We’re witnessing the biggest transformation in Google Ads history. While you were mastering responsive search Ads, Google dropped updates that changed everything about paid search. Now, AI overviews are dominating search results, and new ad formats are emerging in unexpected places.

The proof is in the numbers: Google Marketing Live 2025 brought us over 50 major announcements. Every single one impacts the campaigns you’re running right now. That’s why you need to know about features like smart bidding and performance max campaigns from this blog.

The urgency is real because your competitors are already testing these Google Ads 2025 updates while you’re reading this. So let’s get started.

Revolutionary AI-Driven Features Transforming Campaign Performance

Before diving into specific tools, let’s understand how Google’s AI revolution is rebuilding campaign success.

AI Max for Search Campaigns: Your New Performance Powerhouse

We’ve been testing AI Max since its beta launch, and the results speak for themselves. This one-click feature brings Google’s best AI directly into your search campaigns. According to Google’s internal performance data, advertisers typically see 14% more conversions at similar cost levels. For campaigns still using mostly exact and phrase keywords, the boost jumps to 27%.

Here’s a real example that caught our attention. L’Oréal activated AI Max and saw their conversion rate double while cutting cost-per-conversion by 31%. What made the difference? Search term matching technology identifies queries you might never think to target manually.

Instead of guessing what people search for, AI Max learns from your assets and discovers high-performing search queries automatically.

Intelligent Bidding Exploration: Finding Hidden Conversion Opportunities

Google calls this their biggest bidding update in ten years, and we can see why. Intelligent Bidding Exploration goes beyond the obvious search terms to find hidden opportunities that still bring conversions. Think of it as your campaign reaching people when they’re just starting to look around and don’t know exactly what they want yet.

This fits with Google’s bigger plan of meeting users throughout their whole search experience, not just when they’re ready to buy.

While these AI tools do the hard work for you, there’s one area where your Ads are showing up in completely new places.

How AI Overviews Are Creating New Ad Placement Opportunities

Your Ads are about to show up in places that didn’t exist six months ago.

The reason is simple: AI overviews are changing how people interact with search results. Now your Ads can appear right inside these AI-generated summaries, creating opportunities that weren’t possible before.

We’re seeing encouraging results from early testing. According to Google’s performance research, search engines report a 10% increase in usage where AI overviews appear. When users see your Ads within these summaries, they’re more likely to click because the placement feels helpful rather than disruptive.

Four major opportunities are rolling out across different search platforms:

• Desktop AI Overviews expansion: Search and shopping Ads now appear within AI overviews on desktop in the US. The good news is that the global rollout starts later this year, with English-language search queries getting priority first.
• AI Mode integration: Google is testing Ads within its conversational AI Mode experience. What this means is that when users ask complex questions that need follow-up, relevant paid Ads appear naturally within the response flow.
• Google Lens shopping integration: With 20 billion visual searches happening monthly, shopping Ads will soon appear above and alongside visual search results. This captures users when they’re using their camera to explore products in the real world.
• Automatic campaign eligibility: Your existing performance max campaigns, shopping Ads, and search campaigns using broad match are already eligible for these new AI overviews placements without any setup changes needed.

Worth noting: you don’t have to wait for these changes to impact your campaigns. They’re rolling out to eligible accounts right now.

Google Analytics and First Party Data Integration Updates

First-party data can be confusing, and most advertisers struggle with it. However, it’s worth understanding because better data leads to better AI results in your Google Ads. Quality data helps Google’s systems make smarter decisions for your campaigns.

We suggest focusing on one thing first. Google Tag Gateway for advertisers is now available everywhere, and early testing shows good results. Users who set this up get 11% more signals than regular tracking.

So what makes this work? It puts your tags on your website. This gets better user behavior data. Plus, it follows privacy rules automatically.

There’s also a deadline you should know about. Advertisers using conversion tracking for mobile apps must add a special tag by September 30, 2025. Fortunately, Google gave everyone extra time to make this change. This tag tells Google if conversions happened on websites or in mobile apps. Once it knows this, attribution works much better for AI-driven campaigns.

