing. In email marketing, links to websites often contain personalized identifiers that track user activity. Apple is taking steps to eliminate this personalized information from links clicked within the Apple mail client. This change may have implications not only for attribution but also for other integrations that rely on such information, such as how websites apply promotions. If you are currently building audiences or affinity models based on user click-through from emails, it is expected that these audiences will see a significant decrease as users adopt this feature.

In terms of marketing, it is important to anticipate how reporting will function in the future. As I noted, with regards to attribution, Apple has been advocating for the use of Private Click Measurement. This tool allows advertisers to track ad campaign conversion metrics without revealing individual user activity, striking a balance between advertising needs and user privacy. As attribution becomes increasingly challenging due to technical policies and regulations, it may be the right moment to embrace attribution methods that prioritize user privacy.

The complete impact of this update remains uncertain for numerous companies, posing challenges for those currently relying on query parameters for on-site personalization or deep linking. While there are potential workarounds, they are not without difficulties, and the overall user experience may be less than satisfactory for some individuals.

Contact True Interactive

At True Interactive, we’re following all latest updates to consumer privacy and adapting our own tools accordingly. We have our clients covered. Contact us to learn how we can help you.

Why College Athletes Are a Co-Branding Gold Mine

Why College Athletes Are a Co-Branding Gold Mine

Branding

As college athletes have been appearing increasingly in the marketing world, it is clear that the landscape of sports marketing has shifted completely. No longer are these athletes limited to the exposure and branding that their universities allowed for; instead, they now have the freedom to enter into deals with outside businesses to promote their own image and personal brand. As an athlete myself, I have observed the significant changes brought about by NIL, both within my own experiences and through the journeys of my fellow teammates.

What Is NIL?

So, what exactly is NIL? Standing for name, image, and likeness, it acts on how college athletes can now receive compensation for representing different marketing promoters. This new and fresh effect of NIL rights on the marketing environment is apparent, according to a Forbes piece “How Brands and College Athletes Can Navigate Name, Image, and Likeness Marketing.” The article emphasizes the enormous potential for marketers and athletes to form successful partnerships and negotiate this new setting.  College athletes are now empowered to associate themselves with businesses that share their beliefs and objectives because they have influence over the personal brand journeys they take. This not only improves their reputation and relationship with fans, but it also gives businesses a special chance to capitalize on the zeal and power of collegiate athletes, boosting their marketing initiatives. The article encourages both businesses and athletes to think about long-term goals and mutually beneficial relationships, highlighting the significance of authenticity when handling NIL marketing. This is consistent with my experience as an athlete who has seen the transforming benefits of NIL on prospects for personal branding and marketing.

My Experience

Being an athlete, I have been educated about the appeal and gain that one could acquire by signing with a brand. From seeing Angel Reese becoming the highest paid athlete to a few of my own teammates make a steady income, it gives a lot of hope for the future and what one could potentially accomplish. Athletes now have more control over their personal brand image thanks to their capacity to bargain endorsement deals and explore brand collaborations. I have had the privilege of witnessing my teammate, Jack Dalhgren, a talented swimmer, be endorsed by TallSlim Tees. Even though it doesn’t directly correlate with swimming, he has been a loyal customer of TallSlim Tee’s for quite some time. Essentially, he is responsible for posting on various media platforms promoting TallSlim Tee’s to reach his audience and represent their brand. Fortunately, I help run his social media accounts to help boost his image and likeness. Part of my job is to keep up with trends on TikTok or come up with an original post to assist his success within the company. It not only has allowed him to enhance his personal brand and connect with his followers, but to expand his brand. His partnership has inspired not only me, but also other swimmers and athletes to pursue goals of potentially creating deals.

Traditionally, brand deals were dealt to professional athletes or established celebrities. However, the introduction of NIL opens up a world of possibilities and dives into the wealth of untapped talent. By offering these individuals to promote their products and services, it is an effortless way to increase visibility and awareness which leads to remarkable success on both sides of the parties.

As athletes continue to showcase their talents and skill sets, their likeliness from fans grows exponentially. This creates a fantastic opportunity for athletes to leverage their personal brand and connect with business for mutually beneficial marketing partnerships. Working with college players also adds a touch of sincerity and relatability to marketing projects. Athletes serve as role models by exemplifying commitment, tenacity, and cooperation. Their recommendation can have a substantial impact on how customers behave and what they decide to buy. Businesses can make use of this impact to expand their clientele and boost their reputation.

