Hot Days and Hot Takes on Google's AI Ad Updates, YouTube Premarketing, and B2B Social Proof - Episode 173

And demand Gen and YouTube. Basically, they're using search maps and YouTube signals to predict who wants your brand before they even search.

What does that actually mean? Deciphered into plain English.

They're trying to basically gather together all the signals and then show people the right ads, even if they haven't searched for the thing, if they're on YouTube and they've also been doing other things, then these ads are going to be more relevant because we can kind of work out that this is what they're eventually going to do, or what they're eventually going to ask for.

So it sounds like remarketing on stilts really, isn't it? Which is either going to be great or it's just going to freak people out even more.

It's remarketing without them having to have clicked anything. Just done some.

Premarketing.

Yeah, it kind of is. That's kind of what it is.

It's Premarketing.

Welcome back to digital Marketing From The Coalface. And um, to start off, I've got a blank.

Blank, blank. You've got blank page in front of you, but you have something to talk.

I have got something to talk about. Yeah, it's a blank page. I'm getting some curious looks from people walking past.

It's hot. We've got the front door of the office open. Two people are staring at us like, what are they doing?

So, um, I went out to get some drinks.

Um, product placement.

Kind of. Yeah. Well, I went out to get some drinks, uh, for those that wanted before we started recording because it's a lovely hot day for once, office door open and everything else. And you said, oh, um, get me. I thought you said something spiky. It was like, I don't know what that means, but anyway, you meant something spiky. And I thought, sprite. Well, that's lemonade didn't have any sprite. I saw that one. Yeah. And I wasn't sure whether it was, like, full of chemicals and crap.

Yeah.

Or whether it was an okay lemonade. And it's an R whites lemonade.

Yeah.

So are whites. Are whites? Well, I'm a secret lemonade drinker. Uh, why do you remember that advert from years ago?

I know about the advert because it's well known. I don't. I don't know if it was one that only showed in England. I don't know if our whites were in Scotland. I think they're English. Right. I don't remember seeing.

one hundred and seventy years of making it.

I think that was only recently.

The secret lemonade drinker. It was a guy gets up in the middle of the night, opens the fridge, secret lemonade drinker, and I'm trying to give it up, but it's one of those nights are whites are whites? Yeah. And I could remember it as clear as day.

Yeah.

Advertising works, doesn't it? Because that made me think, well, I remember the advert from when I was like, probably when I was a kid almost. I mean, years and years and years ago. And I thought, oh, right. I didn't even know there was still a thing. So well, I'll just get the whites lemonade and that's why I bought it. So that advert from fifty years ago just made me buy a bottle of can of juice now.

I genuinely didn't, I didn't ask for lemonade. I asked for sprite or seven up, which is like really strong brands. So I'm not even thinking lemonade as a category. I'm thinking sprite. Yeah. It's the first thing that came into my head with sprite, which actually is similar to one of the things I've written down.

You've written down sprite?

No, no, but it's weird because it was just.

Go on then. Lead on, lead off. Go. You might as well do.

one of the things I thought. It's probably not worth talking about because it's not really relevant to everything else, but it turns out it is relevant to everything else. So yeah, it was a it was a podcast I was listening to the other day, um, which I will plug later because it was actually very, very good.

Good. We like to plug a good podcast, but this.

Okay, I'll plug it now actually, before I forget, it was the uncensored CMO.

Okay.

It's excellent.

And who is it? Is it anybody we know or is it just somebody we've never heard of? But they're very good. Yeah, basically like us. Nobody's ever heard of us. But we're very.

Good. Very good. Um, but he had special guests. He had Rory Sutherland and Tom Goodwin on as special guests. And it's part one of two. And it was incredible. I mean, I could talk about all the things they spoke about. It was amazing. But then you probably as well.

Just go called.

Uncensored CMO. And it's the latest episode, rather than regurgitating everything they said, go and listen to it. It's very, very good. But one of the things they said, which leads back to the the branding or why it's advertising and I'm saying sprite rather than lemonade, it's um, they said if you're famous, people go and look for you. If you're not famous, you have to go and look for people.

Okay. Yeah.

So rather than somebody trying to sell me lemonade, you know, would you like this lemonade? I just said sprite because I'm asking for a sprite. Yeah, because. Because that's a famous brand.

Yeah. Because it's a brand that, you know, it's a brand that you like, etc.. Yeah, that makes sense.

And I don't even I hardly ever drink fizzy drinks only when it's really, really hot.

Sometimes it just hits the spot.

