News this week is being presented by more than yet another change to the algorithm – this time, Google is making marketing headlines with the development and release of a (sort of) brand new toolkit called Ads Creative Studio.
The new toolkit is designed for both creative types and marketers, with the aim of helping them take their campaigns to the next level via a new suite of resources both old and new. Google has also stated that they are trying to make it easier for artists and ad specialists to collaborate.
Overview
What is Google’s Ads Creative Studio?
Combining the forces of the YouTube video editor, Display & Video 360, and Campaign Manager 360, Ads Creative Studio gives you a set of basic features unifying the best of all three – in theory, and hopefully, in practice as well. So far, Ads Creative Studio is boasting the following base features:
The Director Mix. A brand-new tool that allows advertisers to create and customize ad campaigns that scale. Advertisers can design and produce a base video asset and utilize customized and dynamic elements to adjust to a variety of potential customers and target audiences – greatly expanding the efficacy of a single campaign and multiplying an ad department’s productivity.
The idea, according to Google, is to enable advertisers to create “thousands of video variations with relatively little effort”, through the use of customizable video layers containing text, graphics, audio, and even references to the viewer’s location, time of day, or interest.
Dynamic Display ads. Dynamic display is an existing feature in Google’s advertising products, particularly the Google Display Network in Google Ads. Dynamic Display, in theory, allows advertisers to cater their ads to the user, rather than trying to sculpt an ad around a vague target audience.
This allows ads to display products and offers that are most relevant to the person viewing them, based on information Google has gathered. Data is by far the most valuable resource in the advertising arms race, and Dynamic Display ads are one of the more unique ways advertisers can choose to leverage Google’s enormous data analysis capabilities.
HTML5 creation tools. HTML5 creation tools simply let advertisers leverage the improved performance and loading speed of HTML5 web elements when creating ads through the new Ad Creative Studio. Remember, speed is key with Google – your ad should be catchy and unintrusive, as well as quick to load.
Audio Mixer and Dynamic Audio. Audio is the unappreciated and underrated MVP of any given ad. Sound is immensely powerful, from voice acting and music to basic sound design and foley. But audio mixing, in particular, can make or break an ad and can mean the difference between something memorable and catchy, or something completely and utterly forgettable.
And finally, a Project Library, which is as straightforward as it sounds.
Why Consolidate These Tools?
While Ads Creative Studio is bringing a few new things to the table, most of its tools can be found in Google’s other existing products, mainly the aforementioned three: YouTube, Display & Video 360, and Campaign Manager 360.
At the heart of it, the idea to consolidate probably boils down to this: one is simpler and more efficient than three. Let alone five, six, or seven, once you take into consideration how people utilize a vast number of different programs and suites to work on HTML5 ads, video ads, display ads, and audio ads.
Ads Creative Studio is Google’s way of taking what they’ve already developed and repackaging it with a neat little bow – while telling advertisers that this is the project they aim to refine over the next few years.
Ads Creative Studio is also a way for Google to lead advertisers in a dance towards a new kind of way to develop and roll out ad campaigns: a dynamic way, where ads become building blocks that include a foundation, and multiple dynamic and customized, user-specific elements that are swapped in and out by both man and machine (or, more correctly, algorithm).
Google is basically telling us that we’re going to spend less and less time coming up with ways to design a new ad around each and every target customer, and instead automate the way ads target our audience, while designing better, more intuitive, simpler, and hopefully less intrusive and less bloated ads (via HTML5 tools and Google’s help). Ads Creative Studio also contains an asset management system where advertisers can store and browse text, video, audio, and graphical assets to utilize in their different ads.
There’s another potential benefit behind the curtain here: increased and improved collaboration between the media team and the ad team. By consolidating the tools and the managerial process, Google aims to create a one-stop-shop for a company’s general ad creation needs – a place where artists can create assets, while advertisers assemble them in real time.
What Does This Ultimately Mean for You?
Ideally, Google wants it to mean that you’ll spend less time making more ads. More ads means more revenue, which is a good thing for a company that mostly generates revenue from online advertising.
Whether or not you use Google’s tools is absolutely up to you, and there’s no denying that a consolidated web-based toolkit like Ads Creative Studio probably won’t be putting out the same quality of work as an experienced ad agency with very high production values and renowned artists. But for the average marketing specialist, Google’s new suite can definitely help make life much easier, on artists and advertisers alike.
Google is Merging Other Resources
In other news, Create with Google is being merged with Think with Google. This is Google’s resource for sharing tools, information, and spotlights in creative ads and creative advertising throughout the industry. Check it out if you want a little inspiration for your campaign – or, more specifically, just want to go check out the kind of ads that perform well with Google. You can also review Google’s creative guidelines on video, text, and more.
