At the heart of Google Marketing Live 2025 was a reimagining of what discovery looks like for consumers, brands, and marketers, in the ever-evolving world of AI. Google looked to encapsulate this in the statement “the future of marketing is here”.
For advertisers, this can be interpreted as another confirmation that AI is not something coming down the line. It has already arrived and is permeating through every aspect of marketing.
The guidance for all those in attendance was clear. The organizations that embraced the transformative capabilities of AI would continue to thrive and unlock performance gains across the Google network, and beyond.
It was in that spirit that Google showcased their emerging products and vision for the future.
The AI powered evolution of search was showcased across three key areas.
AI is also continuing to promote several new consumer behaviors, like leveraging longer queries to converse with AI powered results.
In this context it was suggested that keywords were becoming increasingly limited in their ability to cover all the long tail searches being brought about by AI.
In response, Google highlighted the “Power Pack” of AI Max, Performance Max, and Demand Gen. AI Max is of note here, as a setting that leverages Google AI to enhance keyword matching, creative, and landing page selection.
These together promised to maximize advertiser coverage and performance across emerging AI powered search experiences.
Also launched concurrently with GML, consumers will begin to see ads featured in AI overviews on desktop.
In addition, ads will also be tested in AI Mode, Google’s advanced AI powered search experience designed to address more complicated, multi-part queries.
Smart Bidding Exploration: Touted as the biggest leap in bidding technology over the past decade. This feature enables smart bidding to operate within a set ROAS range, giving Google AI the flexibility to identify and pursue opportunities across a wider array of queries.
Asset Studio: Rolling out later this year, Asset Studio will be a centralized hub for all of Google’s AI powered creative capabilities, including creative generation, image to video transformation, and reformatting.
AI agents are being introduced across some of Google’s most widely used platforms. For Google Ads, these agents will be able to provide tactical recommendations across multiple assets and implement changes when prompted.
For analytics, the agentic integration will be leveraged as a data concierge of sorts, who will be able to surface reporting and troubleshoot technical issues in platform.
YouTube remained a focal point, with Google re-emphasizing its importance as both a prospecting and conversion driving solution.
Of note, a new in app shopping experience was showcased, which allows users to engage with ads and browse products without having to navigate away from YouTube. Additionally, Google is launching a new creator partnerships hub, which will help brands to seamlessly collaborate with YouTube content creators and influencers.
Among the exciting product announcements and general AI fanfare there were reminders of the new realities that advertisers are facing.
Several longstanding approaches to marketing either already are or will soon become largely redundant in the face of the AI evolution.
Right from the off, Google was quick to highlight that the linear marketing funnel was no longer sufficient in encompassing the growing complexity of the consumer journey.
Even Keywords, the cornerstone of Google’s search business, came under scrutiny as an asset that likely won’t be able to keep up with the fluid, dynamic, and expansive search experiences that AI is providing consumers.
However, it is important to stress that the opportunities that AI promises to provide brands outweigh any draw backs of leaving some of old ways behind.
Having said all of that, our guidance for our partners off the back of today’s announcements are as follows:
