Reading Time: 9 minutesGoogle Marketing Live (GLM) event is where the biggest scoop is shared. Each year, Google uses this platform to announce new developments and their vision for their products. This year’s GLM event at Mountain View, California, was all about new paid advertising features in response to the changing landscape of search.
As AI overviews become the predominant way to answer user queries, where do Google ads factor in? And how can you use the developments of this year to develop more targeted Google ad campaigns?
This article will break down key announcements from the event, from AI-powered add-ons to agentic capabilities, and how they can help you drive better performance from your campaigns, save your time and money, and keep you ahead of your competition.
Let’s dive in.
Why GLM 2025 Updates Matter to Your Ad Campaign
The GLM event revealed an array of AI-driven paid-media features by Google across Google Search, YouTube, Shopping, and more, to help you drive your ad performance.
This year’s keynote speech focused on search, creative capabilities, AI agents for advertising, measuring metrics during ad campaigns, media solutions, creator partnerships, and more.
Vidhya Srinivasan, VP of Google Ads & Commerce, introduced exactly how AI agents can manage bids, audiences, and pacing, so you spend less time with spreadsheets and more time thinking about ad strategies.
YouTuber HopeScope displayed how video clips and thumbnails generated with AI can boost click-through statistics.
Sylvanus Bent, the CEO of Asset Insights, mentioned a real-time dashboard measurement that enabled you to change campaigns in real-time.
Conversely, YouTube Ads Lead, Nicky Rettke, presented options to bring your advertisements to the correct audience at the correct time, minimizing guesswork.
Overall, the event highlighted that the advent of AI is not merely transforming the way you market, but also the native tools within which you market as well. As Philipp Schindler, Google’s Chief Business Officer, explained in the keynote, “AI is also transforming what is possible.”
As an advertiser, you stand on the precipice of opportunity: If you deeply understand the AI-driven updates and find a way to create an early competitive edge — you can be ahead of the curve. You must start strategizing on how to plan, execute, and optimize your ad campaigns, further influencing their effectiveness. If not, you will see others make moves that you kept sitting on.
Boost Your Ad Campaigns with the GLM 2025 Marketing Updates
Below is a summary of the most important GLM 2025 updates that will affect your Google ads. We’ll also walk you through what these could mean for you and your business.
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Desktop Ads in AI Overviews and AI Mode
Google Search is adding organic ads to AI-generated Overviews and AI Mode responses on desktop in the US, allowing your business to reach consumers with high intention sooner during ad campaigns. This is similar to how Google ads were placed alongside in the SERPs.
The company is also planning to expand the tool later this year to a select number of other English-speaking countries on mobile.
According to Srinivasan, generative AI can offer Search users the most important information first based on their search query. She also fervently believes that introducing a meaningful ad for the user right after the initial information would initiate more meaningful actions from searchers. For example, a search related to ‘How to bring small dogs on flights’ will first provide users with information on airline policies and other helpful tips. Afterward, generative AI can introduce an ad related to ‘pet carriers’ that might be beneficial to the user.
“Now, here’s the power — we can take a search that doesn’t have obvious commercial intent, but still understand that connecting the user to a product or business is the most helpful next step. And often, that connection is an ad.”
Why It Matters
Google also revealed that people had been finding the ads within AI Overviews useful as they can now search and associate with a business, product and service as quickly as they need them and at the right time so that they can connect to them in the process.
Reducing the amount of time it takes for them to find a product that could be useful to purchase has always been important for online sales and ecommerce — and now it’s going to become even more seamless to do so. That can be a big win if leveraged properly.
As an advertiser, you can also further appeal to new moments of exploration and consideration that have potential but have not been exploited. You can allow the Search, Shopping, and Performance Max campaigns to run in these new placements to achieve this.
Generative Creativity of Veo, Imagen and Asset Studio
Producing interesting visuals, video, and audio content for ad campaigns has long been an issue most businesses face. The process was also clunky on Google ads, and many genuine visual assets got rejected by the dashboard preemptively.