Yeah. It's just the water out. The tap just isn't cold enough today. And we we're lucky because the water out the taps is amazing here, and it's usually freezing cold, but just isn't quite cold enough for a hot day. So the branding thing you you ask for the brand rather than the the product because because it's so well known and it's a it's a way of helping you make a decision. Otherwise, you're like, if I said lemonade to you and you'd be like, oh, there's all these lemonades. And did she mean sprite? Did she mean lemonade? But you know, if it's a strong brand name, you feel safe buying it. Yeah. You're like, okay, well, that's, that's fine. I know that's decent because I've, I've heard of them because they do good ads somehow you think the product's decent.

But you think that's like one of the challenges of B2B. Just to make this episode of the podcast vaguely on topic.

Oh.

Well, you know, it's like, you're right. If I'm thinking of buying a car, there are certain brands I will buy and certain brands I won't buy. If I'm thinking of buying a pair of trainers, I've got a few in mind that I would buy. Yeah, I have, I have in the past kind of gone with the brand I've never heard of before. I'd never heard of is it Hoka? I'd never.

Heard. I got Hoka because I'd heard of them.

Well, I'd never heard of them when I bought them and I quite liked them. And I would now buy them again. Yeah. But um, when it comes to B2B, people are, you know, right. It's like if I need to, you know, I need to build, um, a tether management system for, um, an ROV remote operated vehicle. I don't go, oh yeah, you know, Acme, they're the people, you know, to a certain extent, that's not a good example because certain extent, there are people in the marketplace who specialise in these things. But more, more likely people are going out and searching for the thing rather than the brand. They're looking for a tether management system, or they're looking for somebody who can build modules or create, um, you know, um, what they call the heat exchangers, for example, I need somebody who can build me a heat exchanger to do this and this.

Yeah. So if your brand isn't strong enough for people to go, I want a X, Y, Z heat exchanger, then you've got to be a lot more convincing and, and have information there that that makes people feel safe in the way that a brand makes them feel safe. Yeah. So you've got to have certain elements that that makes them think, yeah, this one looks better than that one. Because you always.

Say that when we're talking to customers, but, you know, we often will. We'll always say, you know, we've got to make people feel safe. Yeah, we've got to give them some social proof because they've never heard of you. But if they see that other people have and they've used you, that's a good thing.

Yeah, definitely.

Certifications makes sense because they expect to see this and that and the other certification. Um, and, and then some case studies to actually show them that you've done it before. And there's a reason for that. Yeah. You know, you know, Adidas don't have to do that if they're trying to sell me a pair of trainers.

Because they're famous.

Yeah. These people said these trainers are good. And this person walked forty miles in the trainers and they worked fine. And you don't need you don't need any of that because it's like, well, they're Adidas.

Exactly. So yeah. Yeah. And that, that actually links to one of the other things that they said. Um, I mean, mostly it was, it was sort of general marketing and advertising stuff, but they did mention engineering led companies. So my, my ears pricked up at that point and they were talking about people like Dyson and they was talking about you've got these product variants, you've got the Z x three, um, Point six, and you've got the z x three fifty five point four two.

Absolutely.

And you've got to explain what the difference is, because it means absolutely nothing if you don't name your products in a way that that makes sense to people, you actually have to make it really, really clear because otherwise people get confused and they walk away because they just, they're like, oh, I don't know, I don't know. And now I've.

Done that recently and I'm struggling to remember what it was I was thinking of buying. And I finished up being so confused, I just abandoned, I thought, I'm not going to bother to revisit it at some point because this version of it did this and this. Yeah. The other version of it did that now. Yeah. And this version did all of that. But probably or and I was just totally confused.

And they say that yeah, people do choice or you get overwhelmed by the amount of choice. And actually less choice is sometimes good. And the other thing is that you can actually use pricing to show the difference. So if one thing, if it's got X and Y and the other one's got A and B make a difference in the pricing. So people kind of know if that's the. Yeah, that's better or worse.

That's right.

Yeah. And even if it's kind of subjective, if you price it differently, people will feel differently about it. Yeah. Because they said that there was a Nespresso coffee machine. They brought in a different model and it did something different, but it was exactly the same price. So you didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. And which one do I have then? This, this does this. But but it's the same price. So if it said this does this and it's more expensive, you'd think, okay, well that's a fancy thing. Do I want it to do the fancy thing? But if it's the same price, you just go, well, no, I don't know.

Yeah.

So you can, you can use pricing to sort of almost help the choice process and help explain what the differences are between things.

I mean, I think that's one thing that Apple get right is you never you never buy on price. You buy what you need. And you don't worry about the price because the price is what it is. Well it's funny.

