Google Discover is getting video ads as new formats come to Search, YouTube Shorts

Abner Li | May 24 2022 - 9:52 am PT

Google Marketing Live is the company’s annual equivalent of I/O for advertising. The 2022 edition saw Google announce several new shopping and advertising experiences that end users can expect in the coming year, including Discover video ads.

YouTube Shorts has been testing ads since last year, and Google announced today that it’s “now gradually rolling that out to all advertisers around the world.” The company shared how advertisers will be able to connect a product feed to campaigns for shoppable video ads.

This is an exciting milestone for advertisers, and a key step on our road to developing a long-term YouTube Shorts monetization solution for our creators, which we’ll share more about soon.

There will be a yellow “Ad” badge, brief description, advertiser name, and big “Show Now” button at the bottom. Another format shows a carousel of products that you can swipe through.

In addition to YouTube Shorts and TV, video ads are also “soon” coming to Google Discover. They don’t appear to auto-play or start audio by default as there’s a button to start and unmute. Hopefully, this advertising respects the existing ability to disable “autoplay video previews” (Google app > Settings > General).

Meanwhile, Google Search is getting “new, highly visual Shopping ads” later this year in the US. Marked in the top-left corner, you can swipe through images that are accompanied with various product details like price and rating. One such description that could appear is loyalty program information:

In the coming months, you’ll also be able to promote your loyalty benefits to potential customers in the U.S. when they’re shopping across Google. Loyalty programs represent a meaningful relationship between you and your customers, and soon you’ll be able to easily integrate them with Google Ads.

3D models of products from merchants will also appear directly on Search, with Google touting one statistic that “90% of Americans currently use, or would consider using, AR for shopping.”