Vidhya Srinivasan reassured the audience that Google was aware of how difficult and time-consuming the process is. She also reiterated the importance of creativity in ad campaigns to trigger inspiration.
So what’s their solution? She revealed that Google had been enhancing its creative tools for improved ad relevance to consumers for quite some time, and they are ready to introduce Veo for video generation and Imagen for image generation as solutions.
Veo is an AI-powered video generation tool that converts your text description into a video with sound. The tool offers next-level realism and improved adherence to your prompts, helping bring your creative vision to life. On the other hand, Imagen is a text-to-image AI tool that creates high quality images from your prompts.
Note: These state-of-the-art video and image generation tools will be incorporated directly into Google Ads and Merchant Center. This way, creating and editing images and videos will be easier than ever.
Why It Matters
Using Veo and Imagen, you can improve the visuals of your ad campaign faster than ever before. You also don’t need to worry about resizing or formats as these tools are built specifically for creating ad assets.
What’s more? Google also plans to release a new feature in upcoming months that will help the image and video AI tools’ creativity naturally align with your branding. You will be able to add your brand’s font, colors, logos, and other assets to create visuals that are on-brand.
Lastly, Google is collaborating with multiple third-party creative companies, such as Canva and Pencil Pro to help you create visuals on other applications, then import them seamlessly to Google Ads.
Overall, better visuals in your ad campaign mean a more immersive experience for your potential customers. These features also help your ads resonate more with your viewers, including through your depicted brand story.
You will also be able to provide more relevant details of your products in the ads in the coming months, fueling engagement from potential buyers. Customers will also have the opportunity to engage with your visual content, what other customers are saying about your products, and try-on features for apparel brands.
Not only are these features likely to boost revenue — they will also provide your business a better perspective of your potential customers and what they need from your products.
AI Max and Smart Bidding Exploration
AI Max, which Google introduced this May before the GLM 2025 event, goes beyond keyword search to asset optimization and search term matching. Assuming that you are already employing Search campaigns, AI Max will widen the scope of who you reach.
What does it entail? Search term matching broadens beyond your keywords — taking advantage of keywordless AI targeting and broad match to find conversions and queries you would not come across otherwise. This tool enables Google AI to learn from your existing keywords, URLs, and visuals to help you appear on more relevant searches.
On the other hand, asset optimization helps you customize messages on your ad campaign to your potential customers. This way, Google AI can customize your ad copy on-the-fly to better suit user intent. Likewise, you can expect better conversions when users are redirected to the most meaningful and best performing landing page on your domain.
In the GLM 2025, Google also introduced Smart Bidding Exploration as a tool working alongside the previously launched AI Max. And it is a big deal.
According to Srinivasan herself, Smart Bidding Exploration is considered the “biggest bidding upgrade Google has made in over a decade.” The tool enables experimentation with bidding strategies you already employ in your ad campaigns.
“It pursues less obvious and potentially high‑performing searches, giving advertisers the chance to appear in more of the moments where people are researching and discovering information on Search”, she added.
Why It Matters
Using AI Max can help you move from your traditional marketing strategies to more automated and intent-driven options. Instead of focusing on predictable search appearances, you can branch out to less obvious and more quality search appearances.
Additionally, you can start using Smart Bidding Exploration alongside your normal bidding strategy and compare the results. From this, you can point out more flexible ROAS goals that match your marketing goals, short-term or long-term.
Find more information on advanced bidding strategies to combine with the Smart Bidding Exploration here.
Agentic Capabilities
The GLM 2025 keynote outlined the pressure marketers face in creating new and engaging content, managing performance data, optimizing ad campaigns from insights, and creating meaningful marketing strategies. Google also recognized the need for marketers to create better campaigns while having less manual work to handle.
The company revealed that over half a million marketers have used the conversational experience on Google Ads to create campaigns. In GLM 2025, Google promised to build on this feature to bring marketers agentic capabilities.
Agentic tools are the future for this. They are programmed to learn from real-time performance from marketing campaigns, massive data sets, assets, and landing pages. The learning equips marketers with more accurate ways to achieve their business goals instead of depending on guesswork.
