Last week, my team and I were fortunate enough to attend the 2018 Google Partners Summit and hear about the forthcoming changes to the Google Marketing Platform, the rebranding of Google Ads, and what’s in store over the next few years.

Here are my key take outs from the day, and things that brands should be looking into:

  • Machine Learning (making machines that learn to be smarter) as a greater focus than Artificial Intelligence (the science of making things smart)
  • Using free open-source platforms like TensorFlow will help anyone develop frameworks around Machine Learning
  • Here is a great 3-minute clip showing how machine learning can be learned by anyone and used for everyone
  • Google’s recent rebrand has seen them dramatically realign their products to 3 x simple stages:
  • The recent rebrand and merging of products and services into these 3 x areas is designed to provide:
    1. Simpler Experiences
    2. Better Results
  • The Partners program has now been drastically aligned, so that Certified Agencies can now only be one of either:
    1. Google Partner (which we are)
    2. Google Marketing Partner
  • The fear over machines writing copy and taking our jobs – is not going to happen. At least yet.   See a computer try to use AI to create recipes / ingredients: HERE
  • Every time I hear someone say ‘The customer funnel is dead’, I tune out and know that they have no idea what they’re talking about, and are rehashing other people’s ideas.
    • NOTE: The customer funnel is NOT, and NEVER will be dead.  The thing that has changed, is the touch0points brands can use to engage consumers.  These, are now increasing and brands need to choose where to play…
  • Here’s an example of things customers are doing while they’re shopping online.  Brands – take note…
  • Smart Shopping campaigns are killing it.
    • If you are selling products with inventory, and AREN’T on Google Shopping, speak to us today – you need to get on this, pronto.
  • The average speed to load a page on mobile is…15.3 seconds.
    • And, if you are selling online, you can see what impact this is having on your conversion rates HERE
    • Page Speed is also now impacting organic search results…
  • We can now offer cross device reporting
    • So if your customers are browsing on mobile, and then purchasing on Desktop, attribution modelling and conversion optimisations can now take this into account
  • We generally include 3 x things in our reports to clients:
    • Observation (what we see)
    • Implication (what this means)
    • Recommendation (what we should do)
      • It was surprising to hear how many Agencies can’t understand the difference between Data and Insight.  Huge rap and shout out to our team – keep kicking those goals and delivering insights!
  • Finally, if you’re feeling creative… try connecting these 9 x dots with 4 x lines