What Brands Should Do

So, what can your business do to start their first or expand on co-branding with college athletes?

  • Familiarize yourself with the landscape! Get comfortable with the rules within NCAA, NAIA, etc. This will help navigate the process effectively.
  • Target the type of athletes you want representing your brand. Take a deep dive on athletes’ values, target audience, and overall goals for your company.
  • Start reaching out and engaging in conversation. Set clear objectives that will be beneficial for all.
  • Be transparent and straightforward about your intentions.
  • Keep it fun!

Overall, the rise of NIL rights for athletes has ushered in a new era of marketing opportunities for both players and companies. Athletes now have the freedom to manage their own brand journeys, forming alliances that are consistent with their goals and values. Due to this development, businesses now have an excellent opportunity to capitalize on the allure and impact of college athletes, build fervent fan bases, and increase the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. Personally, I am eager to witness NIL’s continuous development and influence.

Contact True Interactive

To build your brand online, contact True Interactive. We have deep experience especially in all forms of online advertising.

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Why Meta’s Lattice Architecture Matters

Why Meta’s Lattice Architecture Matters

Artificial Intelligence Meta

Meta continues to demonstrate resilience. In 2022, the company took at $10 billion hit to its bottom after Apple’s privacy controls diminished Meta’s ability to target users with advertising that relies on third-party cookies. Since then, Meta has been developing better ad products that help the company develop targeted ads via first-party data, or the information that customers share with Meta on its apps such as Facebook and Instagram. Meta recently announced a potential breakthrough with Meta Lattice, which uses AI to improve ad targeting.

What Is Meta Lattice?

Meta Lattice is a new model architecture developed by Meta AI that improves the performance and efficiency of Meta’s ads systems. Meta Lattice is a high-capacity architecture that allows the ads system to understand new concepts and relationships more broadly and deeply in data. Meta says this benefits advertisers through joint optimization of a large number of goals.

Meta Lattice is also capable of generalizing its learnings across domains and objectives. This means that it can be used to improve the performance of ads across a variety of apps, such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Meta also says that Lattice can be used to improve the performance of ads even as the way people use Meta’s products changes.

The Potential Impact of Meta Lattice

Here’s a good before/after way to demonstrate the impact of Lattice.

  • Before: Meta had segmented advertising data. Meta maintained distinct datasets for ads presented in feeds, stories, Facebook and Instagram video reels, and other formats. This was also true for objectives, as ads targeting conversion, traffic, and video views were kept separate.
  • Soon: Meta will unify all this information using AI. With Meta Lattice, the platform will decipher patterns that result in enhanced ad performance across various ad formats, objectives, and types. This unification presents Meta’s machine learning algorithms with a larger dataset for learning. According to Meta, this implies better predictions for identifying the most suitable audience for your advertisements, resulting in more conversions through your Facebook Ads Manager — if Lattice does its job.

Meta Lattice is still under development, but it has already shown results. Meta says that in one test, Lattice was able to improve the click-through rate of ads by 10 percent. Meta Lattice is expected to be used to improve the performance of Meta’s ads systems in the future.

Potential Benefits

Here are some of the potential benefits of Meta Lattice:

  • Improved performance: Meta Lattice is able to improve the performance of ads by understanding new concepts and relationships in data.
  • Improved efficiency: Meta Lattice is able to generalize its learnings across domains and objectives, which makes it more efficient to use.
  • Faster adaptability: Meta Lattice is able to adapt to the fast-evolving market landscape, which makes it more effective at delivering relevant ads to users.

It is important that advertisers understand how Meta is developing new ad products. For instance Meta’s Advantage+ ads provide performance marketers advancing ad targeting tools.

As these AI-based platforms evolve, they may become more significant drivers of response, which could help you target the right audience for your offerings without needing to manually set the parameters of each campaign. However, we caution against any advertiser turning over the keys to AI. Advertising campaigns require human supervision to ensure that they continue to meet your objectives. AI advertising tools require human oversight to ensure that its output is accurate, free of bias, and consistent with your brand voice, among other needs.

