Google Ads Adds Negative Keywords, Insights, Reporting To PMax & Much More

Google Ads announced a number of new features and updates to the ad platform this morning at DMEXCO in Europe. These include negative keywords coming to Performance Max campaigns, new insights and reporting, expanding AI features and much more.

I’ll just bullet point the news, so it is easier to chew on:

• Negative keywords for PMax: Google is bringing campaign-level negative keywords to Performance Max campaigns. This is something Google told us was coming in early 2022, and I thought was here but what do I know. This will roll out by the end of the year.
• New insights and reporting for PMax: Google is offering detailed insights on PMax campaign performance including (1) asset coverage reporting in Q3, (2) a revamped performance insights is available now, (3) target pacing insights and (4) impression share reporting are both rolling out now.
• Demand Gen creative preferences: Setting your creative preferences to control which videos run where on Demand Gen campaigns is rolling out now (was pre-announced at GML)
• Search Brand Controls: Stronger brand controls on Broad Match and the choice to include or exclude brand terms is also rolling out now but was pre-announced in June
• Generative Al tools expanding: Generative Al tools in PMax and Demand Gen are expanding to six new languages: German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Italian.
• Conversational experience expanding: Conversational experience in Google Ads will expand beyond English to German, French and Spanish languages by the end of the year.

Here are some GIFs of the last two bullet points in action.

Image Generation AI:

Conversational AI Google Ad Experience:

Here is Ginny Marvin from Google’s summary:

A new beta for (self-serve) campaign-level negative keywords will start rolling out by the end of the year. Stay tuned for details.

And more PMax insights are rolling out:

• New Impression share reporting for text and Shopping ads on Search.
• New Asset coverage reporting & recommendations for underperforming asset groups.
• New Target pacing insights to track progress toward your CPA and ROAS goals.
• Asset level conversion metrics continue to roll out.

New Demand Gen updates:

• Omnichannel bidding to optimize across online and in-store conversions will roll out in the coming months.
• Creative preferences to pin videos to specific formats and surfaces is now available to all advertisers.
• DV360 will roll out support for Demand Gen campaigns starting in October.

AI-powered creatives tools available in more languages:

• Conversational experience for Search campaigns is rolling out in German, French & Spanish in the coming months.
• Asset generation for text and image assets in PMax, Demand Gen, App and Display campaigns is now available in German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Italian.

Expanding asset generation tools:

• In addition to PMax, AI-powered image editing is now available in Search, Demand Gen, App and Display campaigns. Remove backgrounds, add objects, aspect ratios and more.
• And image editing can now be used for product images in your Merchant Center feed.
• In PMax you can now add up to 5 reference images + a text prompt to generate image assets aligned with your brand’s aesthetic.
• Brand guidelines for PMax will be fully available next month, enabling you to apply your fonts and colors consistently across your ads.

Forum discussion at X.