Google’s Latest AI Ad Tool Stirs Fresh Transparency Concerns for Marketers

Google's latest attempt to embed generative artificial intelligence tools into its ad products have some marketers skeptical about the level of transparency they will receive over campaign effectiveness, as well as ratcheting up well-worn concerns around brand safety and suitability, according to buyers interviewed for this story. Google plans to create “novel” ads based on “creative” content supplied by marketers, including images, videos and texts related to a particular campaign, per the Financial Times report. The Alphabet-owned company will then “remix” the material using AI to produce ads based on objectives like the target audience and sales targets. "All of these tools can be a little black boxy," said Nirish Parsad, practice lead, emerging tech at performance agency Tinuiti, "especially when it comes to a brand's creative iteration." Before Performance Max, There Was Google's App Campaigns, Muddying Transparency Google already uses AI across its business, last month launching Bard, an alternative to Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT. AI and algorithms are used elsewhere across its ads business. This feature, due out in the coming months, will be embedded into Performance Max, a tool using algorithms to find the best Google environments to run an ad, like Search or YouTube, and how much should be spent. The move to integrate generative AI into products comes as big tech companies race to roll out workable products. However, marketers need some convincing before they dedicate more budgets to Google's tool. Given the race to integrate AI-based tools into products, Google's move “is the least surprising thing,” said Jon Morgenstern, evp, head of investment at VaynerMedia. Performance over transparency Performance Max, which has been live since 2020, has raised concerns over whether marketers should choose transparency over effectiveness since marketers don't always learn exactly what made a campaign successful, giving advertisers very little oversight to work with. Despite this, the amount of money flowing toward Performance Max appear to be growing. “Today, when it comes to these AI tools, there's not a lot of transparency in terms of where the inventory is showing up,” said Katya Constantine, founder of DTC agency DigiShopGirl. “Brands want to understand what is driving the success and where's it coming from.” Morgenstern points to the unlikely notion of a brand blindly using AI tools like ChatGPT to write search copy in order to drive a brand's best result. “That could go wrong in zillion ways and risk brand safety and suitability,” he said. Google told the FT it plans to put guardrails in place to combat such errors, called hallucinations, in its new generative AI features. “But we already know that guardrails are not enough and, invariably, some such toxic or hallucinated content is going to leak out,” said Chirag Shah, professor in the Information School at the University of Washington. “The question then is who is responsible? Google or the advertiser? That’s why I believe it all comes down to accountability,” he added. Campaign results will drive ad spend Generative AI-driven ad features will likely cause ad buyers to increase ad spend on Google over time, said Morgenstern, who will run A/B experiments to test the efficacy and scale. “This stuff can be really messy when it gets first released and may even lead to us spending down in the start, depending on the rockiness of it,” he said. About 25% of VaynerMedia’s digital spend goes to Google across environments like Search, Shopping, YouTube, Discover, Display, Local and associated Performance Max elements. Increases in conversion rates, along with return on ad spend, would lead to more ad dollars towards Google, Morgenstern said. As of 2022, 28.8% of total industry digital spend was spent on Google, declining from 34.7% in 2017, according to numbers from Tinuiti. Factors, including economic conditions, industry trends and consumer behavior, will affect spend. “Amazon continues to build its ad business, further eating away at Google's and Meta's market share,” Parsad said. “However, if the new technology proves to be effective in generating high-performing ads, it could potentially attract more advertisers to Google's platform and lead to an increase in ad spend.” Audi, Mars, Nespresso Embrace Ad Effectiveness With New Attention Metrics While the industry is combating signal loss, Parsad hopes that this generative AI tool from Google, combined with Performance Max, will drive attention metrics for brands. Still, questions linger on whether AI will achieve other goals, like conversion events. “There is that risk of it being too good at grabbing attention, but not necessarily driving the desired outcome,” he added. An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed industry ad spend on Google to Tinuiti. Tinuiti did not share its ad spend.

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Google’s Latest AI Ad Tool Stirs Fresh Transparency Concerns for Marketers

AI-driven ad features will lead to increases in ad spend

Trishla Ostwal

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Trishla Ostwal