Google unveils AI tools to boost product imagery and immersive ad formats for brands and retailers

Gen AI-powered ad formats like Short-form Video, Virtual Try-On, and 3D Shoe Ads will help brands and retailers engage with consumers effectively.

On May 21, 2024, search giant Google launched new AI tools at its Google Marketing Live event to deepen the connections between shoppers and merchants through compelling content.

The company has unveiled a new visual brand profile right on Search, giving richer results for common shopping queries. The new brand profile will highlight information brands have provided through Google Merchant Center - as well as Google’s Shopping Graph - to showcase its ethos and offering.

In 2023, Google introduced Product Studio, a merchant’s one-stop shop for AI-powered content creation. 80% of merchants who use Product Studio share that they have been more efficient - or expect to be more efficient - from using it.

The New Product Studio features continue to put the power of Google AI in the hands of merchants. For generated images to be useful, it needs to be cohesive with brands’ existing campaigns and content. Now, brands can generate new product images that match their unique styles.

One can upload an image that represents their aesthetic, add a prompt describing the scene and within moments Product Studio will generate campaign-ready content.

Product Studio is now available in Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US in Merchant Center Next and the Google and YouTube app on Shopify and is coming to India and Japan in the next few weeks.

Immersive ad formats

Google also introduced new ad formats powered by its generative AI to help brands’ ads work harder. Initially launching for retailers as a closed beta later this year, one can connect their brand’s short-form product videos - or videos from creators - to their ads.

With just a click, shoppers on Search can engage with these short videos showing how clothes would look on them, view helpful styling suggestions, and easily explore related or complementary products from brands.

Google will also show AI summaries below the video highlights so shoppers can see key details about a product before they make a decision to buy. It brought its Virtual Try-On (VTO) technology to Search in 2023 and since then, it witnessed people click out to retailer sites more when viewing products with VTO enabled, and brands have seen that their VTO imagery get 60% more high-quality views than other images.

To help brands harness the power of VTO, the company will launch Virtual Try-On in apparel ads for men’s and women’s tops. This lets shoppers see how the products would look on a variety of body types and build the confidence to buy. It has used 3D technology to automatically create 3D spins from a set of images, making asset creation easier for merchants who sell shoes.

Gen AI is helping us better meet advertisers’ needs and unlock new possibilities across the marketing process, from new immersive ad experiences to high-performing creative assets. Creative asset variety is crucial to strong ads and achieving this has gotten easier for more advertisers with generative AI in Performance Max.

As per Google’s internal data, Global, Performance Max asset groups before/after a change in Ad Strength from Q1-Q3 2023, it found that advertisers who improve their Performance Max Ad Strength to Excellent see 6% more conversions on average. Performance Max serves across all of Google’s ad inventory, unlocking more opportunities for brands to connect with customers.

Google will be introducing new image editing capabilities so advertisers can try adding new objects, extending backgrounds, and cropping to adapt images to any format, size and orientation. Additionally, retailers will be able to highlight their products from their Google Merchant Center feeds and take advantage of these editing capabilities.

Google launched Demand Gen campaigns in 2023, which can reach up to three billion users monthly. These campaigns have helped advertisers drive demand and conversions, and soon it will roll them out to even more advertisers on Display and Video 360 and Search Ads 360. YouTube Shorts has over two billion logged-in users every month, three discovering new favourites through short-form video.

The company is introducing new formats and features to help businesses engage with these viewers, including vertical ad formats, ad stickers to drive action and new animated image ads automatically created from images in advertisers’ accounts and Demand Gen product feeds.