Last week, Google announced huge new updates to YouTube advertising that may fundamentally change the way that businesses make YouTube ads. Firstly, they announced a new system of organization for your ad content, similar to the content management system you find in Google Drive, implemented on Google Ads. Secondly, they created an ad template for YouTube ads that allows you to put your logos and colors into premade templates, including a text-to-speech option for applying voiceovers. In this blog, we will go into detail about all the new changes and updates announced in this Google article.
Google Drive for Google Ads
Ok, “Google Drive” is not what they’re officially calling it at Google, but it’s a good analogy for the new function they are adding to Google Ads. Basically, Google created a place in Google Ads where your business can organize your ad content assets in one place in the same way a shared Google Drive works.
Source: New asset management and video ad creation solutions
This new function is called the asset library, and its primary purpose is to make creating ads easier. No longer will you need to re-upload assets from past and present campaigns, as everything will already be available to you and your team. Google is focused on adjusting to this visual-first world by making it available for Performance Max, Discovery, App, Local, Display campaigns, and some ad extensions.
Lastly, if you use Google Ads Editor, there is going to be an asset library for you there, as well. Soon, Google also mentions, you will be able to import images and videos directly from your Google Drive account, into your Google Ads asset library. These changes seem like a much-needed update if Google Ads plans to keep up in this ever-expanding competitive landscape.
Video ad templates for YouTube ads
Video marketing can be a powerful way to showcase the best parts of your business in a way that is accessible to a wide range of audiences. It can be difficult to unlock this potential because the creation process can sometimes be lengthy, resource-intensive, and complex. This month, Google set out to change that and make video more accessible to all businesses.
Google now has a video ad creation feature in Google Ads. The way it works is that you would choose a template from their catalog; put in your brand colors, logo, images, and text; and then pick one of their music tracks to add to the background. Then when you’re done, you can use this video ad in any campaign that includes video.
Source: New asset management and video ad creation solutions
This sounds promising and could open doors for a lot of small businesses looking to get into video advertising. Google says that all the templates were made with YouTube ads in mind, so they have optimal pacing, brand and product placement, and prominent calls to action. They claim that the templates are designed to help your ad stand out and drive results. In the article, they even have an example of an Argentinian fintech company that claims while using this video creation technology, their conversion rates doubled and the cost per acquisition was cut almost in half (since video ads now took them 15 minutes to make instead of two days.)
While we are certainly hopeful that this marks a new opportunity for a lot of businesses, we fear that the same templates could be overused, easily identifiable, predictable – and therefore forgettable. We plan to keep up to date on this as it becomes more widely available, so scroll down to sign up for our weekly newsletter to always know the latest marketing news.
New voice-over feature for ad creation
A third feature they are adding in this update is related to the video ad creation portion of the update. Probably following its popularity on TikTok and TikTok ads, YouTube now offers text-to-speech directly accessible from the asset library. Google knows that audio is a huge factor in creating effective ads on YouTube, so they created this as a way to make it easier for your ad to be engaging and easier to understand. People come to YouTube for both a visual and auditory experience – leaving one of those out can mean that people in different tabs or who are just looking to skip your ad will never hear from your business.
Like most text-to-speech programs, you just need to type in your script and choose which of the seven English (US) voices you want to read your ad. Considering that this worked well over on TikTok even though they only had one robot voice for some time, it seems to us that this text-to-speech option will probably be pretty successful — especially with audiences that are familiar with TikTok.
We should also mention that for international businesses, Google also offers general text-to-speech voices in the following languages: Filipino, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Korean, Malaysian, Mandarin, Spanish, and Swedish. They say they plan to add more languages in the future.
What do you think?
In a study by Nielsen, they found that 47% of sales contribution was from creative. As the most significant driver of advertisement ROI, it means that creating great assets is super important to a business’s marketing strategy. We hope these new templates are just that: templates, not cookie-cutter solutions that will make all YouTube ads look exactly the same. Instead, we hope creative teams will simply use them as the first step to build on top of, and really make it their own.
For more marketing news, subscribe to our weekly Monday email newsletter in the green box below. We give you the rundown of all things marketing each week and have links to the blogs we posted the week before so you never miss an upload.
