Google changes its advertising sales strategy.Focusing on small and medium-sized clients, there is room for growth in AI-equipped products

Google is also focusing on leveraging AI and other technologies to automate the services it provides to customers.

Multiple sources say LCS staffers, who are typically senior, experienced and well-paid, have been let go since Google cut 12,000 employees in January 2023. Although a formal reorganization of the sales team has not yet been announced internally, recent sales moves are said to be linked to these moves.

This shift is happening because Google’s ad revenue growth is slowing, say ad agency experts. Google is also “trying to put more resources into segments that are changing more rapidly,” said one search consultant.

One Google employee said the company is no longer experiencing the “rocket growth” of two years ago, but “there’s still room for decent growth.”

One area where there is room for growth is Performance Max. Performance Max is a tool that uses Google’s AI to help advertisers decide where to spend their ad dollars across all Google Ads inventory, including search, YouTube, and the Google Display Ad Network. The service has become a major pillar within Google since its release in 2020.

Google officials said Performance Max was a good way to generate “more revenue from advertisers,” and there was a lot of internal support behind it. Sources said Google has been aggressively marketing the solution, especially to small and medium-sized advertisers. The company says advertisers using Performance Max see better results on average.

“Performance Max was launched three years ago and we have continued to improve it to improve performance for advertisers. Both large and mid-market customers benefit from this product and the increased conversions it provides. We continue to invest in our support and sales teams, and of course, we’re always looking for ways to improve our support model to help all of our customers, large and small, succeed. (Google spokesperson)

Some teams use a point system to reward you for meeting sales goals and selling Google services. “(Performance Max) is a high-priority service within the company, so it definitely has a high weight within sales,” said one current Google employee. “Everyone has some kind of PMax goal,” says a former employee who recently left Google.

Advertising agency executives say Google salespeople are aggressively pitching Performance Max to mid-sized advertisers. One person involved said, “That’s certainly true.”

“We’ve always had a great relationship with Google’s sales team. They haven’t really promoted any specific products, but they’ve been very active recently with Performance Max.”

Skepticism about sales strategies

But some people familiar with the service are skeptical of Google’s sales strategy.

A former Google employee says:

“The message is that automation will solve problems so we can focus on strategy, but if we don’t provide agencies with the rationale to drive strategy, or we don’t have internal information on how to integrate Performance Max into our own systems,” he says. If you don’t share it, it’s an empty promise.”

Staff at several ad agencies say they are wary of using Performance Max because they can’t decide where their ads will run and where they won’t.

“In my opinion, Performance Max is bullshit,” said the agency official. The person said that the results reported by the tool do not include in-depth performance analysis data such as clicks and searches, so they do not have confidence that the tool is actually delivering the results it claims.

“This is another example of striving for growth. If Google just goes after the budget without question and no one looks at these reports, Google will just match our performance. They can charge $500,000, but all they’re doing is making theoretical attributions and claiming the results for something that’s not directly related to them. ” (aforementioned agency official)

Google is also targeting social ad budgets with an AI-powered product called Demand Gen. Demand Gen, announced three months ago, selects advertisers’ best-performing video and image ads and delivers them to YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Google Discover and Gmail.

The winter of a widespread ad spending freeze from 2022 to 2023 appears to be thawing, but advertisers are still scrutinizing their ad spend. Current employees say Google’s recent moves are an effort to do its best to keep advertisers flowing to Google rather than to other digital advertising giants.

“What can we do to compete with things like Meta and TikTok?”