Novembre, 2021

Art and storytelling can play a vital role in helping people understand the key issues facing our society—and art can also help people see them in new ways. This is especially true for climate change, where scientific data and information can at times seem overwhelmingly difficult to comprehend. This is why for the past two years, Google Arts & Culture has developed a range of collaborations aiming to use art and technology to make the science of climate change more accessible and tangible. Our main program, called Heartbeat of the Earth, was built in collaboration with the UNFCCC and features online experiences by eight artists that interpret scientific climate data—from microplastics in the air to rising sea levels, to the CO2 footprint for individual diets.

Today, as COP26 unfolds and global leaders have gathered in Glasgow to decide on the future of the planet, we are thrilled to announce two new collaborations, Voices for Change with Project Everyone and Pollinator Pathmaker with Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, that we hope will inspire people around the world to learn more about the climate crisis and to take action.

Immerse yourself in people’s Voices for Change, with Project Everyone

Kate Garvey, co-founder of Project Everyone: “Visitors to voicesforchange.world will discover a magical virtual world populated with powerful voice messages of the transformations people want to see in support of the UN’s Global Goals. The viewer can navigate around the world, hear different voices and learn about the Goals as they move through the space. These 17 Goals — agreed in 2015 by 193 world leaders — are the most ambitious plan the world has to end poverty, fight inequality and tackle the climate crisis. They are the answer to the multiple interconnected challenges our planet faces.

The project has been a huge collaborative, creative endeavor. It began with Forest For Change – an installation of 400 trees in June 2021 in the heart of London by Es Devlin and Project Everyone. As part of the interactive experience at the Forest, visitors were invited to choose a Goal and record a message of the change they wanted to see in the world. Thousands did so — with Goal 13: Climate Action emerging as the most popular Goal. These were added to by voices from over 60 countries gathered by a network of Civil Society Organizations. Google Arts & Culture then came on board to craft an immersive, digital world for these voices to inhabit—a world that will forever represent a barometer of passions across the world at a key moment in our planet’s trajectory.

With COP26 — the most critical climate summit, yet — taking place this month, this beautiful world will give a platform to thousands of voices and raise awareness about the urgent need to take climate action in order to achieve all the Global Goals. We are very proud and we hope this world will live on — gathering more voices for change at major moments on the road to 2030.”

Creativity can be a messy process. Great ideas and inspiration don’t come easily on command, or in any organized way. And even when we’re in the creative zone, our brains can sometimes get too overloaded and overwhelmed to actually get anything done. That’s why some people use mind mapping, or visual brainstorming, to stay on top of their game.

Markus Müller-Simhofer, founder of the digital mind mapping app MindNode, saw major changes when he started visualizing his creative process. He recalls the first time he realized what a powerful tool mind mapping could be. While developing an app, Markus found that although he had tons of ideas, he wasn’t making any progress. “Out of this frustration, I started to look into techniques to sort my ideas and find focus. Mind mapping best fit how my brain works,” he says.

Mind mapping worked so well for Markus that he eventually scrapped his original app idea and started developing MindNode. “This was 14 years ago and today, I am still working on it — together with a team of 10 people.”

We recently chatted with Markus about how creators can use mind mapping to make better content.

A few years ago, we introduced the Policy center in Ad Manager, AdMob and AdSense to provide publishers with a single, centralized hub to review and monitor policy violations and appeals. This helps ensure they have the information they need to monetize their inventory and remain policy compliant.

Starting today, our Policy center has a brand new look. As part of this update, we’re introducing new features — like the ability to report the number of ad requests affected by policy issues, and advanced filters that are designed to help you better understand, prioritize and resolve issues.

What’s changing?

Improved account health summary

The new and improved account health summary now provides a quick overview of the total number of sites and apps with issues, highlighting the number of issues that are a “Must fix.” This can help publishers better prioritize the issues that require their attention. The account health summary also shows the impact on ads serving for any given page where ads have been disabled or restricted.

In an unpredictable year, change has been a reliable constant. And we’ve seen this clearly in online consumer behavior. For example, Google Image searches for “yard landscaping ideas” have grown globally by over 80% YoY¹ as people look for more ways to spruce up their homes. Meanwhile, searches for “best all-inclusive resorts” have grown globally by over 200% YoY² as people get inspired to travel again.

Thankfully, advertisers don’t have to predict the future to be ready for it. If change is the challenge, automation is the solution businesses and agencies are using to stay ahead of ongoing shifts in consumer demand. Last year, we introduced Performance Max campaigns as a new way to buy Google ads across YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail and Maps from a single campaign. They complement your keyword-based Search campaigns to help you grow performance across Google’s full range of advertising channels and inventory.

After strong beta results, Performance Max campaigns will roll out to all advertisers around the world starting today. They will also become the next generation of Smart Shopping and Local campaigns, which will both upgrade to Performance Max next year.³

Find more customers where they are

Consumers are moving seamlessly between online experiences to find buying inspiration. 70% of U.S. shoppers report buying from a brand after seeing it on YouTube,⁴ and 91% of Google feed users say they took some kind of shopping or product-related action immediately after discovering new products, services or brands on their feed.⁵

Performance Max allows you to promote your business across all Google Ads inventory. As a result, you can show up for more customers and drive more conversions based on your goals. In fact, advertisers that use Performance Max campaigns in their account see an average increase of 13% total incremental conversions at a similar cost per action.⁶ Whether you’re focused on increasing online sales, generating leads, or growing offline sales, Performance Max helps you achieve your goals in four main ways:

1. Increasing conversions and value: Automation optimizes your budget and bids across channels to help you capture new conversion opportunities in real time.

