PPC news - April 2025

LinkedIn launches AI-enhanced tools for ad campaigns

LinkedIn has rolled out new automation and AI-driven tools to streamline ad planning and performance tracking, aimed at improving campaign efficiency and ROI. These updates provide advertisers with powerful capabilities to optimise their efforts with less manual work.

Predict and plan with the media planner

The media planner allows advertisers to forecast campaign performance before launching. By testing different audience segments, placements, and budgets, users can predict reach, impressions, and cost-per-result for objectives such as brand awareness and lead generation. This feature helps marketers make data-driven decisions with ease.

Simplified campaign execution

Ad duplication enables quick copying of ads across multiple campaigns, saving time and ensuring consistency. Additionally, dynamic UTMs automatically generate tracking parameters, improving the accuracy of performance analysis. These tools help streamline campaign creation and make tracking more efficient.

AI-driven insights for performance optimisation

A new marketing overview dashboard consolidates campaign data across multiple accounts, offering key metrics like cost-per-result and return-on-ad-spend in one central location. The AI-powered performance digest provides summarised insights on campaign performance, including click-through rates and competitive benchmarks, helping advertisers refine strategies quickly.

These updates have led to a significant increase in ad spend and campaigns launched, with users reporting high satisfaction with the AI-driven insights.

Google enhances conversion tracking for Demand Gen campaigns

Google has introduced new conversion tracking columns for Demand Gen campaigns, allowing advertisers to compare performance more accurately across platforms. These new columns provide deeper insights into campaign effectiveness by isolating Demand Gen interactions and offering view-through conversion tracking.

Improved performance comparison

The new platform-comparable conversion columns give advertisers a more detailed look at how their Demand Gen campaigns perform in relation to paid social platforms. With 100% attribution to the last Demand Gen touchpoint, these columns are available at both the campaign and ad group levels. This update enables better benchmarking by using view-through conversion data, offering a more comprehensive attribution model compared to standard conversion tracking.

This change signals Google’s push to make Demand Gen campaigns more competitive with social media ads, providing marketers with the tools to make more informed decisions based on granular performance metrics. However, it's important for advertisers to focus on comparing Demand Gen campaigns to similar social platform efforts, avoiding comparisons with search or PMax campaigns.

Google enhances transparency in Performance Max with search terms

Google has introduced a major update to PMax campaigns, now allowing advertisers to see which search terms are triggering their ads. This new visibility brings PMax in line with standard Search campaigns, providing more control over ad targeting.

This update also allows users to directly add negative keywords from the report, improving campaign relevance and performance.

The change addresses a common criticism of PMax, its lack of transparency. By providing this additional data, Google makes it easier for advertisers to refine their campaigns while still benefiting from the AI-driven optimisations that PMax offers.

Microsoft to enforce consent compliance for advertisers in EEA, UK, and Switzerland

Starting 5th May 2025, Microsoft Advertising will enforce new consent policies for advertisers targeting users in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland. Advertisers using Universal Event Tracking (UET) must obtain explicit user consent before tracking or using Microsoft device identifiers, such as cookies.

To stay compliant, advertisers must ensure their systems are set up to send the appropriate consent signals. This can be done through Microsoft’s approved methods, including implementing UET Consent Mode to adjust tracking behaviour based on user consent. Failure to comply will result in disrupted campaign data, affecting retargeting and conversion tracking, and could harm campaign performance and ROI.

This policy aims to protect user privacy and ensures advertisers are aligned with data protection regulations. Advertisers who do not meet these requirements by 5th May5 may face significant disruptions to their campaigns, impacting overall effectiveness.

Google Ads introduces channel control for Demand Gen campaigns

Google Ads has rolled out a new feature allowing advertisers to have more control over where their Demand Gen ads appear across Google’s platforms. This update, which was first announced in January, enables marketers to specify ad placements, giving them more flexibility in managing campaign distribution.

However, while the channel control feature is live, segmentation by individual channels like YouTube, Discover, and Gmail is not yet available. As a result, performance data is still aggregated under "Google-owned channels," limiting advertisers' ability to make precise, data-driven adjustments to their campaigns.

Google Ads Editor 2.9 introduces new features for streamlined campaign management

Google has launched version 2.9 of Google Ads Editor, bringing eight updates designed to enhance campaign management, video ad creation, and measurement capabilities. These new features focus on improving efficiency, particularly for retailers and advertisers using PMax and Shopping campaigns.

Key Updates in Version 2.9

One of the standout additions is the ability for advertisers to attach Manager Account Labels to campaigns, ad groups, and keywords, offering better organisation.

Shopping Ads capabilities have also been expanded, allowing retail PMax campaigns to display ads for brand-related searches, even when those brands are usually excluded.

For video ads, responsive formats now support automatic vertical video generation, optimising content for platforms like YouTube.

Additionally, Google Ads Editor now supports creating and managing YouTube Masthead ads, as well as offering limited support for lift measurement studies, allowing for more accurate performance tracking.

Advertisers can now also set age exclusions in Performance Max campaigns, refine campaign targeting, and export data to Google Sheets with multiple tabs for easier analysis.

Google expands Search Max beta for enhanced ad optimisation

Google’s AI-powered Search Max match type is being rolled out to more accounts, offering enhanced automation for search campaigns. This feature goes beyond traditional keyword targeting, utilising AI to dynamically optimise ad components and improve campaign performance.

Search Max expands search term matching by analysing landing pages, headlines, and descriptions to identify relevant searches. It also dynamically selects the most relevant landing pages and optimises associated headlines and descriptions. Additionally, the feature includes AI-generated ad assets, making the ad creation process more streamlined and less reliant on manual input.

This update allows advertisers to reach new audiences with minimal effort by automatically tailoring ads based on user searches and existing content. However, the increased automation means less control, requiring advertisers to closely monitor and adjust campaigns as Google refines the feature.

Google tests channel reporting for PMax campaigns

Google is testing a new channel reporting feature for Performance Max campaigns, which could help address long-standing concerns from advertisers about the lack of transparency in these automated campaigns.

Performance Max campaigns have been criticised for their "black box" nature, where ad performance is consolidated across various Google channels without clear visibility into which channels are driving results. The new channel reporting feature, currently being tested with select advertisers, would provide breakdowns of performance across different Google platforms like Search, YouTube, Display, and Gmail. This could give advertisers better control over budget allocation and campaign optimisation.

The introduction of channel reporting could significantly improve transparency, helping advertisers optimise their campaigns by understanding where their budget is being spent. While the feature is still in testing, its potential to reshape how Performance Max campaigns are managed is significant, especially for those looking to make more data-driven decisions. If rolled out more broadly, it would mark a major shift in Google’s approach to automated campaign management.