This year’s Google Marketing Live EMEA (2025) was packed with updates aimed at shaping the future of AI, advertising and online shopping. Let’s recap some of the main innovations that got us thinking about how we can integrate these into our client’s strategies.
AI Search: The SERPs Are Getting Smarter (and Trickier)
What happened: Google is embedding ads more deeply into AI Overviews and AI Mode in search, providing new ad slots right within generative summaries.
What this means for clients: While this unlocks new visibility opportunities, organic traffic may be impacted as AI results potentially reduce clicks to websites.
To make sure our clients are appearing in these overviews and staying ahead of the competition, we now include Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) as a standard in all our SEO strategies. Thankfully, it isn’t as daunting of a task as it may seem, with panel experts confirming at today’s event that there is no one trick exercise to appear in the overviews – instead focus on creating unique and helpful content that can be easily crawled by search engines.
Wherever possible, integrating your SEO strategy with PPC will also be helpful, particularly when making use of AI-optimised formats and placements to maintain prominence in this rapidly evolving SERP layout.
AI-Generated Creatives at Scale
What happened: From later this year, new tools will let advertisers generate on-brand creative assets using examples of their current visual identity.
What this means for clients: Brands that we work with will be able to use Google’s AI tool to create on-brand creatives (both images and video) at scale. This could potentially be a tool worth considering for those in competitive markets, where the need to produce new creatives on a regular basis, or for those with budget restrictions.
We’ll work with our clients to help advise them when it is best to utilise these tools and for helping them to train the AI in a way that seamlessly blends into their Paid Ad strategy without losing brand integrity.
Performance Max: Profit, Not Just Revenue
What happened: Performance Max campaigns can now be optimised for profit, using cost-of-goods-sold or cart data, not just top-line revenue.
What this means for clients: This will be a strategic game-changer for our e-commerce clients. We can now align campaigns more directly with business margins and focus on return on profit, not just ROAS. Expect tighter feedback loops between ads and inventory/cost data which will be especially helpful for our clients with high product diversity or seasonal shifts.
YouTube Short Ads Come Out on Top
What happened: YouTube Shorts now support interactive formats, including in-app shopping and user-generated content ads.
What this means for clients: There’s now a more seamless purchase path within YouTube which is particularly valuable for lifestyle and B2C brands.
There will also be more opportunities available to our clients such as YouTube creator partnerships, UGC ad amplification, and short-form storytelling. We’ll be paying close attention as these new tools become available to us, particularly as we learned that 90 million hours are spent daily by users across the globe, shopping on YouTube – meaning the growth opportunities are exponential!
A New Immersive Shopping Experience
What happened: Google introduced 360° product views and virtual try-on for a more engaging e-commerce experience.
What this means for clients: For retail clients, these formats offer more immersive ways to showcase products. Being an early adapter of these ad types could really help to give clients a competitive edge. We’ll focus on integrating these ad types into product feed management and visual merchandising strategies, especially where conversion is closely tied to consumer confidence in product appearance or fit.
Privacy, Measurement & Attribution
What happened: Google unveiled Meridian, a new marketing mix modeling tool, and pushed further on Privacy Sandbox initiatives.
What this means for clients: We all know by now that reliable tracking has become harder the more cookies have been phased out. Whilst it’s still in the early stages, Meridian sounds like it could be a useful solution as it combines multi-channel attribution with first party data, helping clients to get a clearer idea on the ROI across different marketing channels.
Final Thoughts
Google Marketing Live 2025 underscored that we’re in a new era of AI-informed, privacy-conscious, and performance-driven marketing. For our clients, this means rethinking not only how we advertise, but also how we measure, create, and connect with customers globally.
It’s a quickly evolving online world and we completely understand why our clients come to us feeling overwhelmed sometimes! The good news is that with all this change comes lots of new opportunities and the benefit of investing early means that you could give yourself a competitive edge and come out on top in the future.
To find out more about how we can help you leverage AI driven advancements, get in touch today.
Photo credit: Pawel Czerwinski
