• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, July 20, 2022

Google on Wednesday announced three ad creation tools to make collaboration easier. The tools offer asset storage and organization, feature for advertisers to quickly create video ads for YouTube, and a voice-over audio tool now integrated into the video creation tool.

“We’ve been working to make high-quality video ad creation easier for businesses of all sizes,” Google's AdsLiaison wrote in a tweet. “Video creation is now fully launched in Google Ads Asset Library. You can also quickly add voice-over to your new & existing video ad.”

The voiceover audio tool accessible through the asset library uses Google’s speech-to-text technology, according to the post.

Type the script into platform. The user selects the preferred voice, and the audio gets overlaid on the video. Seven voices are available. Languages include English, Filipino, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Korean, Malaysian, Mandarin, Spanish, and Swedish. The goal is to add more languages in the future.

Google’s Asset Library attempts to solve challenges by creating a visual database to upload, download, and share assets from current and past campaigns. 

The Asset Library is available for Performance Max, Discovery, App, Local, and Display campaigns as well as some extensions. When creating or editing a new campaign, marketers can access the library and click on the appropriate assets.

Google also made significant changes to its calendar and email services with the help of artificial intelligence.

The company began earlier this week to offer better search options in Gmail. Over the years, it made advancements to search capabilities and suggestions in Gmail through search filters, search operators, search chips, which Google introduced in 2020 to help users find relevant emails in fewer clicks.

Search improvements include better and more contextual contact suggestions with intent matching, and personalized suggestions based on historical interactions, and more. The rollout should be complete by July 30, 2022. 

Spam invitations in calendars are annoying, to say the least. Today Google announced the ability to prevent spam from appearing in personal calendar by providing the ability to only add invitations from known senders. This includes people in your same company domain such as @google.com, those in your contacts list, and people you have interacted with in the past.

Admins can set the default reply option for users in the Google Admin console. Note that end users can indicate their preference in their own Calendar settings. Google plans to complete this roll out by the first week in August.