Well, because um, I'm needing a new app. I'm not needing a new Apple Watch. I'm wanting a new Apple Watch.

Might get the ultra fantastic.

See this is where you go. So my Apple Watch does does everything. But it doesn't connect to some of the running apps. So it doesn't do all the the running stuff, which is mainly what I use it for apart from actually telling the time. So there's the Apple Watch and then there's the the Apple Watch SE. The SE is way, way cheaper than the normal one. And I'm like, what's wrong with it? You know, look at it. But they're very clear. They tell you the things it does and the things that it doesn't do. And for what I need, it does everything I need. And it's only a couple of hundred quid. Yeah.

That's right.

But they do explain it really well. And you can, you can see what the difference is. And I'm like, you know what. For the extra five hundred quid I do not need all these extra bells and whistles. So you can, you can make a decision really quite easily on that. But the pricing is, is a big gap there. So you have to take a look and go. And it's very much what am I missing out on. But I'm like, I'm actually not missing out on anything I'm particularly bothered about. the lower ones. Fine for me.

In the second hand car market, which is the second time I've mentioned it today. It's it's your car is absolutely covered in pollen.

I know it.

Looks like you didn't have very much water in your washer bottle to wash it off.

And I do.

Just look at it from here. I can't see. Yeah. You can go and just get up and look at it now. Go on. Get up and look at it. Just go.

They're getting.

Up. How could you even see through that on the way in? You have to admit, it looks like. It looks like you washed it off with candy floss or something.

It does. I did. I was because I drove into Aberdeen yesterday, probably, but, I mean, it was fine this morning.

Leslie's car's gleaming. She must have washed it.

She must have done. Yeah. It's a lot shinier than mine.

It is? Yeah. Um, yeah. When you come to second hand cars, you can see what looked to be exactly the same car. There's five grand a difference in price. Yeah. But then when you dig into it, it's like, yeah, but this one has got the, the panoramic roof and it's got that and it's got the leather seats and yeah, it.

Just and then you go, yeah, do. How badly do I want these things, you know? And most of the time, most of the time it's like, yeah, they're kind of extras. I'm not that fast. Yeah. But there might be something specific you want. You're like, I really want one with a thing, in which case you are prepared to pay more. But pricing is a great way of figuring that out.

We work for a company some years ago, didn't we, based down in London, and that's what they were. They were pricing consultants. It's really they were huge. It was like fourteen hundred of them, all in offices all over the world. And they primarily helped businesses with pricing.

Yeah. I mean, pricing.

Is.

Pricing is complicated and it's quite difficult to get right as we know. You know, it's really hard to put a price.

Yeah. Because I mean, in our line of work and you know, if there's any other agency people listen to this, they'll know like traditionally people sell time. Yeah, selling time is fine, but it penalises people who are good.

Yeah. Or fast. Yeah. Faster and better you are. The less money.

You are good. I meant efficient. Yeah, yeah. People who can do something really well and do it really quickly. Make less money than people who are crap.

Yeah. So obviously that model is a bit rubbish.

It is a bit rubbish. Yeah it is, but it's the one that people understand and trying to persuade people otherwise. I mean we tend to price by um on deliverables. So you know we'll price by value price using like a deliverable model. Price it up internally. We're working out, you know, how long is this going to take us.

Times obviously feeds.

Into.

It, but it's also the value that you're adding. And you know what the thing's worth in the end. So it's it's complicated to work it out. And the only way you can get around the sort of getting faster is by putting your prices up.

Yeah, I think we've talked about pricing quite a lot and we've talked about hourly rates and things like that in previous episodes. But yeah, it it's a problem that never goes away. Remember there was and there may still be. Um, I was in that cohort of agency owners. Um, most mostly they were Americans and a lot of them had adopted the points based system.

Yeah, yeah. Which we tried.

Which we kind of played with.

And people got kind of settled down.

Convinced.

People still get bogged down and like, well, why are you charging me seven points for that and five points for that? And it actually made it more contentious.

I mean, if you've got a right nice round number, so you say you've got a retainer, that's five thousand quid a month and that buys you fifty points. Yeah. So I think people go, okay, so every points, you know, one hundred quid. Yeah. So straight away they're thinking right, that's that's going to be five points. Right. So that's five hundred quid. Yeah. So why not just say that thing we're going to do for you is five hundred quid. Yeah. You know when they start asking well how long is it going to take. And you say oh five hours. Oh right. So you charge you one hundred quid an hour. Fair enough. If that's if you're that dumb. But I mean it's um. Yeah, I don't know. Pricing is, is I don't know how we got onto pricing. We got into pricing.

