Sign in with Google Your biggest opportunity is an expanding Google Search universe. With 5 trillion searches on Google annually1 people are asking more of Google Search than ever before, and it is becoming more intelligent, personalized, and agentic. It’s no longer just where people find what they want; it’s where they figure out what they need—and where they buy. More users trust the content and information they find on their journey on Google and/or YouTube than other leading search, social, streaming, or AI platforms2.
To maximize your performance while navigating this shift, we’ve introduced the Search Four. This blueprint for the new era of Search is composed of four essential building blocks. Let’s dive into each one.
1. Build and activate your Data Strength by connecting your data sources & maximizing your signals with Data Manager and Google tag gateway.
First, you need to build your data strength. What used to be the job of a data scientist with database access, is now in your own hands. To allow Search to deliver the best results for your bottom line, you need to connect your most high-quality business signals.
Data Manager is where you connect those signals. It’s a single ingestion point for your signals, allowing you to bring your website, analytics, mobile app data, and first-party data to power your bidding with improved conversion tracking. And if you need even more scale, the Data Manager API allows developers to build custom workflows that programmatically stream data directly into Google Ads and Google Marketing Platform. This is your one-stop-shop to connect, manage and optimize your signals.
Understanding how your customers engage with your website is table stakes. To understand customer behavior and recover lost conversions, upgrade your site to the Google tag gateway with just one click through partners including Akamai, Cloudflare, Fastly, Google Cloud, or Webflow. Advertisers using Google tag gateway see an average +14% in observed conversions3.
By building a robust, first-party data pipeline, you supercharge Google AI with the high-quality fuel it needs to stop guessing and start optimizing—setting your downstream bidding, campaign optimizations, and ROAS up for success.
2. Align your Smart Bidding strategies to your business goals, steering Google AI to capture high-value outcomes for your business.
Now that your account has your high-quality data flowing in, it’s time to put that to work. Smart Bidding bridges the gap between your business strategy and the auction-level mechanics Google AI uses to find the right customer, at the right cost, for the right value. It instructs your AI-powered campaigns on exactly which outcomes to prioritize.
When some customer interactions are worth more to your bottom line than others, use Value-based bidding (VBB) to maximize total conversion value rather than just volume. By predicting the unique value of every query, VBB sets the optimal bid for each user in real time. To drive the outcomes that matter most, enhance the value you deliver by layering on relevant goals—like New Customer Acquisition, Bidding to Store Goals, or Bidding to App Goals.
While standard Smart Bidding excels at optimizing for known high-probability conversions, it can overlook non-obvious queries to protect your efficiency. To find uncaptured opportunities, use Smart Bidding Exploration to discover and bid on less obvious, high-potential search queries that are often missed. It’s your tool to expand your footprint to new pockets of consumer intent and diverse user profiles that will elevate your overall bidding performance. In fact, Search campaigns using Smart Bidding Exploration see an average of +27% more unique converting users, helping advertisers successfully scale their footprint without sacrificing performance efficiency4.
This isn’t just bidding; it’s business intelligence in motion. When instructed with real business goals, your campaigns transform from simple search matchers into powerful growth engines.
3. Adopt the best AI-powered solutions with AI Max for Search campaigns and Performance Max campaigns.
Relying on manual keywords can limit your potential; static targeting simply cannot keep pace with the scale of human curiosity in the AI era. By adopting AI-powered solutions like AI Max for Search and Performance Max campaigns, you leverage your data and bidding at a scale and speed that manual campaigns simply cannot match—unlocking billions of net new queries that your ads weren’t reaching before5.
AI Max can supercharge your Search campaigns with one click. And with the suite of targeting and creative enhancements in AI Max, like search term matching, final URL expansion and text customization, it expands your reach into new queries that you weren’t accessing before, and tailors your creatives to what customers are looking for. In fact, AI Max for Search campaigns already using search term matching see an average 7% lift in conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA/ROAS when they enable text customization and final URL expansion6—all while maintaining the granular controls and reporting transparency you need.
With Performance Max, you can access the full power of Google’s channels in a single campaign to maximize your reach. It provides you the same AI-readiness capabilities as AI Max, but maximizes your reach across channels to find your next most valuable conversion.
By leaning into these AI-powered campaigns, you ensure your ads are ready for new surfaces like AI Overviews and AI Mode, where queries are becoming longer, more complex, and more conversational.
4. Unlock maximum opportunity by setting flexible budgets—daily or flighted— that unlock profitable growth.
Capturing this expanded reach is only possible if your budget has breathing room to match it. Consumer demand doesn’t follow a fixed schedule, and rigid budget caps can limit your campaign performance and profit.
When Search finds a high-value customer, it needs the capacity to bid and convert them, ensuring you never miss a conversion. To give your campaigns the room they need to perform, ensure they aren’t held back by limited budget. Set demand-led, flexible budgets—daily or flighted—to capture relevant demand and maximize conversion potential in real time. Over 60% of Google performance campaigns use demand-led budgets to capture performance gains as consumer interest rises7.
For seasonal pushes, flash sales, or product launches, you can use Campaign total budgets if you have a set amount to spend over a specific period. This allows you to set a fixed total to capture maximum volume without manual daily adjustments, allowing Google AI to dynamically pace your spend. We found that advertisers using campaign total budgets saw a 66% average reduction in manual budget adjustments compared to using daily budgets8.
In this new era of Search, stronger data fuels better bidding; better bidding powers smarter targeting; and flexible budgets ensure you capture every opportunity Search uncovers.
Recap
Success in the AI era isn’t about working harder; it’s about working smarter. You can start applying the Search Four today to achieve excellence with Search across your accounts. By fueling your campaign strategy with accurate measurement and aligning your bidding and budgets with clear business goals, you can lead the way in the new era of performance.
