Last month, Bang Digital headed to Sydney to attend the 2019 Google Partners Summit. As Google Premier Partners we are super privileged to be invited to exclusive partner only Google events every year, and the 2019 Partners Summit certainly did not disappoint!The Summit ran from midday into the evening and featured talks from key leaders from within the Google team and from the digital marketing industry. Read on to discover our key takeaways from this year’s Summit.Firstly, let us just preface something… The future of Google Ads is almost here and the below innovations are just the beginning.Voice Search: As technology progresses and the customer journey continues to evolve, we, as consumers of digital media, are naturally moving more towards voice activation and smart technology. As Google is typically a physical search-based platform there was always going to be a challenge with how to incorporate Voice Search into its algorithm. It sounds like Google will be getting around this by sending search results in the form of images to a device - a very intriguing and interesting concept. We’re excited and will be closely watching this space!

Discovery Ads: With 90% of people saying they discover new products on YouTube and with 800 million people using Discover each month, as marketers we need to begin to capitalise on these people. Launching in the next few months will be a new and exciting ad format - Google is calling these Discovery Ads. The purpose? To get in front of people while they are browsing and before they even know they need exactly what you are selling. Discovery Ads will run across Discover, YouTube and Gmail. Discovery Ads will be a carousel-style, responsive ad and will be able to be used across a range of audiences including custom, in-market and interest targeting.

Gallery Ads: Did you know that people only need to see an image for 13ms to identify it? Crazy right? As the human mind becomes more adaptable and less focussed, advertising needs to keep up by becoming more immersive and creating lasting user experiences. Cue: Gallery Ads. A new ad format coming soon to a Google near you. Gallery Ads will be 100% viewable (they will pretty much take up the whole screen on mobile) and will feature the ability to swipe and scroll. The kicker? Gallery ads will be pay-per-click or pay-per-scroll so marketers will no longer be charged per impression - YAS!

Bumper Ads: Bumper Ads are definitely becoming a ‘thing’ - and if they’re not part of your digital marketing strategy already, after the next sentence they definitely will be. When comparing 3 exposures to Bumper Ads to 1 exposure to a Trueview Ad, Bumper Ads delivered a 107% increase in ad recall and 134% increase in purchase intent… See, we weren’t lying. Go Bumper Ads!So you want to use Bumper Ads and add YouTube to your digital marketing strategy but don’t have any video content? Never fear, the Bumper Machine is here. The Bumper Machine users AI to create 6-second ads from your existing creative.

However, while all of the above innovations were super exciting and we can’t wait for them to roll out - it was the final session with the forever awe-inspiring, thought-provoking, Digital Marketing King Dave Booth from Cardinal Parth that really got us thinking…As privacy concerns become more prevalent among consumers of digital media, we need to prepare for a cookie-less world. As we move forward, some browsers will begin to block third party cookies by default. This is already happening with Safari blocking all third party cookies and only allowing organic cookies to last for 7 days. Therefore, the need to focus only on first party cookies is becoming more and more important. This doesn’t just apply to Google but will include other big players such as Facebook, Amazon, Apple and CRMs. The 2019 Google Partners Summit in a nutshell? Be there through innovation. Be useful by driving growth. Be bold by inspiring change.At Bang Digital we always aim to be at the forefront of digital marketing innovations in order to provide our clients with the best digital marketing strategies. Being a Google Premier Partner and attending these events allows us to do this. Contact us today.