Yeah. We got some, some roundabout route about, um, engineers recently. But yeah, it's about how engineers describe their products. And if you, if you have a fancy name and you don't use some mechanism to explain what the difference is between two things and pricing would be one of the mechanisms you can use.

In the podcast. You were, you were you're referencing the uncensored CMO unplugged them again. What was the the subject matter? Or they used Dyson as an example. What was the context of that?

You're going to buy a Dyson and you have all these different models, and they've all got like weird names.

One's got a so and so filter and one hasn't.

Got.

Filter and one's the V9 and one's the V12 and all that.

And none of it makes any sense. And you really don't know what the difference is between.

How is Dyson a hugely successful company? And I have to say I like their products as well. I know some people don't, but I do. Are we saying that they've got it wrong? Um or were they saying that they've got it wrong?

They were saying that the company is led by engineers, not marketers. And therefore the approach to naming products and adding new products is a very engineering approach, whereas.

They've been hugely successful.

Yeah, they have.

Marketing are involved somehow, surely.

Yeah. Yeah, obviously they are. But um, yeah.

They're the ones that said make it purple.

Probably. Yes. But yeah, it's more.

As many V's in it as you want, but make it purple.

But yeah, the model number of models in the description of the models and the naming of the models is very engineering led and not very consumer friendly, was what they were saying.

Yeah, it's from a consumer's point of view as well. When you come to buy a new filters, and I actually threw out a box, I did, I did put them free to a good home on Facebook, but nobody came and took them. But I bought a box of all right. They weren't Dyson, but they were, you know, aftermarket filters that I bought and they were the wrong ones. And, you know, and I researched, I thought I'd bought the right ones. And then I finished up throwing a box of three filters in the bin because they were the wrong ones. But exactly that because. Oh no, the yours is the, the V ten XP or whatever. Yeah, really.

I know it's not helpful.

Yeah. So plain English, keep it simple, stupid.

Um, keep it simple and yeah, don't give. Don't provide too much choice. And if there is choice, make the make. The choice is obvious. Like what the difference is between them. So it was, it was brilliant that the whole conversation was.

Anything with Rory Sutherland and is good.

Yeah, it was really, really good.

I will get around to doing his mad Masters course at some point.

Um, the other thing is, um, all the Google announcements last week, so they had a big, um.

Announcement fest.

Yeah. Basically a video that involved, um, people standing on ladders and I missed the beginning. So I kind of missed the.

Was that the thing I booked on? But I, yeah, I had to go and I was going the opticians. So I actually.

So I.

They did send me a link saying, sorry we missed you and.

Yeah, you can watch.

The highlights. Yeah, I haven't watched it yet.

It was very fast moving and it was an hour and they packed a ton into an hour, which meant that they kind of skimmed over quite a lot of stuff. And you ended up like, I'm gonna have to like, go back and understand what on earth you're talking about later on. But there was.

You know, like when you're watching videos to learn stuff, you can actually play them at one and a half and three times.

And it.

Was like, you're gonna have to play it at like quarter speed when you play it.

Back. Yeah. And I've watched bits of it about three times. I'm like, nope. Yeah. Still no idea, but I kind of tried to summarise the stuff that is probably relevant. Some of it is like very e-commerce y and stuff that we kind of don't really need to worry about, but they're going to put ads in AI mode. So Google ads is basically changing.

So obviously they've got ads either side and in amongst AI snippets, but now they're going to put it into AI more.

So they're going to be. So you would ask an AI mode, you'd ask which um, which running shoes should I buy. And it would be, well, here's some running shoes. And these ones are really good if you want. And it would like be contextual, right. And conversational and, and, and there's a special offer.

I'm saying, so the advert will look like it's just a response and it won't even look like an advert because they've been trying to hide adverts for a long time. I think.

They did a little mock up and it is going to say sponsored, but it's part of.

The.

AI answer.

Right?

And it's kind of contextual. So it would would answer your question rather than just being the the kind of answer your.

Question, how are they defending that in terms of like, do they believe that it'll work because people don't care that they're being sold to because they're obviously going to be instead of getting an answer impartial, they're going to be getting sold to.

Now it looked like you'll get you'll get an answer. But part of the answer would recommend, you know, okay, a product and the product would be an ad.

Because it used to be, I mean, or is rather with Google ads, if you know your answers there and ads for adverts related to your questioner there. And it's kind of clear to most people that's an advert. That's not an advert.

I think it's going to be less clear.

