By Helen Myers, Advertising Week Correspondent
Wednesday’s panel began with Google’s Managing Director of Technology, Media, and Telecommunications, Vanessa Kingori discussing the AI innovations driving the advancement in Google Search.
“15 percent of the searches we see each year are brand new. There are so many questions that still haven’t been searched yet,” she said. AI is helping to answer some of those questions as well as improving the user experience to be more natural, visual, and personal.
Search is no longer restricted to a text bar, as users can now use their camera, voice, and even search text and images directly from their screen with Circle to Search.
In the context of brands and marketers, consumers are shifting how they operate, and Google aims to connect users to the best-suited ads.
“We found that marketers who have leaned into this technology and done the work to integrate AI into the way that they work are seeing a 60% higher growth in their revenues, and they are adapting to those new consumer behaviors about twice as fast as their peers” Kingori explained.
Next, Director of Search Marketing at Google, Ola Kalinowska-Nowak, dove into AI Overviews. “They let me search more easily, more effortlessly, and ask questions that maybe I didn’t think search would give me an answer to,” she said. AI Overviews offer not only a condensed list of information, but also links to exactly where the tool got each bullet point so that users can dive deeper if they please.
When asked how consumers are behaving differently with AI Overviews she stated: “AI Overviews is reaching one billion global users every month. Users search more, and they’re more satisfied with their search results.” She also added that once users realize how to utilize these tools to their benefit, their purchase journey will improve and the connection between discovery and action are expedited.
“It’s not the end, it’s just the beginning, right? So I’m really excited to see what more happens in the world. I think for somebody who works in marketing it’s such a key moment to try and keep up with the pace of innovation and keep learning” she explained.
Simon Robinson, the global head of performance marketing at Dell took the stage to touch on the campaign side of how marketeers are adapting to AI. He states that Dell has heavily invested in search tools compared to other big name brands. Because there is a wide variety of purchase journeys, Dell wants to focus on capturing the sale for themselves as opposed to retailers.
To help with these shifts, Dell hired a search specialist. “A large part of what my job is now is actually bridging that gap between the experts, Google, internal experts, our agency, and actually implementing and making real the recommendations you guys are giving us,” he stated. “The education piece, and those sorts of things are what’s going to make the biggest difference for Dell’s search program moving forwards. It’s really just about opening it up to do it right, and that’s not an easy task in many cases.”
Kalinowska-Nowak ended the panel by sharing what excites her for the future of search. “How we can test and learn and try all the best of AI solutions and see how they work and make them work for us,” she concluded.
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