Note: The features will be available directly on Google Analytics and Google Ads dashboards. Users don’t need to do anything else to access it.
Google is also working to introduce Marketing Advisor alongside agentic capabilities on Chrome Browser to help customers manage campaigns across different platforms. According to a Google blog, the feature will roll out later this year.
Why It Matters
Agentic capabilities will make it easier for you to create campaigns that stick. From helping you create campaigns to onboarding customers, reporting on performance, and troubleshooting — it will help in everything.
The feature will also provide you with personalized recommendations for your campaigns, including creative recommendations, tailored ads related to your products and services.
On the other hand, Marketing Advisor will be an extension of your marketing goals, further providing you with step-by-step guides on relevant websites. You can run assessments across your businesses while getting proper strategies that suit individual products. Marketing Advisor will also help you identify issues with your campaigns and how best to correct them.
Improving Measurement, Audiences, and Reporting
As an advertiser, you understand the importance of measuring performance and how to interpret the results to create the most favorable outcomes. The GLM 2025 focused on why you need to correctly measure ad campaign performance to create a solid base for AI solutions. This way, you get to derive the best results from your marketing strategy.
Google announced at the event that Google Ads Data Manager would be available for everyone, giving marketers more control over their first-party data use.
Other features Google plans to launch in the coming months to help marketers measure performance, audiences, and manage reporting include new customer acquisition goal, Google-engaged audiences, and cross-channel budgeting.
The company also announced that it would use generative AI to power Google Analytics insight cards to reveal changes, especially in consumer trends. Advertisers will also be able to filter data and create visual reports from Google Ads and Search Ads 360.
Google further plans to release a feature on Google Analytics 4 to help marketers compare their business’s performance with that of similar businesses. You will also be able to measure your performance across multiple channels and funnels through the Google Analytics 4 integration with linked Campaign Manager 360 accounts.
You need to understand which elements of your ad campaigns have been getting more attention from your audience and driving conversions before investing more in your paid channels. As Nicky Rettke explains, “New attribution path reporting in Google Analytics shows year performance across channels, so you can see how your media is driving early engagement and interactions that lead to conversions, a true sign of prospecting success.”
Why It Matters
First of all, the upcoming features will enable you to differentiate between old and new customers. You can also improve your campaign strategies based on the differences to help you start and derive results.
Cross-channel budgeting will help you manage your finances depending on the needs of your ad campaigns. Depending on how you plan your campaigns and their projected performance, you can get the right recommendations to suit your goals.
Google-engaged audiences will allow you to keep your existing and new customers engaged after they shop.
For all the insight-related features, you will get the most favorable recommendations to boost your marketing campaign while helping you correct any mistakes you might have made in your strategy.
Proper reporting and insights will also help you know where to focus your funds and time during marketing campaigns. This prevents you from wasting time on unproductive campaigns.
AI-driven Ad Campaigns as the Future of Marketing
Advertisers are getting tired of one-size-fits-all solutions, including in bidding, reporting, creating visuals, and measuring performance. GLM 2025 showed us that they were listening to the issues marketers have been laying out.
Google is incorporating AI into various tools on Google Ads and Analytics, offering you more control, automation, improved visuals, and better measuring, all under one roof.
Beyond that, AI is not replacing your expertise but supercharging it based on your goals. Therefore, you can shape your story and outline your desired outcome while AI tools do the heavy lifting.
That said, allow Vizion to guide you as you explore these new features while merging paid media with generative AI. We can offer tailored advice and solutions for AI-driven ad campaigns, custom visuals that suit your brand, AI-powered reporting and performance measurement, and strategy optimization.
At Vizion Interactive, we have the expertise, experience, and enthusiasm to get results and keep clients happy! Learn more about how our status as a Google Partner, along with our PPC Management, Google Shopping Ads, Social Media Advertising, Amazon Advertising, and other Paid Media services can increase sales and boost your ROI. But don’t just take our word for it, check out what our clients have to say, along with our case studies.
