The buzzword of Google Marketing Live 2026 can be summed up into two letters: AI.
As marketers, we have to adapt to change daily and adopting AI is no exception. Google rolled out new and improved ways to increase ad performance across all Google products utilizing Gemini during its biggest event of the year, Google Marketing Live.
For search, Google announced that Ads in AI Mode will become more conversational in its answers and users are encouraged in their queries to give the prompt as much detail as possible for the answer to better fit the users need. Deals and promotions can show up within the answer to the user, giving them suggestions on products to purchase that would fit the needs of their prompt.
Google also introduced the Business Agent for Leads which allows marketers to have an online sales presence outside of business hours. AI would handle questions that potential customers would have utilizing website content, and it has the ability to streamline lead qualification by focusing on high intent leads who would meet the criteria set by the marketer.
To address brand standard concerns, Google launched AI Brief. This tool allows marketers to provide Google AI with specific context about their business in their own words, ensuring the brand is represented accurately to customers. AI Brief can be given clear guidelines for ad copy and target audiences to better align automated outputs with advertising goals.
Google also introduced an update allowing Demand Gen campaigns to share conversion data across different campaign types. While conversion credit was previously attributed solely to the final search ad clicked—even if a user first engaged with a Demand Gen ad—the introduction of Campaign Type Attribution enables marketers to better monitor the influence of upper-funnel channels.
Get a full list of the updates here.
Blog post by LTD Connect Director of Digital Media Lisa Schulte.