Yeah, it sounds like it. From what you've.

Seen from the from the mockups and it did say sponsored, but it's part of the answer and it's um, it's not like buy this, buy this, it's conversational. So it's kind of answering your question, but also advertising the thing.

If you were to get people together who are not necessarily Google PhDs and say to them, right, we're starting to lose advertising market share. Google ads is is starting to lose some of its traction because of AI mode. What shall we do? And you know, to the uninitiated, you would say, well, just sort of weave adverts into the AI responses. And that seems to me like that's, that's exactly what they've done.

Yeah.

Well that's not clever, is it? They haven't come up with a clever solution. They've just done what the obvious thing.

Yeah, yeah. Basically.

But I wonder, I wonder if it'll mean like, you know, like you still have an army of people who say I never click adverts. I don't, you know, Google ads, you know, blah, blah. Um, I just wonder if you know, the people or more people will just say, well, I'm not, you know, I'll go and use, I don't know, I'll go and use Claude because they're not putting adverts in the responses. I'm just getting an actual response because ChatGPT are doing it.

Yeah.

I don't know if perplexity and the others are probably doing perplexity.

Said they never will.

Okay.

You probably will at some point.

How did they get their revenue? Is it is it paid like, yeah, twenty quid a month or whatever, like ChatGPT or whatever. Yeah. Okay. All right.

So yeah, so that's one thing. So obviously, um, creating ads is going to be different because you're going to have to have a bank of.

Well, I would imagine, are they not saying that they'll figure it out for you. Tell, tell, tell us what you're trying to sell and we'll figure it out for you. Because that's what they're kind of doing.

With.

Like the P max and the.

AI Max models.

Is.

Getting bigger. So yeah, it'll be related to that, that they'll kind of make up these ads based on whatever information they can find about you. You know, yes, I'll pay you some money and you weave my, my product into the answers, basically.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's, um, fun and games. Um, in terms of creating ads, there's going to be a thing called ask advisor, which is a, rather than just being an AI assistant in the ads, it's an agent that's going to have memory. So if you ask it to do something one time, you'll come back another time, it'll remember like what you've told it before. Yeah. So and it'll go and do stuff rather than just, you know, telling you what to do. Mhm. And it's supposed to be helping with planning, asset creation, measurement and optimisation. So everything basically. Okay. Hopefully it'll be useful eventually. I think it might take a while.

Getting rolled out in North America first. Um, did you say. I thought you did. Maybe you didn't.

Not that some things are that there was something else that's being rolled out in North America. I'm not sure about all this stuff. I think it's all just getting. And I don't know when this is all getting rolled out. Okay. Um, AI Max is taking over. So at the moment you've got, um, the dynamic search ads that you kind of just give them a URL or whatever and, and let them get on with it. Yeah. So they're getting replaced by AI Max. So because they both kind of do the same thing anyway, but they do look like they're putting a bit more control into Imax. So you'll be able to tell them, um, certain things that, that they can't do, you'll be able to put in disclaimers, you'll be able to get previews of the assets they're creating and certain like, you know, certain do's and don'ts. So they are giving you more control. So I think they have listened to people kind of going, yeah, but what it comes out with is rubbish. And, and I don't like it. So there is.

If ever there was a candidate for AI, then it is this kind of it is programmatic advertising, isn't it? Like, you know, however, whether you're using AI Max. Max or you're using just standard search ads and with manual intervention and everything else, if you can educate the AI to what you're trying to achieve and you know it can go off and do it for you and make the best use of your budget, I can understand why that might work.

You use the AI in HubSpot reports.

Um, I think I'm working on a HubSpot report for a client just now, and I'm not sure if I, because it was on Friday and I was losing interest. So I think it was kind of, I started dabbling with it.

I've been working on HubSpot reports and that was Friday morning. And again, I was like, well, my brain isn't working. So yeah, I need a report that does this and this split by this. Oh my God.

Yeah, it just.

Just does it. It's really good. Okay. Very, very happy with that because, um.

I think that's one of the areas of AI. You know, when people talk about AI, they talk a lot about generative AI. Look, it can create this photograph or it can create this video of somebody, somebody doing something that that person never did and all that crap and generative AI in terms of creating content and so on and so forth. But the way that you can crunch data with it is, is off the scale.

Great.

