Recap 2024: New Behaviors Create Opportunities for Businesses

After the excitement that artificial intelligence caused in 2023, this year, the exploration of the possibilities that this technology generates for people became much clearer. In 2024, the application of AI began to take a defined path. 

Fifteen percent of the billions of searches made every day have never been made before. This reflects the growing diversity of interests and the evolving informational needs of users, who are looking more than ever for quick and accurate answers. Consequently, many of these searches might not have the capacity to be fulfilled if the only way to address them were through text.

Leveraging artificial intelligence to better support users, we introduced Circle to Search, a solution that allows people to search by just taking a photo, recording a video, or simply circling what they see on their device’s screen. As a result, these queries through Google Lens have become one of the fastest-growing types of searches on Google, generating higher engagement among some of the youngest users (ages 18 to 24). Meanwhile, 80% of Generation Z uses Google for their shopping experience, including discovering, browsing, gathering ideas, researching, and purchasing, according to a study conducted by Ipsos in several countries, including Mexico.

New behaviors create new opportunities not only for brands but also for businesses, making technologies such as AI an enabler to develop more useful ads and strategies that allow them to connect with more consumers in a personalized way, thus enhancing the commercial impact of brands.

In line with this approach, at Google we’ve accelerated the development of tools to maximize campaign performance and help teams boost their creativity. In the second quarter of this year alone, we launched over 30 new features and products to help brands leverage artificial intelligence and keep up with the changing expectations that customers and users have.

Let me now give you five examples of these functions:

1. Creation of campaigns with the conversational experience in Google Ads, powered by Gemini models. With this type of campaign, we aim to give more businesses access to this technology, which provides them with a virtual assistant that guides them step by step to optimize their ads, generating keywords and ad content, including titles, descriptions, images, and also site links.

2. In Performance Max campaigns, a tool that allows advertisers to automate and access their entire Google Ads inventory from a single campaign, we added the ability to include brand guidelines to create personalized visual ads. Creative teams provide this tool with guidelines that include logos, colors, and brand fonts, in order to deliver brand-consistent ads to their customers across different visual formats and channels.

3. Through Product Studio, creative teams can transform already existing product images into dynamic videos with just a few clicks to generate branded visuals that highlight some of the key attributes and features of their product.

4. With artificial intelligence in Merchant Center, a free tool that helps millions of shoppers on Google to discover, explore, and buy their products, brands can view personalized information generated from their own product performance. And with simple prompts, they can also develop visual reports instantly.

5. Video improvements that allow Google’s AI to automatically create more versions of video ads, enabling brands and their teams to extend their ads across the various formats offered by YouTube. Brands are now in control: they can choose not to use this feature or remove all the assets that they consider don't work for their business. This means greater efficiency while allowing teams to focus on other key aspects of their strategy.

The impact of AI technology is transforming the way teams think, create, and communicate with all their consumers. As a result, brands and their partners won’t be competing with this technology; they will be competing with other companies that are already powering their businesses with AI.

I would like to share an example about a German automotive company that used our artificial intelligence tools to generate multiple video, image, and text assets in different lengths and orientations from existing long-form videos. It then introduced the newly created creative assets into demand generation campaigns to boost reach, traffic, and bookings for its driving experience. In doing so, the results of the campaign showed an 80% increase in website visits and a 2.7-fold increase in clicks, leading to an increase in sales.

We will continue to listen to our customers and use their feedback to drive innovation in all our products. Furthermore, I can’t wait to see what the future holds for us in terms of technology. It’s also a great time to recap and thank our teams, as well as our customers and partners, for their ongoing collaboration and trust that allow innovation to shine through their business results.