• by Laurie Sullivan , 2 hours ago

Google on Thursday introduced several new tools including "AI Max for Shopping and Travel." The standout feature in AI Max mirrors an agency service that lets advertisers in their own words guide AI on how to convey messages to specific consumer audiences.

Brendon Kraham, vice president of search and commerce global ads solutions at Google, briefed reporters about the feature. He said Google works closely with agencies, but as AI is more deeply embedded into the creative campaign process, “we think there are more strategic conversations to have with agencies” rather than spending the time creating a massive keyword list.

“AI Brief,” powered by Gemini, enables marketers to design creative briefs with AI-based setting guardrails, banned phrases, and boundaries based on the brand’s preferences. 

The AI creative brief, for example, may tell AI to avoid mentioning prices in campaigns, or prioritize searches for healthy ingredients. It functions as a guide that informs every prompt given to ensure consistency across different campaigns.

This new tool allows advertisers to build an AI-driven creative brief in AI Max for search campaigns that maintains a brand's specific tone in campaigns by following three guidelines: messaging, matching and audience.

Kraham said a brand’s existing text guidelines will automatically move to messaging guidelines in the feature, and advertisers will see previews of sample assets and searches before they commit to the creative.

AI Brief will roll out in English for AI Max for Search campaigns during the coming months, followed by Performance Max and AI Max for Shopping campaigns.

"Text Disclaimers" for heavily regulated industries including healthcare and finance aims to improve compliance, ensuring that required legal text always appears in ads. It will roll out in the coming weeks globally in all languages.

Text customization, which allows advertisers to modify the creative in product listing ads, is coming to AI Max for Shopping and "Final URL Expansion" to unlock targeting and text ads.

Kraham explained that Final URL expansion (FUE) uses Google AI to identify the best destination for each search. Connecting queries to the correct web pages has become increasingly difficult, he said, as searches become more conversational and unique.

Google also is bringing AI Max to Shopping campaigns and to Performance Max.

AI Max for Shopping campaigns enables retailers to connect content with a shopper’s need before they search for specific product details, using the shopper's Merchant Center feeds to transform product data into dynamic Shopping ads that answer conversational queries.

AI Max for Shopping and Search Campaigns has expanded into travel for conversational queries, and will feature travel-specific formats. It is available in Search campaigns and will roll out in closed beta globally, in all languages.

AI Max is known for search-term matching and asset optimization.