Google Marketing Live 2025: Recap for Small Business Owners

By: Jyll Saskin Gales, Google Ads Coach

You may be seeing some buzz online about Google Marketing Live (GML). This is Google's annual event where they share their big announcements about the future of Google Ads and what new tools and features we can expect in 2025.

Whether you're a casual Google Ads user or somebody who uses the product every day, it's a good idea to pay attention to GML. It's the best inside look we get at where exactly Google Ads is going. I attended Google Marketing Live at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California, and I can tell you that the announcements at this event are definitely geared towards large advertisers rather than small businesses. Still, there are a few key takeaways that all small business owners should care about if Google Ads is part of your marketing strategy. Let's break those down for you right now.

AI Max for Search Campaigns: What Small Businesses Need to Know

First, Google talked about the future of Search, and it doesn't look that different than the present of Search, if I'm honest. The big feature that will be on your mind as a small business owner is something called AI Max for Search campaigns, which Google actually announced a few weeks ago.

This is an optional setting you can turn on in your Search campaigns that brings three AI-powered features together:

• Keyword-less search term matching
• Text customization (formerly known as automatically created assets)
• Final URL expansion

Note that all three of these features already existed in Google Ads, but now they're being brought together under the AI Max umbrella as a way to broaden your reach through additional targeting and creative.

If you are a small budget advertiser, a niche advertiser, or someone who has only seen Search profitability with exact match keywords, then this is not going to be the solution for you - at least not right now.

However, there are a few interesting features of AI Max that may appeal to certain types of small businesses. For example, AI Max is going to bring something tentatively called Ad Group Location Interest Targeting. If you own a business with multiple locations and you've always struggled with how to structure your account (multiple campaigns, multiple ad groups, etc.) then this solution could work well for you. I go into greater detail about it with an example in this video:

On the whole, you can bet that you're going to start seeing recommendations in the Google Ads interface and receiving emails from Google telling you to turn on AI Max. Of course, if you want to test the hot new thing, go for it, but I would definitely advise most small business owners to proceed with caution, or not proceed at all, with AI Max.

Performance Max Updates: More Transparency, More Control

Now, let's move over to that other big part of Google Ads: Performance Max. Again, Google shared a few PMax updates before GML but has now lumped them together to show us what it sees as the future of Performance Max. And apparently, the future of Performance Max is more transparency and more control, which should be music to your ears if you're a small budget advertiser.

There have been dozens of updates to Performance Max over the last year and hundreds since this campaign type first launched in 2022. Here are a few tidbits that all small business owners will want to take advantage of if you're running PMax or thinking of running PMax:

PMax Search term transparency and control

Previously, we had very little insight into the kinds of searches that Performance Max was advertising on, but now we are going to get a full Search Terms report in Performance Max, just like we have in Search campaigns and Shopping campaigns.

Alongside that, we are also getting the capability to add negative keywords to PMax campaigns, something that has been missing from this campaign type for the last three years. So, if you want to, you can start optimizing your PMax search terms and negatives exactly the same way you're used to doing in Search and/or Shopping.

PMax Channel Performance transparency

Up until now, if you wanted to see how different channels were performing (for example, how is the Search part of Performance Max is doing versus the Display part versus the YouTube part, etc.), you would have to guesstimate based on metrics in the Google Ads interface, or you would have to use a script that would analyze the data for you to make estimations.

Now, Google is giving us every little bit of detail about everywhere our ads have run through our Performance Max campaigns. Note, however, that there is not a control piece to go along with this, and Google has not shared any plans to provide one. So, even if you look at your channel performance and see that Gmail, for example, is not performing well, you have no way to exclude Gmail.

This now diverges from the capabilities of Demand Gen campaigns, because Google recently brought both channel performance reporting and channel controls to Demand Gen, but Performance Max only gets channel performance reporting and not channel controls.

Search term reporting and channel performance reporting are the two major improvements to Performance Max. There have been a handful of other features recently, like better asset-level reporting and the opportunity to exclude certain age demographics from Performance Max, but I would say that small budget advertisers should focus their optimization efforts on search terms and channels.

More GML2025 Announcements and Takeaways for SMBs

There were a bunch more announcements - shoppable YouTube formats, various types of incrementality testing, new ways to incorporate your data with Google Ads - but I think fewer than 1% of small business owners can and should leverage these features.

So, if you feel like trying something shiny and new in your Google Ads account, go ahead and try AI Max or PMax.

And if you want to keep running your campaigns like you always have been, it looks like you'll be able to keep doing so - at least through 2025. Who knows what GML2026 will bring?

More updates from Google Marketing Live 2025

Google Marketing Live 2025: Recap for Small Business Owners
Google Marketing Live 2025: Recap for Lead Gen Advertisers
Google Marketing Live 2025: Recap for Ecommerce Businesses

AI Max for Search Campaigns: What you need to know about "Search Max"
Smart Bidding Exploration in Google Ads: Everything you need to know

Performance Max Channel Reporting: Transparency, But No Control
Performance Max Search Terms Report & Negative Keywords - Finally!

All About Shoppable YouTube Ads: Shoppable Masthead, Shoppable CTV
What are Attributed Brand Searches in Google Ads?