Google Takes a Closer Look Inside Ads As 2025 Approaches

• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, Yesterday

Google has introduced a wave of advertising products and updates this year to transform the ways that advertisers connect with consumers and businesses.

On Monday, the company provided additional insights into some of the details for the most successful features.

Driving performance with artificial intelligence (AI) to improve optimization, reporting and insights became the focus this year, regardless of platform -- from ads in AI Overviews to Shopping Ads in Google Lens, Google drove performance through brand inclusions, brand exclusions, and negative keywords.

Google recently announced it will roll out ads for AI Overviews, initially in U.S. mobile search results.

James Gibbons, senior customer success manager at Quattr, posted on X an example of an Google sponsored search ad in Google AI Overviews. "Paid listings within AI Overviews," he wrote. He provided a screenshot of the ad and also posted the full search engine results page on mobile for context where Google served the paid listing.

Advertisers testing the ad have seen positive results. One of the more helpful features launched this year is how Google addresses and reports on misspellings. 

Misspelled search queries now are reported in the search terms report with the correct spelling of the word in the query, which means that more data is visible -- such as the 9% of search terms, on average, that previously were listed under the category of “other” due to misspellings in the search terms report.

Innovations in AI and automation from Google continued throughout the year across Search, Performance Max, Demand Gen, Retail and Apps.

AI is used to generate creative assets, optimize campaigns in real-time, and even provide dynamic pricing recommendations for retailers.

Since Performance Max launched, some key updates center on understanding the assets that drive performance, identifying underperforming asset groups with asset coverage reporting, and transparency such as seeing where ads serve on YouTube.

YouTube also offers third-party verification and measurement, and reports on where ads were served on the Search Partner Network.

Advertisers also can use the content suitability center to exclude placements at the account level and use the content suitability center to exclude placements at the account-level.