Contact True Interactive

To succeed in the ever-changing world of online advertising, contact True Interactive. Read about some of our client work here.

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Google Launches New Video Campaign Types

Google Launches New Video Campaign Types

Google YouTube

Nine out of 10 marketers use video as a marketing tool – an all-time high, according to HubSpot. Ninety six percent of marketers  — more than at any point in the past nine years — told HubSpot they see video as an “important part” of their marketing strategy. So it’s no surprise that Google continues to roll out new tools to help marketers capitalize on video advertising.

At Google’s May 23 Marketing Live event, the company launched new ad products intended to capitalize on video:

Video View Campaigns

The main goal of Video View Campaigns is to drive as many views as possible at the lowest cost per view (CPV). Google suggests that these campaigns can potentially increase views by an estimated 40 percent in comparison to the conventional skippable in-stream cost-per-view campaigns. This is achieved by integrating different ad formats, including skippable in-stream ads, in-feed ads, and Shorts ads, and letting Google-powered AI dynamically optimize where the ads are served. This new campaign type sounds ideal for advertisers looking to maximize views by running different ad formats (on different YouTube placements) under a single campaign, instead of splitting creatives by ad format into multiple campaigns. The global launch of the Video Views Campaigns beta is scheduled for the coming month. Ultimately, Google hopes to offer advertisers a broader range of alternatives for connecting with their target audience.

Demand Generation Campaigns

Demand Generation Campaigns are crafted to use AI to engage consumers and motivate them to take action. These campaigns will run on different platforms, such as YouTube Shorts, YouTube in-stream, YouTube in-feed, Discover, and Gmail placements. In contrast to the prior lead form ads, the call to action for these campaigns will direct users to the advertiser’s website, which (says Google) should facilitate simpler conversion tracking.

A noteworthy aspect of Demand Generation Campaigns is the development of lookalike segments based on seed lists. These lists may include first-party data and YouTube users, enabling enhanced targeting through the implementation of lookalike segment settings: narrow (2.5 percent reach), balanced (5 percent reach), and broad (10 percent reach). Ad creatives can be specifically designed for these lookalike segments – which, in theory, should improve the chances that the ads resonate with target audiences.

The development of lookalike segments based on seed lists is a departure from Google’s recent announcement regarding the phaseout of Similar Audiences. When Google first announced the sunsetting of Similar Audiences back in November 2022, Google mentioned that “similar audiences will be transitioned to more durable solutions.” At the time, it appeared as though Google was referring to audience expansion and optimized targeting, which are simple toggles an advertiser can enable or disable for any given audience to have Google find more users that either look like an advertiser’s target segments or are likely to convert. That said, it’s possible that Google is restricting the capabilities of Similar Audiences as we know them by removing them from an advertiser’s view, and reintroducing a more restricted version of these calling them Lookalike Audiences just as we are seeing for Demand Generation Campaigns.

While we were able to create Similar Audiences off rule-based segments such as visitors of “/shop/collections/jackets,” the new Lookalike Audiences seem to only allow the use of first-party or YouTube audiences for their creation. I am curious to see if Google makes Lookalike Audiences available for other campaign types in the near future, or if it still limits their use to Demand Generation video campaigns.

What Advertisers Should Do

We urge advertisers to take an even-handed, critical approach with these new products. Google plays up benefits, but with the benefits come some caveats. As I blogged recently, Google’s ad products have lately been launching without giving advertisers adequate control and visibility into performance so we can clearly see what is working and what is not and adjust our strategy accordingly. This is not to say Google is releasing bad products – but they should provide more visibility and control rather than take a “Just trust Google – we know what we are doing” stance.

At True Interactive, we advocate on behalf of our clients. We are monitoring these developments closely. Contact us to learn how we can help you succeed in all forms of digital advertising.

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Why Google’s Search Generative Experience Matters to Advertisers

Why Google’s Search Generative Experience Matters to Advertisers

Google

Google made its strongest commitment to AI to date at its annual developer conference, Google/IO. The company announced a number of changes to its core products as well as new capabilities powered by AI, especially generative AI. They include:

Bard Available for Everyone

Google’s Bard AI is a powerful tool that can be used for a variety of tasks, including browsing the internet, searching for information from photos, writing code, and working with other apps. Bard is available to everyone, and it does not require a waitlist.

