The Most Important Changes to Google Ads in 2023

In PPC, there is never a boring moment, and 2022 gave ample evidence of this. This year, upheavals in the supply chain, changes in customer behavior, and surging inflation drove small and medium-sized firms above and beyond. Google, of course, made some moves of its own along the way.

In this article, we’ll list the top 10 Google Ads changes from the previous year that you should be aware of for the year 2023, along with helpful advice for how to modify your campaign for each one. As you’ll see, there’s a mix of positive, negative, and even uncertain…Here are the list below.

1. Cost per lead rises (almost) everywhere.

In 91% of industries, the cost per lead has climbed significantly. The arts and entertainment, travel, and furniture businesses witnessed rises of 134%, 69%, and 54%, respectively, while the average overall growth was 19%.

According to the research, factors like increased costs as a result of inflation and advertising appearing for queries with less commercial intent have resulted in lower conversion rates and, thus, higher CPL.

2. The end of expanded text adverts

For the past 22 years, advertisers have been manually developing, testing, and optimizing their PPC advertising on Google. Every marketer takes delight in creating the ideal text ad. Google has released a number of fresh search ad layouts throughout the years.

With Expanded Text Ads, Google quadrupled the size of their basic text ads in 2016. Expanded Text Ads increased in size once more in 2018. Expanded Text Ads were the format that characterized PPC advertising for years, but after several years of change, Google ultimately wiped them out in June.

The responsive search ad (RSA), which allows advertisers to offer many different text assets for Google to put together to generate the ad that runs on the SERP for every search, is now Google’s new standard ad type.
With sufficient assets, this asset-driven and machine learning-powered ad format has a great deal of potential to provide over 40,000 different variations of an advertisement. However, detractors are quick to point out that RSAs may not always work properly and can produce some subpar combinations. The modification essentially restricts brand control over the messages and testing procedures of their advertising on the SERP.

3.Implement local campaigns and smart shopping

Shopping advertising is well-known to ecommerce advertisers. In order to assist businesses in promoting their shopping advertising across Search, Display, and YouTube, Google developed the Smart Shopping campaign type in 2018. All small businesses could simply access Google’s reach of high-value placements throughout the web with just a product feed in Google Merchant Centre. To help local businesses market their Google Business Profile across Google Search, Maps, Gmail, Display, and YouTube, Google introduced Local Campaigns in 2019.

Both of these campaigns assisted small businesses in automating a large portion of their campaign administration while providing excellent ROI on minimal budgets. However, Google stopped allowing advertisers to create both of these campaign types earlier this year and started automatically “upgrading” them to Google’s newest campaign type, “Google AdWords Remarketing.”

Google’s Performance Max campaigns give even more reach across new ad places, such as Google’s Discovery feed, and have a number of special features. And for many, this is reason enough to rejoice! Many advertisers can brag a big boost in conversions with a reduced CPA without the bother of managing more campaigns thanks to increased reach, placements, and automation.

However, not all advertisers are happy about the demise of the local and smart shopping initiatives. Before they run successfully, Google’s completely automated Performance Max campaigns need a sizable amount of data and funding.

4. Similarly inclined viewers are up next

Nearly ten years ago, Google developed Similar Audiences to expand the reach of advertisers’ remarketing audiences. Google expanded its Similar Audiences programme in response to the popularity of competitor Facebook’s lookalike audiences.
They have since established themselves as a pillar of many advertisers’ Google Ad campaigns. New privacy laws have, however, significantly hurt the audience-building strategies of Facebook and Google. Because of this, Google declared in November that it would stop using Similar Audiences in favor of “more powerful and durable” audience options in 2019.
For around another six months, advertisers can use Google’s Similar Audiences in their ads. Then, starting in May 2023, it won’t be possible to add Similar Audiences to brand-new campaigns or ad groups. Soon after, in August 2023, they will no longer be targeted by any campaigns.

Prior to the transfer, Google advises advertisers to update their audiences. Google advises all advertisers to develop a habit of developing new audiences for their ads using first-party data, such as Customer Match data.

Google also advises using smart bidding techniques and targeted advertising to further enhance the effectiveness of their campaigns.

After Similar Audiences is discontinued, advertisers wishing to expand their reach beyond their first-party data may profit from Google’s audience expansion. It’s interesting to note that Microsoft does not appear to be following Google in this regard. Microsoft Advertising announced that it would be extending its Similar Audience solutions to other international regions on the same day that Google announced its plans to stop Similar Audiences.

