Artificial intelligence dominated the agenda at Google Marketing Live in Sydney yesterday, with the tech giant unveiling a suite of new tools designed to reshape how brands connect with consumers across the full purchase journey.
From predictive ad formats to multimodal search, the message was clear: AI is no longer a feature of the future, it’s the foundation of Google’s advertising strategy today.
B&T was in the room alongside more than 600 marketing, media and agency leaders as Google executives, including ANZ Managing Director Mel Silva and global VP of Search Ads Shashi Thakur, laid out a roadmap that promises to shift the advertising landscape.
Central to this strategy is a recognition of how user behaviour has fundamentally changed, with Silva pointing to four key behaviours driving engagement today: streaming, scrolling, searching and shopping.
Across each of these behaviours, Google is embedding AI to meet consumers with personalised, frictionless experiences, and, crucially, ad formats that deliver real performance.
Among the headline innovations was AI Overviews, Google’s generative search feature, which now reaches more than 1.5 billion users globally and is driving over 10 per cent growth in applicable query types across key markets. Google is currently trialling ad placements within these overviews, with rollouts underway on desktop and mobile in select countries. Australian advertisers are expected to gain access later this year.
Also unveiled was AI Mode, a major step forward in search technology. With advanced reasoning, multimodal capabilities and the ability to follow up with context-rich responses, AI Mode enables users to ask complex, layered questions and receive detailed answers that incorporate live web data, personalised inputs, and product recommendations. Early adopters are already submitting queries two to three times longer than those typically seen in traditional search.
Visual search also featured prominently, with tools like Google Lens now handling close to 20 billion searches each month, up from 12 billion just six months ago. Notably, one in five of these searches carries commercial intent. Circle to Search, which allows users to search directly from any screen using visual prompts, is proving especially popular among Gen Z users, who now initiate more than 10% of their searches through this feature.
For marketers, Google revealed a series of significant upgrades to its ad products aimed at driving performance and reducing complexity.
Leading the announcements was AI Max for Search, now in open beta, which eliminates the need for keyword targeting by learning directly from an advertiser’s landing pages and creative assets. The tool is designed to anticipate user needs and surface relevant ads accordingly. Early adopters, including Australian education marketplace Candle Fox, reported a 30 per cent increase in conversions and a 17 per cent reduction in cost per conversion.
Performance Max, Google’s all-in-one AI-powered campaign platform, also received a boost. Now equipped with channel performance reporting, the platform offers advertisers greater visibility into which formats and placements are driving results. Over the past year, more than 90 product updates have been rolled out, resulting in an average lift of over 10% in conversions.
Meanwhile, Demand Gen, optimised for high-impact, visually led campaigns across YouTube, Discover and Gmail—continues to gain traction. Advertisers using both video and image assets saw 20 per cent more conversions at the same cost per action compared to those using video alone, contributing to a 26% year-on-year increase in overall conversion value.
New platform features were also unveiled, including Smart Bidding Exploration, Google’s biggest update to bidding in a decade, which helps marketers uncover incremental conversion opportunities. A new Asset Studio will launch later this year, allowing advertisers to use generative AI to create, test and scale creative assets within the Google Ads interface. And by the end of 2025, incrementality testing will be available at scale with lower spend thresholds and self-service options.
However, the event wasn’t just about tools, it was about adoption. A keynote session featuring BCG X Partner Julian King revealed that although more than 90 per cent of marketers are experimenting with AI, just 11 per cent have achieved true integration across their business. King called out a significant “execution gap,” urging attendees to stop hesitating and start scaling. Those already embracing AI across their workflows are seeing 84 per cent higher revenue growth and 60% faster time-to-market, according to BCG data.
The overarching message? Brands can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines. As Silva noted, Google wasn’t the first to build a search engine, browser or email service, but it became dominant by building them right. With AI, it’s taking the same approach, bold, responsible and relentless in its focus on user need.
“That’s the new reality of consumer choice, and it’s defined by four key behaviours: streaming, scrolling, searching and shopping. And only Google and YouTube get you in front of consumers across all four,” she explained.
