See what Google Ads news had the biggest impact this year and how you can make the most of these changes next year.
The team at Google was very busy in 2024. Almost no aspect of the Google Ads platform went untouched when it came to updates over the course of the year.
Whether you like the changes or dislike them, there’s no getting around the fact that it can be hard to keep up with everything being adjusted behind the scenes.
So let’s take some time to go over the biggest changes (read: not all changes) that happened with Google Ads in 2024 and discuss what they mean for 2025.
Here are the top news updates from Google Ads this year.
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There have been a few Google search updates to the user experience and placements, like conducting a Google Shopping search with Google Lens and showing ads in the Google AI Overview.
But for us die-hard marketers, there were a few updates that feel a bit more technical and like bigger wins for campaign management.
First, we have brand inclusions that help keep your branded search campaigns focused on the right brands and only those brands. The catch? Your campaign has to be opted into the campaign-level broad match setting. Personally, I’m not a big fan of this for non-brand campaigns, but if you’re using brand inclusions to focus and you still have access to negative keywords (which you do), then this is a good option for branded search campaigns.
Those same brand lists can also be leveraged as exclusions for Dynamic Search Ad campaigns, helping you control your DSA campaigns from hitting on branded search queries, which is great, especially if you’re leveraging the brand campaign strategy above.
Speaking of search queries, Google announced a slight easing to the controls that block advertisers from seeing all of the search terms in their reports. Misspellings will now be grouped under their correctly spelled query to unlock a little more insight. Google expects this will increase the percentage of search terms that are visible by about 9% in the average account. It might not be a huge number, but anything that gets us more insights is more than welcome.
Lastly, Google didn’t stop with the misspelling changes in search terms. Negative keywords now include misspellings. Again, this news is more than welcome from a marketer who has been adding tens and hundreds of negative keywords simply because they were spelled incorrectly differently than any previous query. With the new logic, we now will only need to add the correctly spelled version of the negative keyword we want and Google will also block the misspelled version of those terms.
Google Ads has rolled out Performance Max campaign updates frequently over the last year, but for me, the biggest impacts were all based on better insights and controls for PMAX campaigns.
First, there are a bunch of new insights about different aspects of your PMAX campaigns to help you understand what’s working and what’s not. Whether you need to know which assets are performing best, understand how your budget is pacing, look into which audience segments are responding well, or determine if you’re losing impression share on search and shopping to competitors, there’s a new insights section for each of those.
Additionally, we now have better insights into the black box that used to be (and still kind of is to some degree) Performance Max ad service.
With the content suitability center, advertisers can now see placements of ad services on YouTube and the Search Partner Network. What’s more, we can now use account-level placement exclusions to block our ads from showing on certain placements as well.
There were a handful of updates to Demand Gen campaigns, but here are the two that stood out to me.
First, the minimum audience size for lookalike audiences was lowered from 1,000 to 100 users. I’m often frustrated with how Google’s controls make it harder for smaller businesses to advertise on the platform and this was a very direct step in the right direction. Now the barrier to entry is lower for SMBs, which is a win in my book, even if Demand Gen isn’t the campaign type I would start with.
The second update for Demand Gen was another tick in the advertiser control column on the scoreboard. With creative preferences, advertisers can control which placements their videos will show up in rather than having all videos show in all placements. That means that if you have assets that don’t look quite right in one placement, you can prevent them from showing there and prioritize other assets instead.
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Display got a good amount of AI inserted for creatives. With the new solutions, advertisers will be able to animate static images, expand and adjust the aspect ratios of existing images, as well as enhance resolution and sharpness. Overall, these are some pretty great options in a world where hard creative is hard to come by.
Also, Google Display Ads have expanded their network and will now have inventory on X (formerly known as Twitter), so if your audience is there and you want to reach them without using the actual X Ads interface, you can do so via GDN.
First-party data has been a hot topic ever since Google vowed to get rid of third-party cookies in January 2020. Since then many deadlines have been pushed and pushed, ultimately resulting in Google reversing course in 2024 and stating that third-party cookies are here to stay (for the time being).
But even with that reversal, marketers (and Google) have picked up on how valuable this data is and how it can enrich your marketing.
With that, Google had two changes this year to help enhance your first-party data. First, they simplified Google Ads Data Manager to centralize all data integrations in one location and also control all access to third-party platforms like Salesforce, Marketo, HubSpot, and more.
For anyone trying to enrich their data with first-party insights, this is a much simpler interface to work with that helps minimize the steps from one part of the platform to another.
The second update is a bit more technical. Confidential matching enables advertisers to leverage their first-party data with Google’s measurement and audience solutions. The details can be found here, but essentially, your first-party information will remain secure despite also being leveraged in your Google Ads account. A win-win.
The last set of updates also isn’t for a specific type of campaign but does impact quite a few campaign types that you have around the Google Ads system.
Generating new creatives for your campaigns just got a lot easier with new tools for asset and image generation directly within the Google Ads interface.
It’s also now easier to take existing assets like images and videos and edit them to change the image, enhance your videos, and highlight products in a different way than they’re being shown in your Merchant Center Feed.
Lastly, you don’t have to rely solely on Google Ads for asset creation and collaboration. They’ve partnered with third-party design platforms like Canva, Smartly, Pencil, and Typeface to integrate directly with Google Ads and make the upload process that much easier.
Google is constantly making new updates to the Google Ads platform. While we still see lots of AI and automated solutions coming down the pipe, I’m encouraged to see more controls for advertisers as well. As I mentioned earlier, this isn’t all of the updates from 2024, but hopefully, this list of updates gets you paying attention to the new options we have and excited to try out some of the new solutions from the Google Ads platform. For help making the most of all the latest Google Ads features next year, see how our solutions can maximize your search campaign strategy in 2025.
