Paid Media News & Opinion #137

Google introduces Branded Searches conversion metric

Source

> What’s happening

Google has rolled out a new conversion metric called “Branded Searches”, offering advertisers a way to measure brand interest sparked by their ads across Search and YouTube. First previewed at Google Marketing Live 2025, the feature is now live and available for supported campaign types.

This new metric tracks users who, after viewing your ad, search for your brand name on Google Search or YouTube within a 30-day view-through window. It’s designed to help advertisers understand how their upper-funnel campaigns influence brand recall and curiosity, even if the user doesn’t immediately click or convert.

The new metric is supported across YouTube, Performance Max, and Demand Gen campaign types.

> Why we care

Branded Searches introduces a new way to quantify upper-funnel impact, something that’s often difficult to track in performance-focused platforms. Until now, it’s been hard to know whether users remembered a brand after seeing an ad but didn’t click right away.

This metric gives advertisers visibility into how many people were compelled to seek out their brand after passive ad exposure. It bridges that gap by offering concrete behavioural data tied to brand engagement.

Branded Searches give marketers a long-missing KPI for top-of-funnel campaigns and helps quantify influence, not just clicks. For brands investing in reach and storytelling, this is a valuable step toward better measuring, justifying, and optimizing brand impact.

Google Ads expands lookalike targeting with new seed sources

Source

> What’s happening

Google Ads has rolled out an upgrade to its Lookalike Segment targeting, offering advertisers a wider range of seed sources, greater flexibility in audience creation, and improved scalability. These changes are designed to help brands reach new, high-potential users more effectively, which is especially valuable in a privacy-first world with increasing limitations on data signals.

The key updates include new Seed Source options, advertisers can now generate lookalike audiences using:

• Android device IDs

• Google Analytics audiences

• YouTube user segments (Note: Requires a minimum of 1,000 matched users, compared to 100 for other sources)

Influencer & creator-based targeting, a new capability allows advertisers to build lookalikes from the audience of a YouTube creator’s video, even if the content isn’t owned by the brand.

Segment combinations, advertisers can now combine up to 10 different seed lists when building a single lookalike audience, allowing for more nuanced and powerful targeting strategies.

Adjustable reach settings, Google now allows you to choose how broad or narrow your lookalike segments are with three new modes:

• Narrow (higher similarity, smaller reach)

• Balanced (default setting, optimal trade-off)

• Broad (lower similarity, larger reach)

> Why we care

With more seed sources now supported, including YouTube users and Google Analytics audiences, advertisers have greater flexibility to model high-performing audiences based on behaviours across platforms. This is critical for brands without large email lists or CRM data to power Customer Match.

By allowing the use of creator video audiences as a seed, advertisers can amplify the impact of influencer partnerships by extending reach to people similar to a creator’s engaged followers, even if the creator’s content is not owned by the brand.

The ability to combine up to 10 different seed audiences helps advertisers define and scale lookalikes based on complex user behaviours or cross-platform activity. This is especially useful when targeting niche audiences or blending signals from different sources.

Negative keyword lists appear to be available for use with PMax

Source

> What’s happening

Many advertisers have reported being able to use negative keyword lists with PMax campaigns, which is something that Google’s own documentation previously stated is not available to do and they don’t appear to have officially announced this.

However, we have personally seen this become available in our own accounts, and the documentation does appear to have been updated. Previously, there was an additional note that specifically said lists weren’t available for use with PMax, but this is no longer in the article.

> Why we care

The ability to add negative keyword lists will save a huge amount of time and make for much better “housekeeping”, allowing for client-specific negative keywords to be quickly and easily applied to your PMax campaigns.

We would advise that when you first implement this, you monitor the search terms reports closely to make sure it is working properly. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t, but as Google seems to have quietly released this and not formally announced it, it’s better to be safe and just double check it is working correctly!

What else we've been talking about:

• Google releases AI shopping tools with virtual try-ons

• Microsoft Ads expands remarketing list sources to 20 campaigns

• Target CPA recommendations referencing competitors data

• Google Analytics adds Reddit Ads integration

• Microsoft Ads rolls out Lifetime Budgets for Audience Ads 

• Product Studio gets new location and features in GMC