The bottom line from all these changes? Better measurement data means better campaigns across all search engines.

Performance Max Gets Major Control and Reporting Upgrades

Performance Max is finally getting the controls marketers have been asking for. After months of limited options, Google made updates that give advertisers more control. Here’s what you can use now and what’s coming soon for your performance max campaigns.

Let’s break down what these changes mean for your ad campaigns.

The negative keywords feature has been the most requested update since performance max campaigns started. Now you can block specific search terms at the campaign level. And since you can block search terms you don’t want, your Ads won’t show up for bad search queries that waste budget.

At Oikos Project, we’ve seen brand exclusions become more flexible. You can now block branded search ads while keeping shopping ads for your brand terms. This makes sense since most businesses want product ads for their brand but prefer handling text ads differently.

There’s also a new targeting feature called high-value customer mode. It finds prospects similar to your best customers and bids higher to reach them. Your reports show how many valuable prospects each campaign attracts.

While Performance Max gets more powerful, another major campaign type is going through its own transformation.

Demand Gen Campaign Evolution and Video Action Changes

Google is making video advertising simpler by putting everything into one campaign type. It’s called Demand Gen campaigns. These campaigns work across Google’s visual places like YouTube, Shorts, Discover, Gmail, and the Google Display Network. They’re built for advertisers who want good results from Ads that look great and work in different formats.

What’s happening now is that Video Action Campaigns are going away completely. This affects how you handle video content across all these places. The timeline is clear: you can’t create new Video Action Campaigns after April 2025. Plus, all existing ones will change to this new system by July 2025.

You need to know about four big changes coming to your campaigns:

• Campaign move requirements: We suggest moving your Video Action Campaigns before the July deadline. Google will change campaigns that you don’t manage yourself. But you’ll have better control if you do it manually.
• Better video formats: The new system supports more video and image formats than before. For YouTube Shorts, you can now use 9:16 vertical format Ads that work great on phones. You can also make different sizes from one source video, which saves time and editing costs.
• More reach through Display Network: Connection to Google Display Inventory gives you access to over 3 million websites and apps. Your Ads can reach more than 90% of people who use the internet.
• Shopping tools: Retail advertisers get better tools for showing products. Customers can see if items are in stock and look at your other products without leaving the app they’re using.

While these campaign changes roll out, there are also important updates to how targeting and keywords work across all your Google Ads.

What Marketers Need to Know About Broad Match and Targeting Updates

We get asked these three targeting questions more than any others from marketers trying to keep up with Google’s changes.

Q: How has broad match evolved in 2025?

Broad match got much better with AI Max integration. The reason is that the system now uses search term matching to find queries you’d never think to target manually. Performance data shows it’s finally reliable for most advertisers. Campaigns that were stuck using exact and phrase match keywords see the most improvement when they make the switch.

Q: What are the Customer Match audience changes?

Google made this easier for everyone. You used to need 1,000 active users for search campaigns, but now you only need 100. Display campaigns still need 100 users within 30 days, so that part stayed the same. The result is that small businesses can now use their customer data for better targeting without huge lists.

Q: Should you adjust existing exact and phrase match campaigns?

Our advice is to start slow. Test AI Max activation on a few campaigns first, rather than changing everything at once. Our observations found that campaigns with 70% or more exact and phrase match keywords typically see 27% better results when they add AI Max. Because of this, we recommend a gradual transition over several months to avoid performance drops.

Preparing Your Strategy for Google’s AI-Powered Future

You now have a complete picture of the Google Ads 2025 updates that will shape your advertising success this year. AI overviews are creating new ad placements while Performance Max is getting better controls. Hopefully, we have delivered the right message: these changes will help you stay competitive in search advertising.

You don’t have to figure this out alone, though. We’ve been helping businesses succeed with Google Ads changes like these for over 10 years at Oikos Project. Our Google AdWords and PPC campaign services are designed to help you adapt to these new platform features. When you start using these updates now, you’ll have a major advantage over competitors who wait.

Ready to future-proof your campaigns with these new Google Ads capabilities? Contact us today and let’s build a strategy that works in this new era of search advertising.