Perfecting your Google Ads strategy is an important part of maximizing your exposure and bookings. 

In typical Google fashion, the algorithm for Ads changes over time, which will affect how you should go about your strategy. That being said, you should always be adjusting your strategy based on how each ad is performing. 

Luckily, Google does not leave its users in the dark and has announced its 2022 top priorities for ads: automation, measurement, and privacy. These are not technically new priorities, however, Google’s focus on each one has changed. This guide will dive into each one of these priorities and what they mean for your business. 

More Opportunities with Automation

“Over 80% of Google advertisers are now using automated bidding to free up time and improve ad performance.”

– Vice President and General Manager of Google Ads, Jerry Dischler  

Dischler has spoken with brands and learned their desire for speed and agility to drive higher growth through ads. With this information, Google has guided its users to begin using the campaign types Performance Max and Discovery. 

• Performance Max: This new goal-based campaign type uses your keyword-based Search campaigns to help you discover more converting customers across channels based on your chosen conversion goals. 
• Discovery: With information from Google’s audience and customer intent signals, this type of ad campaign helps you deliver highly visual, personalized ads across many channels in a single Google Ads campaign. 

Both of these campaigns are designed to help you reach more potential customers at scale by just creating a single ad campaign. Here are some of the benefits you will see by trying out one of these ads. 

• Easier ad management due to less campaigns
• Multi-channel reach (Youtube, Gmail, etc.)
• Greater ad inventory
• Incremental conversions

That being said, you may be more interested in running a single channel campaign, such as, Search or Display. In that case, you can still use automation with Smart Bidding, responsive search ads and broad match keywords. 

Changes to Measurements

You already know that without accurate data and results, creating a successful marketing strategy becomes more difficult. Measurement can be a complex topic to understand, which is why Google is putting more of an emphasis on it this year. 

Google Ads will be introducing these new measurement solutions: 

• Enhanced conversions: The enhanced conversions feature improves the accuracy of your conversion measurement by sending first-party conversion data from your website to Google in a privacy-safe way. 
• Consent mode: Although still in beta, consent mode adjusts how your Google tags behave based on the consent status of your users. For instance, you can indicate whether consent has been granted for analytics and ads cookies and Google’s tags will dynamically adapt.
• Conversion modeling: The modeled conversions solution offers a more complete report of your conversions by using data that does not identify individual users to estimate conversions that Google is unable to observe directly (due to privacy or technical limitations). 
• Data-driven attribution: Data-driven attribution credits conversions to a customer’s entire journey engaging with various ads, rather than giving credit to the last ad they interacted with. 

Improvements to Privacy

As a business owner, your privacy policy should be of utmost importance — and Google recognizes that, which is why privacy is one of its priorities for 2022. 

Recently, Google updated its privacy playbook to ensure both you and your customers feel secure when conducting business. Here are three major takeaways.

• Build direct relationships with your customers.
• Ensure your measurements remain accurate and actionable.
• Drive performance by keeping your ads relevant.

Google is always putting out updates and features to better serve you. As you continue building your Google Ads strategy for this year, consider these three priorities and start optimizing your campaigns!