(Image: Shutterstock/MOLEQL)

Ian, our Digital Account Director, takes a look at AI Max…

Continuing on the theme of AI-related search products is the advertising side of the coin – Google AI Max for Search – which is now being rolled in beta phase globally. AI is nothing new to the world of search, with Smart Bidding, Responsive Search Ads and Performance Max having been around for a while now, however AI Max looks to expand on some of these existing features and roll them into one, fully automated product. As you might expect, broad match keywords form the basis of the way the campaign captures queries, however it also incorporates “Keywordless” technology. This takes into account contextual, behavioural and semantic data of individual users to decide who an ad should be shown to and when. On top of this AI Max will also automatically generate ad copy and direct traffic to what it believes is the most relevant URL. This is essentially a combination of what was auto asset creation and Dynamic Search Ads, but rolled up so you can’t have one without the other.

So essentially you supply an initial framework in the form of broad keywords, some ad copy and the main website URL and then let AI Max do it’s thing. One of the main issues I’ve always had with an automated approach is ad copy creation, which is normally cringeworthy, off brand and generally crap. However, Google claims that the ad creation element of AI Max is much improved (tbc). The other main issue is lack of visibility. I remember trying in the early days of PMax when clients would ask “so which search terms are we appearing against? What do you mean you can’t tell?!”. Luckily AI Max reporting provides visibility on the search terms which triggered ads, landing pages and ad assets.

All good then? Well the proof will be in the pudding as they say. The only way to find out is to test it against your existing search campaigns and see if performance is better [deep breath]…

Credit: Ian Young, Digital Account Director