A picture can worth a thousand words. But a video can tell a whole lot more.
According to Google, more than 60 percent of shoppers say online videos have given them ideas or inspiration for their purchase. This is where Google introduces its YouTube video assets for responsive display ads (RDA) campaign.
"We built responsive display ads to help you adapt to the increasingly diverse mix of content types and screen sizes," said Google.
"Now you can expand your reach to new inventory and improve performance with sight, sound and motion — all while scaling ad creation, testing and optimization."
Google also announced two reporting updates for RDA:
Combinations Reports
With machine learning technology, Google can help deliver the best ads it thinks to the right customer. However, it's not always easy to tell which is working and why,
Using the Combination Reports, marketers can learn how different creative asset combinations perform.
The Combinations Report is designed to give advertisers more insights into which groupings of assets and copy are performing best.
They can find the report under the 'Combinations' tab in the Google Ads interface.
"This new report shows you the top performing asset combinations that are being generated in your responsive display ads. You’ll see separate sections for combinations based on your images, text, dynamic feeds, and videos," Google explained.
'Ad Strength' Scorecard
Creating relevant and helpful display ads should be every advertisers' priority.
And here, Google is providing them the Ad Strength scorecard to ensure marketers' RDA are set up properly, before they start to show.
"Google Ads will check that you have the optimal number of unique headlines, images, and descriptions," said Google.
Previously, a variation on this ad strength score is already been made available for responsive search ads (RSA). And by including RDA, Google is essentially expanding this tool.
This move has been long overdue.
With Google having its ad platform up and running with tons of inventories, and YouTube having a lot of video assets to start with, why not merging them both?
And naturally here, RDA is having that option, as its ads are largely automated with advertisers adding multiple contents within the same campaign.
With video assets on RDA, advertisers can add to up to five YouTube videos, as well as their headlines, description and brand logos, to get served in different combinations and sizes.
This is in line with what Google announced in late 2018.
At that time, the company said that RDA would become the default display format.
The announcement of video assets on RDA mark the first significant updates for RDAs since its initial rollout.