5. Insights into new rival advertising on the SERP

Google declared in 2021 that it would broaden its advertiser verification programme and provide users with more ad transparency when they see targeted advertisements on and off the SERP. To help searchers learn more about how advertisers might reach them, Google introduced My Ad Centre in October as a result of their efforts.

My Ad Centre offers a variety of features, one of which is a potent new tool called “Advertiser Pages.” The users of these advertiser pages can view every other advertisement that the advertiser has ran in the previous 30 days.

You must click on the three stacked dots next to an advertisement to see the business’ Advertiser Page. From there, you may browse information from verified advertisers, including their address and official company name.
You can also choose “See more ads from this advertiser,” which is more intriguing. From this point, you can view every advertisement that the advertiser has ran over the previous 30 days.
Even better, you may filter these results to just show text, picture, or video advertising. This new capability was created to provide Google users greater transparency, but it also has the incredible potential to enable current advertisers snoop on their rivals!

6. New ad type for the automotive industry

Due to the ongoing disruptions to our lives caused by supply chain problems, pandemic limitations, and economic uncertainty over the past two years, many industries have been obliged to continually modify their tactics. There have been some positive adjustments to Google Ads, even though some have felt more like salt in the wound. For instance, Google introduced Vehicle Listing Ads in March to assist auto dealers in showcasing the new and used vehicles they had on their lot.

This new Vehicle Listings Ad, which is similar to a Local Inventory Ad on Google, is prominently displayed at the top of the SERP and emphasizes the image, price, condition, and location of the cars. Along with a few additional ad forms for industries like finance and travel, Microsoft Advertising also unveiled a comparable automotive ad type for nearby dealerships.

These new Vehicle Listing Ads require an active inventory feed to be supplied and authorized on a regular basis through Google Merchant Centre and are maintained almost identically to Shopping Ads. Prior to now, Google Merchant Center’s infrastructure was not allowed to host the majority of motor vehicles due to rigorous regulations.

7.New company name and logo advertising assets

Businesses frequently struggle to stand out on a crowded SERP and may have to protect their own brand name against rivals or other advertising trying to unfairly capitalize on their success stories. Google is now offering new business name and logo ad assets on the SERP to safeguard verified advertisers.

Only authenticated advertisers have access to these new materials. Google thinks that its restrictions for these business name and logo assets will lessen impersonation and fraud in addition to making their ads more visually appealing and helping to boost performance. Advertisers must finish the Google verification procedure before using these new services.
Additionally, advertisers are only permitted to utilize this function to emphasize their exact domain name match or their official business name. Logos assets must also be prominently displayed and accurately reflect the identities of the verified sponsors.

8. For video advertisements, new voiceover features

This summer, Google added additional features for its video ad content. One of the upgrades is the ability for advertisers to simply add a voice-over to their already-existing YouTube video commercials. Google previously revealed that fewer than half of video advertisements had voice-overs. According to Google’s study, adding a voice-over to these adverts can reduce the cost per lifted user by 50% and boost ad recall by 25%.

Without using any additional video editing tools, advertisers may supply their screenplay, preview, and edit their voice-overs while selecting from eight different voices (four male and four female).

9.YouTube and smart speakers are getting audio ads

Many advertisers are starting to change their strategy and budget as streaming entertainment and other OTT services become standard for the majority of consumers.

Earlier this year, Google proudly declared that its new audio ad campaigns would help it fulfill the increased demand from YouTube’s music and podcast listeners.

Advertising companies can now reach viewers while they are streaming podcasts or music, situations in which highly visual video material would traditionally underperform.

10. Broad match beta test raises questions for us

Google introduced restricted beta functionality in October that enables campaign-level activation of broad keyword targeting for advertisers. Given its persistent promotion of broad match combined with Smart Bidding, this is not surprising, but it was unsettling to see a match-type-free choice, even if it was only a beta test.

Conclusion

While the economy and SERP changes have tested us and we’ve lost several observable Google Ads tools this year, there have been a number of welcome enhancements to our PPC campaigns. We may not know what Google has in store for us in the upcoming year—the only thing we can count on is even more change—but with these suggestions and tools, you have many opportunities to thrive in 2023.