It's phenomenal. You can chuck like thousands, hundreds of thousands of lines of data at it and say, this is what I'm really interested in, and it'll just come back and give you some answers. You can talk to it. It's like having your own private geek. Somebody that understands power BI, understands SQL, understands, you know, complex queries and all the rest of it. Yeah. And you can talk to them and say, this is the kind of information I need. And they would rush off and write the queries and the complex, you know, the queries that were required because, you know, SQL was kind of trying to be, you know, speaking in an almost natural language to, to extract data out of big data sets. Well, it's not just natural language.

Yeah.

Yeah. You don't have to, you.

Don't have to.

Understand.

That shows, um, all the deals in the dashboard split by, um, the source of the leads and trying to figure out which pulling properties and deals. And it's actually quite complicated because there are two completely different parts of HubSpot and it just did it. And then it wasn't quite what I wanted. And then so I was able to say, can you change it to do this? And it just did it, and it was taking ages and I probably wouldn't have got it right. It was really smart. Um, so yeah, things, things involving data and reporting the.

Speed of change is quite staggering, isn't.

It? Yes. No. Like it used to be like maybe once every couple of weeks I came to work and my brain hurt. My brain hurts every single day at the moment.

Yeah. I was, I was, I was kind of working on something this morning and I was, um, you know, working with my best mate, Claude. And, um, I just thought, I thought to myself, like, this stuff is making me more productive. Not because it's doing loads of crap for me that I didn't want to do, but because it's actually helping me to decipher things and understand things and take things back to first principle. It's like this personal kind of almost, you know, and it's. Yeah. Anyway, I think it's no secret that we're big fans of A.I..

Yeah, but yes, I see.

It blind to the challenges it's bringing.

No, no, because I was reading something today and I was spending as much time just trying to learn stuff as I am doing stuff at the moment. There was something like, um, if you ask AI a question, it's something like fifty percent more likely to agree with you than your friend would. It doesn't push back as much as a human would.

So absolutely.

You've got to be quite.

You can tell it not to do that though.

Yeah.

You can set it up to be.

I know.

To always challenge your thinking. Yeah. You know, I think you're right by default. Yeah, yeah. Great idea Dave. Yeah, I got it to, to do something for me last week. And we got, you know, quite a nice enquiry came in and I wanted some help to make sure I covered all the points. So I gave it the enquiry. Yeah. I said I want to respond to this and blah blah blah. And I got and the stuff got back from it was utter and I mean utter garbage. Really. Complete and utter. I just put it all in the bin and wrote it myself. It was terrible. It's funny.

Because sometimes it does things like that quite well.

And I did, I did actually say to it, you know, I said, you know what, forget it. I'm going to write it myself. And it actually came back and said, oh, you know, well, can you can you share it with me once you've done it so I can compare what you did to what I did? And so I did.

Did it put his hands up and go, yeah, right. Yours is.

Better. It basically said, yeah, I was just waffling and coming up with loads of like, you know, you, you said in three sentences because I'm, you know, famously in my emails are often quite short. Yeah. You know, you said in like three sentences what it took me like, you know, a whole page to write. So it kind of acknowledged that. But, you know, anyway, I thought it was quite funny.

It's quite nice to know that it's not always right.

Um, yeah. Quite often isn't obviously.

So one of the other things in this Google announcement was they were talking about data strength. And they're like, you can connect the various data sources direct from Google ads rather than having to go into tag manager. So there's something called data manager in Google Ads, which has been there. It's not it's not brand new. It's been there for a little while. So you can connect it up with your sources rather than having to go externally. So it's trying to bring everything in, in together to keep you in one place and make it just a bit easier. And then there's Google Tag Gateway, which just seems like another.

It's just another word for server side tagging, I think, isn't it?

Yeah, I think so. But yeah, it's just another they're like, oh, we're going to make it simpler and put everything in one place. And we've introduced a new place. You've got to go to our tags.

Okay.

That's great. Thanks so much. But the, um, the talking about causality and like attribution and stuff. So they're introducing something called um, attributed branded searches. So recognising that, um, with like zero click and all that. That branded search is actually somebody. Somebody found you somewhere else. And then they're searching for you by name because they found you somewhere else. So they're, they're trying to tie in that data somewhere along the line and qualified future conversion. So that's recognising like, you know, things like B2B with really, really long sales cycles. So they're trying to find a way to say, look, um, if somebody downloads this thing, that's a qualified future conversion. So in about eighteen months, that's got more chance of turning into a lead than someone who doesn't do this. So they're trying to build in these sort of predictive data, not just based on like conversions now, but, and, um, and the media clicks from somewhere. So they're trying to be a bit smarter with, with all the attribution stuff, but haven't quite worked out where that's going.

And they haven't either.

They've got something, they've got an enterprise version of what's it called, is it something three hundred sixty where.