2. Finding new customers: Unlock new audience segments by using Google’s real-time understanding of user intent, behavior and context to show up in the right moments with more relevant ads.

3. Gaining richer insights: Performance Max campaigns are now part of the Insights page to help you understand how automation is working and how you can improve your campaign. Using the Combinations report, you can also see how your top-performing assets are being combined to build creatives.

4. Working together with automation: Steer automation by providing high-quality creative assets and sharing your expertise about which audiences are most likely to convert.

Get new features designed for retailers and local marketers

Performance Max campaigns allow retailers and local marketers to access new ad inventory and formats not currently available with Smart Shopping or Local campaigns — including on channels like YouTube, Search and Discover. To help you increase sales, Smart Shopping and Local campaigns will both upgrade to Performance Max in 2022. We’ll work closely with you and your partners to get feedback and build the right tools to help you easily transition your campaigns. Stay tuned for more information early next year.

We know the holidays are a critical time of year for your business. You should continue using Smart Shopping and Local campaigns to reach more shoppers across online and in-store experiences this holiday season. However, when the time is right for your business, you can start testing Performance Max campaigns before next year’s campaign upgrades.

In the next few months, we’ll introduce new features in Performance Max specifically for retailers and businesses with store locations. For example, you’ll have the option to focus your campaigns to exclusively optimize for new customer acquisition. If you’re a retailer with a local inventory feed, you’ll also see new Search and Maps ad formats powered by your products to help drive more foot traffic to your stores.

Upgrading Smart Shopping and Local campaigns to Performance Max next year will help you get more value from Google Ads while simplifying the number of campaigns you use to achieve your goals. We’ll continue investing in Performance Max and improving our automation technology over time to help you get better results.

To set your Performance Max campaigns up for success, check out our new best practices guide and video. You can also take the Skillshop e-learning course for Performance Max campaigns to get more tips on how to use them to their full potential. And explore the Demystifying Automation interactive demo to learn how different automation technologies can supercharge your marketing capabilities.

<sup>1. Google Data, Global English, Jun 22, 2021 – Aug 20, 2021 vs Jun 22, 2020 – Aug 20, 2020
2. Google Data, Global English, Jun 22, 2021 – Aug 20, 2021 vs Jun 22, 2020 – Aug 20, 2020
3. In Europe, Performance Max campaigns can be used with any Comparison Shopping Service (CSS) you work with. The ads will show on general search results pages and on any other surfaces the CSS has opted in to.
4. Google/Talkshoppe, US, whyVideo study, n=2000 A18-64 Genpop video users, Feb 2020
5. Google/Ipsos, Google Feed Consumer Insights, June 2020, Online survey. Americans 18+ who made a discovery on at least one Google feed (feeds defined as Google app, Chrome app, YouTube, Gmail) on a mobile device. Base: Feed users n=1,053
6. Google Data, Global, Ads, July – September 2021</sup>

City transportation is crucial to connecting residents to education, employment and essential services. At the same time, the transportation sector is where global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are rising the quickest.

In 2018, we launched the Environmental Insights Explorer (EIE) in collaboration with the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM). As part of Google’s most ambitious decade of climate action, we’ve committed to helping more than 500 cities and local governments reduce an aggregate of 1 gigaton of carbon emissions per year by 2030 and beyond. With EIE, cities have free access to Google’s unique mapping data and insights so they can make sustainable decisions regarding cleaner transport policies and infrastructure programs. Since launching EIE, we’ve seen more cities and governments set ambitious climate targets. This week, 120 world governments will gather in Glasgow at COP26 to report their progress toward these commitments and set a path forward to address climate change. EIE can help cities and governments translate these targets into concrete action.

In pursuit of helping more cities take action against climate change, we will make transportation insights available in EIE for over 20,000 cities and regional governments by the end of the year, making it one of the largest ever collections of high-quality, globally consistent environmental data sources. This expansion will double the number of geographies represented in EIE, accounting for the majority of the world’s transport emissions.

As the window continues to narrow on implementing policies and plans to reduce emissions, we’re unifying around a single mission: to foster sustainability at scale. To help, we’re partnering with the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, a network of megacities committed to addressing climate change. Our work with C40 will help us better support the needs of cities while making data accessible to city projects that are working on climate solutions. Together we can provide higher-quality transportation activity data to measure and track GHG emissions at a global scale, while also giving state and local governments resources to better understand what’s working at a local level.

The need for action is now, and we need to rise to the challenge quickly. Google technology is unlocking our ability to generate climate-related insights and impact at a global scale. Here are a few of the latest ways we’re using AI and Google Maps data in EIE.

Taking inventory of yearly progress

More cities, states and regions are committing to comprehensive climate plans to decarbonize transportation by 2040. These next two decades of ambitious action will require regular progress reports to assess what is and isn’t working.

Using AI, our systems analyze transportation trends in a city by mode, helping local governments take stock of their progress in tackling GHG emissions. GHG inventory processes traditionally take months and multiple data sources to compile, and are now streamlined, allowing government staff to reduce the cost and personnel burden of reporting.