Ads Decoded

Join us for the season one finale of Ads Decoded: a special live recording at Google Marketing Live with the product teams behind the day’s biggest announcements across Search, YouTube, agentic commerce, creative and measurement.

First, host Ginny Marvin is joined by Google’s Head of Ads and Commerce, Vidhya Srinivasan, fresh off the keynote stage. They discuss how Gemini is fundamentally transforming intent understanding to keep with consumer behavior and deliver ads on longer, more complex searches, as well as unlocking performance on YouTube. Vidhya also shares the skills and mindsets she’s seeing in the teams who are succeeding in adapting and rewiring for the AI era.

That’s followed by an in-depth, technical roundtable with product leaders to double-click on the why and how behind the headlines:

- Reinventing ads for AI Search: Chris Monkman, Senior Director for Ads in AI Experiences, breaks down how AI Max and Performance Max deliver ads that provide rich answers to complex queries in AI Mode, and how the new AI Brief delivers the brand control and audience constraints you need.
- Graduating measurement from report card to performance driver: Christine Turner, Managing Director for Measurement, Data & Audiences, talks about the compounding effects of data strength and details the rollout of new metrics like Campaign Type Attribution for Demand Gen, Attributed Branded Searches, and Qualified Future Conversions
- Generating high-performing ad creative at scale: Josh Moser, Advertising Platform Senior Director, shares how bringing our most advanced AI models into Asset Studio really is allowing advertisers to quickly build and scale creative assets that are optimized for performance.

Want Ginny’s key takeaways and tips from this conversation? Subscribe to the Ads Decoded newsletter → https://goo.gle/3NO45ZW

Find Ginny at linkedin.com/in/ginnymarvin and @adsliaison on X.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is generative AI leading to a "sea of sameness" in advertising? This week, we’re tackling the creative burden - from the pressure to produce endless aspect ratios for YouTube to the fear of losing brand control in an automated world.

In this episode of Ads Decoded, host Ginny Marvin sits down with Charles Boyd (Group Product Manager - Creative, Google Ads) and Sarah Hathiramani (Director of Product Management, YouTube Ads) to bridge the gap between brand fidelity and AI-powered scale.

In this deep dive:

- Avoiding the sea of sameness: How to use generative AI to stand out rather than blend in.
- Understanding Ad Strength: Why it’s a diagnostic metric for discovery, not a pass/fail performance report
- Advertiser-in-the-Loop controls: Using text guidelines to steer AI while maintaining brand control
- PMax Asset Experiments: How to use the new "guided A/B testing to isolate creative impact.

Want Ginny’s key takeaways and tips from this conversation? Subscribe to the Ads Decoded newsletter: https://goo.gle/4ryu6uV

Find Ginny on LinkedIn at https://goo.gle/4aFEw4I and on X as https://goo.gle/3N2Q22r.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For a long time, creator marketing was seen as a "big brand" awareness play or best suited for retail businesses. If your focus is on performance, B2B, or lead generation, creator content might not have been in your toolkit - until now. In this episode of Ads Decoded, host Ginny Marvin is live from the YouTube NewFronts stage with Melissa Hsieh Nikolic, Director of Product Management for YouTube Ads. They dive into how Google is making it easier for brands of all sizes and across sectors to integrate authentic creator voices directly into their performance campaigns within Google Ads and DV360.

They cover:

-The trust factor: Why creators help drive meaningful results for businesses across every industry - including finance and healthcare.
-Finding your match: How to use AI-powered search in the Creator Partnerships hub in Google Ads to identify the right YouTube creator for your brand, no matter how "niche" your business might be.
-Creative freedom vs. rigid specs: Why the magic happens when brands trade strict editorial scripts for a creator’s authentic voice.
-Measuring success: Using Brand Lift with Search Lift and Conversion Lift studies and unified organic/paid reporting to prove performance

Want Ginny’s key takeaways and tips from this conversation? Subscribe to the Ads Decoded newsletter: https://goo.gle/4ryu6uV
Find Ginny on LinkedIn at https://goo.gle/4aFEw4I and on X as https://goo.gle/3N2Q22r.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Conversational shopping in AI Mode. Virtual try-on. Agentic checkout. Business Agent on Search. Google Lens in YouTube Shorts. Shoppable CTV.

The secret powerhouse behind them all? Your product data. It’s no longer just a list of SKUs; it’s the high-resolution infrastructure for the next era of retail.

In this episode of Ads Decoded, host Ginny Marvin is joined by Firas Yaghi, Global Product Lead for Retail Solutions, and Nadja Bissinger, Group Product Director for Retail on YouTube. They separate the hype from the strategic essentials, discussing the practical steps retailers can take now to deliver high-performing ads across Search, YouTube and new AI-powered experiences.

In this conversation:
-The product feed as foundation: Enriching your data with lifestyle images and rich descriptions to power multi-modal discovery.
-From competing to compounding: Why it’s time to stop viewing campaign types as competitors and use a surround sound-style approach.
-The signal shift: How Lookalikes have changed from rigid targets to multi-dimensional signals that give the AI the flexibility to find your next best customer.

Want Ginny’s key takeaways and tips from this conversation? Subscribe to the Ads Decoded newsletter: https://goo.gle/4ryu6uV

Find Ginny on LinkedIn at https://goo.gle/4aFEw4I and on X as https://goo.gle/3N2Q22r
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From tracking fragmented online-to-offline user journeys to navigating conversion windows that can stretch for months, lead gen marketers face a set of challenges that are uniquely complex. In this episode of Ads Decoded, we’re looking past the simple form fill to discuss how practitioners can master lead quality in an era of signal loss and AI-driven consumer behavior.

Join Ads Product Liaison Ginny Marvin, Mimi Forsythe (Global Head of Lead Gen Solutions) and Lydia Azaret (Lead Gen Measurement PM) as they break down the steps needed - from lead scoring to data hygiene - to enable your campaigns to deliver high quality lead volume.

In this episode:

-The offline gap: Why mapping the full lead-to-sale journey is foundational to driving performance with Google AI.
-Value-centric measurement: How to implement proxy values and lead scoring to tell the bidder what "good" looks like.
-Data Manager: Navigating the one-stop hub for connecting CRMs and first-party data.
-Tactical must-dos: Understanding the nuances of Enhanced Conversions for Leads (ECL) and Google Tag Gateway (GTG)

Want Ginny’s key takeaways and tips from this conversation? Subscribe to the Ads Decoded newsletter: https://goo.gle/4ryu6uV

Find Ginny on LinkedIn at https://goo.gle/4aFEw4I and on X as https://goo.gle/3N2Q22r
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.