Google Marketing Live 2025 was arguably one of the biggest we’ve had in the past decade, at least since I’ve been in the industry since July 2021.
AI is on everyone’s minds, specifically with the surge of AI Overviews in the past 12 months. Google openly admitted that AI Overviews have been a ‘success’ – but off the back of that, most advertisers have seen significant click decreases, as everyone’s getting their information before the click. The question becomes, if AI Overviews are just the start, what else are Google going to look to try to improve within the user journey, specifically from an Ads perspective.
Here are just some things that I’ve picked up from Google’s latest Google Marketing Live.
Google Ads AI Mode
Not specifically new for GML 2025, but Google put the rumours to bed, as they announced their new AI function, which is currently being rolled out across the U.S. Just like OpenAI, Google has put this together to combat the surge in top-of-funnel and middle-of-funnel searches.
Naturally, this will result in fewer clicks, and CTR will decline on informational-based searches, but it appears that Google wants to streamline the process so that an informational search can be shown as a commercial-based search. In essence, they want to try to predict what a user will want to buy within their information-based search.
Within GML, Google announced that Ads will appear in AI Mode, again linking information-based search queries to commercial ads it predicts the user is likely to visit next in the user journey. It’ll be interesting to see over time what ranking factors play a part in appearing within these AI Mode searches, and how much of this is user experience-led, versus a bid.
Google Ads appearing in AI Overviews
It was only a matter of time before ads would start appearing in AI Overviews, since Google Ads has become more and more pay-to-win based. Google’s demonstration showed shopping results appearing below informational-based searches, once again reinforcing Google’s desire to promote commercial ads on informational searches.
While it’s a benefit to advertisers, it’ll be interesting to see if it’s just shopping products that will appear in these overviews, or whether these will widen to search, display or video assets also. I’d be surprised if this wasn’t to be the case.
While it’s a win for ads to appear below informational-based content before a click occurs (which Google argue will result in higher quality traffic), it still feels like a big loss to SEO.
AI Max for Google Ads
A one-click feature that seems to open you up to more searches which you may have missed out on, AI MAX seems to be a further expansion to broad match. It’s another step to the keywordless future we expect Google Ads to become, emphasising the need for highly optimised pages, rich with content that are surrounded around features, benefits and frequent FAQs that will help pick up extra keywords beyond broad match.
I can’t help but think that this will likely have the same limitations to broad match – to where there is less control over search terms. There is also less control over the headline and landing pages used, it seems, with Google optimising the ad to how it sees will convert.
While this might be a great feature for advertisers with large monthly budgets, willing to widen the search query nets, this is a feature that will likely be overlooked by advertisers with smaller budgets
The Power Pack
The Power Pair that Google launched a few years ago (Broad Match + PMax) didn’t really live up the expectations, mainly due to the limitations of Pmax channel reporting (which is finally being added).
With the introduction of better PMax reporting, the power pack has been enhanced. Advertisers with the budget will now be able to use AI Max + PMax + Demand Gen in one account, which in theory will catch users across the sales funnel – or whatever remains of it. Again, for new advertisers without the budget, it’s going to be a stretch to run this strategy since the budget won’t go as far, but it’s interesting to say the least.
In Conclusion
Overall, GML 2025 was just an insight into an AI, keywordless future inside Google Ads. There was even more to add, like the Agentic features, as well as the AI updates to ad creatives. But there still looms a tricky dark cloud for advertisers who maybe can’t afford to invest into the new features – and with a keywordless future coming – it’s a wakeup call to start optimising practices towards a landing-page focused process.