Yeah there is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The data where it's all.

Analytics three sixty or something.

Yeah. Analytics three sixty and it's got then they've got a thing called Meridian and it's all going to be really, really smart in there.

Which is really, really, really spend that kind of money on analytics.

But I think if they're looking at that, it might filter through. Yeah. But it's good that they're thinking about things like like qualified future conversions, like long, long sales cycles and trying to, to sort of go, you know, this is a better lead than that because this is more likely to convert. So yeah, all, all good in that point. And then they're talking about Google Analytics being your data command center and being able to connect with all your different channels. So they're going to pull in data from like different social media platforms and stuff. So you can see like all your conversions and all your data better from within Google Analytics.

Okay. We currently, you could do that with this, say looker studio because you could connect all the different data sources and then display it in Looker studio. And they're gonna they're now saying, well, we can connect them to Google, Google Analytics instead.

Or as well. I don't know. Yeah. They're trying to simplify things and then just adding more things. So who knows.

But trying to stay relevant, I guess.

Yeah. They're trying to make Google Analytics the sort of go to place because obviously there's so many other people kind of going, you know, we've got a reporting dashboard here and you can pull everything together. So I guess they're seeing that, that they need to compete by, by getting more and more data in. Mhm.

Is there any of this stuff interesting?

Well, it's interesting because.

Is it the people who listen to this really want to hear all this?

Who knows? Who knows? They're gonna have to kind of figure some of this out or, or ask us to figure it out once we know. Yeah. Um, and then there's stuff on YouTube.

Is that the stuff that Leslie was mentioning in her crib? Okay.

That that that's different. I'll speak for that as well. They're using like in demand gen and YouTube's, they're trying to identify basically they're using search maps and YouTube signals to predict who wants your brand before they even search.

What does that actually mean? Deciphered into plain.

English. That's what I'm trying to figure out.

Second guess.

Yeah, I guess with maps and things, if somebody in the area and they're looking for something, then they kind of know that they're more likely to buy from you. But yeah, they're trying to basically gather together all the signals and, and then show people the right ads, even if they haven't searched for the thing they, you know, if they're on YouTube and they've also been doing other things, then these ads are going to be more relevant because we can kind of work out that this is what they're eventually going to do or what they're eventually going to ask for.

So it sounds like like remarketing on stilts. Yeah. Really isn't it? Which is either going to be great or it's just going to freak people out even more.

Yeah, it's remarketing without them having to have clicked anything. Just done some.

Remarketing.

Yeah, it kind of is. That's kind of what it is. It's premarketing. It's um, yeah, doing it before they actually search.

Showing adverts based on stuff that you've looked at and where you are and what it knows you're interested in. Because if you again, going back to AI, if you pick a particular LLM, which you use a lot, again, you know, like we're predominantly using Claude here, even though we've got Gemini as well, we predominantly use Claude. The more you do with it, the more it learns about you. And you can be doing something completely random and it'll say it'll say something like, yeah, and that's particularly relevant for you living in Deeside.

Oh, I know.

I mean, that happens a lot. I mean, I see that sort of thing a lot when I'm, when I'm using it and it just, it is building up incredible memory. So if they're saying that the YouTube platform can build up this memory and start to really understand, oh, you know, right. You know, Dave's watching a video about yeah, about, you know, Honda pan European motorbikes. And it's just, but we know he's got one. So he maybe he's looking for leathers or a new helmet, show him adverts for leathers and helmets.

Yeah. But he's, he's just looked on the map for like somewhere in France. So maybe he's looking for like how to take your motorbike to France.

He might need a satnav.

Yeah. So yeah, it's stuff like that. There also, this is the thing that Leslie was speaking about um in the US they're rolling out. Ask YouTube.

Yeah that's right. I saw that. That was quite interesting.

It's like basically a conversational search in YouTube. So you can, rather than just searching for a few words, you can actually ask a question. Then you can, you can refine it with follow up questions so that you can get exactly what you're looking for. Yeah. And so it's like an LLM within YouTube. Yeah. So it's.

And why wouldn't it? I mean, the, the amount of natural language data that sits in YouTube is off the scale. So. Yeah, they are exactly the right. Um, what do they call it? I can't remember the name of it. You know, the um that the LMS learn, learn from, you know, they're.

Yeah. Because we know that um, YouTube transcripts are used by, by AI, either I am a mod or I overuse. One of them does and one of them doesn't. And so yeah, they'll be using the transcripts, um, to, to find the exact answer to someone's question. Yeah. So yeah. Mind. Mind boggling.

