Google announced two new ad types at its annual Marketing Live gathering in San Francisco earlier this month. It also announced expanded visibility for Showcase Shopping ads, which will now appear in Google Images results, the Discover feed, and the YouTube feed, and a redesigned Google Shopping platform. For today, let’s stick with the new ads, which are currently in beta in the United States and will be available to search marketing agencies in Canada in late 2019.

First, Discovery ads. These units, which Google VP of Product Management Brad Bender described in a press briefing as “visually rich, mobile first, and [using] the ‘power of intent,’” will reside in the Google Discover feed on mobile, the YouTube feed on mobile, and in Gmail under the Social and Promotions tabs. The ads will feature large visuals that advertisers will upload alongside custom copy and which Google will optimize using machine learning. With the Discover feed now reaching more than 800-million users globally, Discovery ads could quickly become a staple for search marketing pros.

The second new ad type, Gallery ads, are also highly visual. These units will appear at the top of search results and feature four to eight scrollable images accompanied by up to 70 characters of text per image. Advertisers will be charged for each click or whenever a user swipes to the third image in the carousel. Google has been running tests on Gallery ads, which will compete with other paid ads for SERP real estate, and found they generated 25 per cent more interactions than other formats. This is a mobile-only ad type in its current iteration – no word yet on whether it will be made available for desktop or include video in the future.

As a Google Premier Partner search marketing agency with access to valuable insights on Google’s preferred practices, GrowthEngine Media is uniquely prepared to adopt these new ad types and apply them to your ongoing digital marketing strategy.