Google Marketing Live May 2025 Recap - AI Marketing & Search

Google Marketing Live 2024 delivered a clear message: we’ve officially entered the AI-first era of advertising. From creative production to measurement and audience building, nearly every update focused on automation, personalization, and performance at scale. But beyond the hype, which updates actually matter for advertisers – and which will deliver results?

Google Marketing Live

As the founder of AdsAngler, a boutique performance marketing agency, here’s my breakdown of the top announcements and how I see them impacting advertisers:

1. Generative AI for Ad Creative: Stay In Platform by design

Google’s rollout of generative AI tools in Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns gives advertisers the ability to generate image assets on the fly – including editing capabilities like object removal and lifestyle background insertion. You can also define brand colors and fonts to stay on-brand.

My take: This will be useful for scale and testing, but I’d caution against relying too heavily on AI-generated visuals without brand oversight. It's promising, but best used alongside professionally created assets for now.

Who wins: High-growth eComm brands and agencies managing multiple clients with limited design support. Also a solid testing sandbox for ad creative variation.

2. Search Ads in AI Overviews: Are they searching or researching

Google will start showing ads directly within AI-generated Search snapshots. This is a major shift in how users engage with search results, moving away from the traditional list format to a more integrated Q&A experience. While Google "does no evil", this is their attempt to bring back some of the lost search volume (and bottom line profits for google), it is remain to measured if the conversion rate hold in a research based search environment.

My take: This could dramatically improve CTR for some categories – but relevance is everything. The context needs to match the query exactly, and creative + landing page must deliver.

Best for: Service businesses and product brands with a strong value prop and high purchase intent. Be prepared to optimize content, not just copy.

3. YouTube Shorts Interactive Ads: Smart and Native

Google is leaning into native interaction on Shorts with swipe-through actions, stickers, and creator-powered affiliate campaigns. There’s even a new ad format to boost existing creator videos with paid reach.

My take: This feels like a strong response to TikTok. The native engagement features are well thought out and perfect for driving impulse buys or top-funnel interest.

Ideal for: Shopify sellers, mid-size brands, and anyone running influencer or creator campaigns. Huge upside for products under $100.

4. Audience Targeting Improvements: It's about time

Lowering the threshold for lookalike segments to 100 users is a big win for small advertisers. Google also introduced "Google-engaged audiences" – automatically building lists of users who found your site via Search or Ads.

My take: This democratizes powerful targeting tools. But performance depends on the quality of your CRM and site tagging.

Who benefits: Local businesses, lead gen advertisers, and brands with solid Google Analytics + conversion setup.

5. Profit-Based Bidding + Incrementality Tools: I have been asking for this all my life

Performance Max and Shopping will soon let you optimize toward profit, factoring in cost of goods. Combine that with conversion lift studies and asset-level reporting, and advertisers can now run smarter campaigns with better measurement.

My take: This is where the future of media buying is headed – aligning campaigns with real business outcomes, not just ROAS. Attribution is evolving, and these tools are part of that transition.

Best for: Brands with margin diversity (e.g., apparel, consumer tech) and agencies managing budgets across product categories.

6. Non-Ad Highlights: AI Search & AR Try-On

Beyond advertising, Google continues evolving Search into a visual, conversational assistant. SGE (Search Generative Experience) is rolling out to U.S. users. AR try-on, 360 spins, and visual search ads show how product discovery is changing.

Why it matters: These features push marketers to elevate product content – richer imagery, better metadata, and more immersive experiences.

Final Thoughts

Google’s updates show a clear shift: media buying is becoming less about manual input and more about managing systems powered by AI. That doesn’t reduce the marketer’s role – it elevates it. We now need to focus on feeding the right data, optimizing creative direction, and interpreting results in smarter ways.

At AdsAngler, we’re actively rolling these features into testing environments and tracking which updates drive measurable ROI. If you’re a brand spending $10K+ monthly on paid media and looking to stay competitive, now is the time to adopt – not observe.

Let’s talk about how these tools can support your growth.

— Shay Zaidenberg Founder, AdsAngler