Bard Plugins Are Here

Bard plugins are a new way to extend the capabilities of Bard. There are currently a number of plugins available, including plugins for OpenTable, Kayak, Spotify, Walmart, and Indeed. These plugins allow you to use Bard to do things like make restaurant reservations, book flights, create playlists, and order groceries.

Gmail Is AI-Powered

Google’s new “Help me write” feature in Gmail uses AI to help you write emails. Simply type in a one-line prompt, and AI will automatically generate the rest of the email for you. You can then refine the email as needed.

Google Photos Get a Dose of AI

The new “Magic Editor” feature uses AI to help you edit your photos. You can use Magic Editor to change the lighting, remove objects, and adjust your position in photos. Magic Editor makes it easy to edit your photos like a pro.

Search Gets an Upgrade with the Search Generative Experience

But perhaps the most significant change: the launch of a new search feature, search generative experience (SGE). SGE uses generative AI to share answers to queries in the form of complete “snapshots” of content instead of providing a few rich snippets and links to websites for more information. Search can unfold as a series of questions and follow-up questions that the searcher refines (similar to ChatGPT prompt).

At the event, Google’s vice president of of Search, Liz Reid, demonstrated SGE by searching for “why is sourdough bread still so popular?”. The search results appeared almost immediately, and above them was a rectangular orange section that pulsed and glowed with the phrase “Generative AI is experimental.”

After a few seconds, the glowing section was replaced by an AI-generated summary of the search results. The summary included several paragraphs about the taste of sourdough bread, its prebiotic abilities, and other factors that contribute to its popularity. To the right of the summary were three links to websites that Reid said “corroborated” the information in the summary.

On Google’s blog, Reid provided even more context. She shared the example of a searcher asking, “What’s better for a family with kids under 3 and a dog, bryce canyon or arches.” Normally, a searcher might break this one question down into smaller ones, sort through the information available, and start to piece things together themselves. With generative AI, search can do some of that heavy lifting for you.

When SGE becomes available, searchers will see an AI-powered snapshot of key information to consider, with links to dig deeper.

Google Search

Below this snapshot, you’ll see suggested next steps, including the ability to ask follow-up questions, like “How long to spend at Bryce Canyon with kids?” When you tap on these, it takes you to a new conversational mode, where you can ask Google more about the topic you’re exploring.

Context will be carried over from question to question, to help you more naturally continue your exploration. You’ll also find helpful jumping-off points to web content and a range of perspectives that you can dig into.

How Will Ads Work in SGE?

Google said that SGE will feature search ads from the start. Advertisers will not be able to opt out of showing ads on the new search experience, at least not initially. Google will be closely monitoring the performance of ad placements and experiences during this experimental phase.

SGE ads will be displayed in dedicated ad positions and slots, and will be labeled as “sponsored ads.” Google said it will continue to test and adapt ads so that they provide relevant and useful results for searchers.

Here are some additional details about how SGE ads will work:

  • Ads will be displayed in a variety of formats, including text, images, and videos.
  • Ads will be targeted based on a variety of factors, including the search query, the user’s interests, and the user’s location.
  • Ads will be subject to Google’s advertising policies, which are designed to ensure that ads are relevant, useful, and non-misleading.

SGE ads will be a “native part” of the new search experience. The company believes that ads can be a valuable tool for helping users find the information they need, and that SGE ads will be no exception. Here is a screenshot of ads in the desktop user experience of SGE:

Ads in Google Search

As Google Search evolves with the introduction of the SGE, it will be important to track how your ads perform in this new environment. However, as SGE is still in its experimental phase, you will not be able to immediately track how your ads perform differently in SGE versus the old Google Search.

The generative AI feature is still under development, but it has the potential to change the way people search for information online. By providing users with a concise and informative summary of the search results, the feature can help people find information quickly and easily. Only time will tell how SGE ads will be received by users. However, Google is confident that the new search experience will provide a more relevant and useful search experience for everyone.

Contact True Interactive

At True Interactive, we advocate on behalf of our clients. We are monitoring these developments closely and assessing how to incorporate conversational AI. Contact us to learn how we can help you succeed in all forms of digital advertising.

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