This is a little bit mind boggling. Yeah. And, but you know, when it comes down to it, it's still just like people trying to get you to buy shit.

Yeah, exactly.

Which is, you know, the internet runs on. Yeah. People trying to get you to buy shit.

Yeah. Basically. And it's just, um, it's getting more and more complicated. But actually that comes back to that, that podcast again. And they were like, you know. Yeah.

Were they saying the same thing?

Pretty much. But they were talking about, you know, how, um, if you're, if you're in a large corporation, you come up with an idea, you've got to justify it within an inch of its existence. You know, we're talking about, um.

Whereas here, if someone comes up with an idea like run with it, see what happens sort of thing.

Yeah. Um, you can, yeah. In a smaller organisation, you can, you can give things a whirl, but you know, in a big organisation, you've got to show the numbers or prove that if you do this thing, it's going to like increase sales by at least like naught point one percent, whereas the best ideas are they were saying the best ideas are just like crazy, random. And sometimes, sometimes.

They certainly are in Rory Sutherland's world. And I'm not saying he's wrong, but you know, the crazier the.

Better in consumer land.

Counterintuitive. Yeah.

And they were talking about things being surprising. Yeah. And stand out. Um, you can, you can sort of kill an idea by using data too much because you're just trying to make it fit into the same box as everyone else. And then everything sounds the same.

Yeah. Well, we had that recently with a, with a new customer where, you know, we came up with some, I thought really nice ideas around a landing page and they were just, they just push back and say, oh no, you know, it's against this and we won't be able to do that. And it was all built using their brand guidelines.

Yeah. And it wasn't it wasn't wacky. We weren't like, you know, doing anything that.

Was, you know, we need, we need to.

Test look exactly the same as other things. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. It's that sort of thing. So it's um it's harder to, to sort of do anything particularly creative if you've got to justify everything with, with a whole series of numbers and you can't, you know, you can't try anything different. Yeah. Yeah. Which makes it hard to sort of move forward sometimes because you just get stuck in a cycle of doing the same old, same old.

What's on your list? Anything else? Just pick one thing and we'll talk about that to finish. Scroll up and down.

That's way too boring. I'm not even going to talk about that. Another googley thing how people use AI mode. This is a US report.

What's the.

Takeaway mode has over one billion monthly users, so it's being adopted and.

The users or searches.

Monthly users.

Users users.

Wow. Yeah. And queries are doubling every quarter.

Um, in AI mode.

Yeah. Searches are thrice as long. Three times as long as traditional ones. And then The number of follow up queries is increasing by forty percent every month. So people are getting the hang of asking follow up questions as well. So they're using it properly. They're not just using it as a search engine. They're they're having conversations with it. Yeah.

So that's it. That's what you wanted to discuss. Not a lot to discuss there. You just kind of told me something.

Please. Okay. What's on your list? Come up with something to.

My list is to listen to uncensored CMO. There you go. Third plug for the podcast. Um, and that's what I'm gonna do.

But apart from that.

Nothing.

Nothing, nothing.

Because I do tend, I mean, I really appreciate that you come with a big list and that's fine. And I can learn stuff and talk about stuff. And I appreciate that. Leslie's now started putting together, like, you might want to talk about this. You might want to talk about that. Traditionally in this podcast, I've kind of talked about stuff I've been doing and, you know, yeah, I just haven't written down any notes from the stuff I've been doing. So I've got nothing. I've got nothing to offer.

Fine. It's too hot anyway.

It is a bit. Yeah. That's right. Well, as soon as we finish this, everyone's going home.

So it's. The sooner we finish the.

Well, you might say. I mean, I won't be going on, but everybody else is. So as soon as we finish this. So if you want to sort of wrap it up.

If they've heard that they're going to come down and start throwing things at us, they can all hear that.

So yeah. But yeah, I mean, the sun is literally splitting the trees. And I don't think it's as nice the next couple of days. Then it's nice again on Thursday. Yeah. And then it's okay at the weekend. It's never it's not getting cold. But yeah, today is particularly.

Is a very, very nice it's a bank holiday in England as well.

It is a bank holiday.

It doesn't happen very often.

Quite a lot of Scotland take it as well.

Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those weird ones.

Yes.

Nobody knows.

Kind of mainstream bank holiday but yeah. Okay. Right. We'll leave it there for now. We've got uh nothing else to say of interest. It's sunny and-

We've lost interest ourselves.

Yeah. It's. God help you. Uh, you can listen to, um, Julie Digital Marketing From The Coalface, and I promise to try harder next time.

Thank you.