At the Google Marketing Live event in Singapore, Google announced recent updates to its AI tools across Search and YouTube. The updates are intended to help marketers sustain with changes in how people find and interact with content online, particularly as more users turn to voice, video, and visual search as a substitute of typing.
Search isn’t any longer nearly typing words right into a box. More users now ask questions using photos, voice, or a mixture of formats. Google says tools like Lens, Circle to Search, and AI Overviews are helping people search in recent ways, with Lens alone handling greater than 100 billion visual searches this 12 months—about one in five showing business intent. Younger users, especially Gen Z, are also using Circle to Search to start greater than 10% of their searches.
Google says it now supports over a billion shopping-related searches a day worldwide. In Southeast Asia, Gen Z users are driving more activity on Search than another age group. This shift opens up recent ad opportunities, especially for businesses looking to meet users earlier in their decision process.
YouTube stays strong in Southeast Asia
YouTube stays the most-watched video platform in Southeast Asia and continues to see high usage across generations. Independent surveys suggest users in countries like Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines trust YouTube creators greater than those on other platforms.
That trust appears to translate into stronger business results. Google shared figures showing YouTube ads deliver more return on investment than traditional TV in Southeast Asia—4.1 times higher in Indonesia, 2.3 times in Thailand, and 2.9 times in Vietnam. YouTube also outperformed other social platforms in ROI comparisons.
New AI tools for marketers
Google outlined several upcoming tools that aim to simplify campaign management and improve performance using AI. These include recent ways to generate ads, find audiences, and fine-tune campaigns while not having as much manual input.
- Ads in AI Overviews: These are summaries that appear above standard search results. Google is now expanding ad slots in these summaries to desktops and mobile devices in chosen English-speaking markets, including the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia later this 12 months.
- Asset Studio: A brand new Google Ads workspace that uses generative AI to help marketers create many versions of ad visuals and videos using models like Imagen and Veo.
- AI Max for Search: This tool uses Gemini models to generate headlines and match ads to searches without depending on long lists of keywords. Shopee ran a five-week test with it in Southeast Asia and saw conversions double, together with a 49% increase in ROI.
- In Malaysia, telco Maxis used AI Max for Search to find recent postpaid customers. The tool picked up on long-tail and multilingual queries that traditional keyword targeting had missed—including Chinese-language searches. Aileen Soo, Head of Discovery at Maxis, said the tool helped them match or beat their regular click-through rates with little or no manual setup.
- AI Mode: A brand new setting in Google Search that supports longer, more complex queries using multimodal input. It allows follow-up questions and provides links to the online. Google plans to begin testing ads inside AI Mode in the US soon.
- YouTube Creator Partnerships Hub: A tool inside Google Ads that helps brands find YouTube creators to work with. Marketers can search by category or trend and view engagement and audience insights before reaching out. The tool is already available in Singapore and Indonesia, with other markets to follow.
- Agentic AI features: These are built into Google Ads and Analytics to help automate tasks like writing keywords, adjusting creative assets, or generating reports. The system learns from existing landing pages and performance data to offer suggestions or handle basic campaign management.
More automation, less guesswork
As marketing teams face tighter budgets and increasingly complex customer behaviour, the brand new tools are designed to cut down on manual work. Google says the goal is to move marketers away from reacting to trends and toward anticipating them—with AI taking good care of more routine tasks so teams can deal with strategy.
(Photo by sarah b)
See also: Video marketing hooks: Why human creativity still beats AI
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