Google Ads has launched a new feature to assist advertisers in optimizing their YouTube campaigns
Known as Creative Guidance, this innovative tool is now available through Recommendations and has been integrated into Video Analytics within Google Ads.
Creative Guidance leverages AI to evaluate your content and offer best-practice feedback. For example, if critical information is missing from your video ad, Creative Guidance will notify you, ensuring that your campaigns are as effective as possible.
Why we care. Creative Guidance offers rapid feedback and actionable steps for enhancing video ad performance, ensuring ideal setup and quick optimization to maximize your video ad’s performance.
Creative attributes. Creative guidance can detect if your video ad is missing the following key creative attributes:
- Brand logo: Shows a prominent brand logo in the first 5 seconds.
- Video duration: Follows the recommended video length based on your marketing objective.
- Voice-over: Uses a high-quality, human voice-over.
- Aspect ratio: Ad group includes all 3 video orientations, at least (1) horizontal 16:9, (1) vertical 9:16, and (1) square 1:1.
Depending on what’s missing in your video ads, you’ll get suggestions for high-impact improvements as well as links to handy tools that could boost the performance of your campaign.
Google has confirmed that it will be introducing more attributes in the not-too-distant future.
How it works. To access Creative guidance in Google Ads, follow these instructions:
- In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon
.
- Click the Assets drop down in the section menu.
- Click “Videos”.
- Click the “Analytics” tab next to “Videos”.
- Select your video ad in the drop down menu.
- In the “Ideas to try” section below the retention curves, you’ll find the creative attributes you’re missing with recommendations on how to take action.
The steps listed above are part of a new Google Ads user experience that is set to launch for all advertisers in 2024.
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What has Google said? A spokesperson for Google Ads said in a statement:
- “We’ll let you know if your video is missing a best practice. If we have a recommendation or tool to implement a suggestion such as adding a voiceover, we’ll direct you to it.”
- “Voiceover has a big impact on YouTube. Thanks to the power of AI, quality voiceovers in 15 languages are accessible directly in Google Ads (both in the asset library and built into the video creation tool) and coming soon to Ads Creative Studio.
- “Similarly, if your campaign would benefit from videos in different durations, we’ll guide you to Trim video. Or, if you’re missing a horizontal, square or vertical video, you can easily create one using a variety of high-quality templates.”
- “These features empower marketers to take charge of their creative. AI can help turbocharge performance by tuning creative elements across all the different viewing experiences and content that YouTube viewers love.”
Deep dive: Read Google’s Creative guidance in Google Ads update in full for more information.
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About the author
Nicola Agius is Paid Media Editor of Search Engine Land after joining in 2023. She covers paid search, paid social, retail media and more. Prior to this, she was SEO Director at Jungle Creations (2020-2023), overseeing the company’s editorial strategy for multiple websites. She has over 15 years of experience in journalism and has previously worked at OK! Magazine (2010-2014), Mail Online (2014-2015), Mirror (2015-2017), Digital Spy (2017-2018) and The Sun (2018-2020). She also previously teamed up with SEO agency Blue Array to co-author Amazon bestselling book ‘Mastering In-House SEO’.
