Discover the 5 Key Early Signs Your Ads Need AI Optimization

The digital advertising landscape is evolving at an unprecedented pace, with AI playing a pivotal role in reshaping how brands engage with their audiences. According to recent studies, 15% of Google searches are entirely new every day, presenting both opportunities and challenges for marketers aiming to stay relevant. In this dynamic environment, generative AI has emerged as a game-changer, enabling brands to produce high-quality, brand-compliant creatives at scale while optimizing performance.

Google’s AI-powered solutions, such as Performance Max campaigns, are revolutionizing creative production by automating asset generation, optimizing ad delivery, and ensuring brand consistency across multiple channels. For example, the nonprofit Green Umbrella reduced its cost per acquisition (CPA) by 51% and increased conversions by 544% with a Performance Max campaign, demonstrating the transformative potential of AI in digital advertising.

As brands navigate this AI-driven era, the challenge lies in balancing automation with human oversight—ensuring that AI-generated creatives align with brand identity while maximizing efficiency. This article explores how generative AI in Google Ads is reshaping creative workflows, backed by real-world case studies, core technologies, and best practices for success.

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1. Core Google AI Technologies for Creative Automation

1.1 Performance Max Campaign Features

The campaign that maximizes effectiveness uses generative AI to automatically create videos, images, text and other materials that meet brand specifications, while dynamically optimizing the delivery strategy of the Google Ad Network. Practice shows that advertisers with an ad strength rating of "very good" have an average conversion rate increase of 6%. For example, Event Tickets Center has increased the speed of creative production by 5 times through this model.

Simply upload a brand guide containing fonts, colors, images and other elements, and AI will automatically generate thousands of material variations that meet the requirements, greatly reducing the burden of manual design. At the same time, AI will also test various material combinations such as titles, calls to action and visual effects on platforms such as search ads, display ads and YouTube, and instantly select the most effective creative solutions to achieve dynamic optimization.

For brands looking to achieve similar efficiencies, Topkee’s Google Ads service provides end-to-end campaign management, automating creative production with campaigns that maximize performance while ensuring consistency with brand imagery.

1.2 AI-Powered Creative Tools

Google Ads uses specialized AI tools to streamline the creative workflow. The video dubbing function can automatically add dubbing in more than 12 languages to YouTube ads, facilitating large-scale localized advertising. Automatically generated video ads can transform static images into engaging videos, generating up to six variations for each material and supporting information customization. "Creative Gemini" can generate advertising scripts and edit existing content, helping marketers to efficiently produce high-impact creative ideas.

Topkee’s creative production service complements these tools by combining AI-generated drafts with human optimization, ensuring creatives meet both performance needs and brand standards.

1.3 Smart Bidding and Data Integration

Google's AI-driven smart bidding can optimize bids in real time based on conversion goals, while Google Advertising Profile Manager centrally manages first-party data such as CRM and GA4 to improve targeting accuracy. For example, Hankook Tire combines smart bidding with the GA4 "session start" metric to allow AI to prioritize highly engaged users, effectively improving traffic quality.

Topkee’s TTO tool takes this functionality a step further by automating conversion tracking and budget allocation, helping brands replicate this data-driven success.

2. AI-Driven Creative Success in Google Ads

2.1 Green Umbrella: Performance Max Campaign Optimization

Green Umbrella, a child welfare organization, faced the challenge of acquiring new regular sponsors within a limited budget. By adopting Performance Max campaigns, the organization diversified its creative assets—incorporating videos of varying lengths (30 seconds to 2 minutes), optimized images with key messaging, and strategically crafted text ads to maximize keyword coverage.

The results were impressive: a 51% reduction in cost per acquisition (CPA), a 544% increase in conversions, and a 35% decrease in cost per click (CPC). These outcomes highlight how AI-driven automation can enhance campaign efficiency by dynamically adjusting creatives based on performance data. Google’s AI not only optimized ad placements across Search, YouTube, Display, and Discover but also ensured that each creative variation adhered to Green Umbrella’s brand guidelines.

2.2 Hankook Tire: Global Campaign Unification with AI

Hankook Tire, a global leader in the automotive industry, sought to streamline its fragmented search campaigns across 28 countries. By implementing Smart Bidding and focusing on non-brand keywords, the company improved traffic quality while reducing CPA.

A key strategy was leveraging broad match keywords to expand reach in markets with low brand awareness. With AI-driven recommendations, Hankook Tire reallocated budget based on search trends and exceeded key performance indicators (KPIs) expectations by 300% in some regions. Additionally, integrating Performance Max as a supplementary campaign enhanced overall efficiency by providing diverse signals for machine learning optimization.

These case studies underscore how AI enables brands to scale creative production while maintaining performance and brand integrity—whether for non-profits seeking donor acquisition or global enterprises unifying cross-border campaigns.

3. Best Practices for Brand-Compliant AI Creatives

Simplifying the account structure can improve AI performance. For example, the beauty brand Sephora reduced the number of advertising campaigns and organized advertising groups in a thematic way (rather than segmenting keywords), allowing AI to understand the delivery goals more accurately. Data-driven creative optimization requires accurate conversion tracking. Hankook Tire linked Google Ads to GA4’s “session start” metric and integrated first-party data with the help of Google Ads Data Manager to achieve efficient insight analysis and intelligent bidding strategies to improve traffic quality.

Topkee's TTO platform provides clear and actionable data for AI by centrally managing Google Advertising accounts, budget allocation, and automatic conversion tracking; its attribution remarketing service uses TTO tools to segment audiences by behavior to achieve personalized advertising. In terms of brand creative maintenance, Topkee combines preliminary concepts such as AI-generated copy and images with manual optimization to polish the content tone and compliance, balancing automation efficiency and artistic control. These tools are based on the Google Ads ecosystem, effectively bridging the gap between automation and brand safety, and ensuring that AI-driven marketing activities have both efficiency and brand influence.

4. Future Trends and Strategic Implications

Google Ads is testing immersive formats such as 3D ads and virtual makeup trials to enhance consumer confidence. At the same time, the AI overview function in search will soon integrate ads to provide brands with new exposure scenarios in AI-generated search results. Although AI has outstanding performance in creative mass production, it needs to be combined with manual supervision to ensure brand tone and ethical compliance. For example, the skincare brand Eadem uses AI to diversify its ads while continuing to maintain brand recognition through manual calibration. This requires marketers to use AI to improve efficiency while making fine adjustments to the output content at the value level to balance automation efficiency and brand personality expression.

Conclusion

Generative AI in Google Ads is transforming how brands produce and optimize creatives, delivering efficiency without compromising quality. From Performance Max automation to Gemini-powered ideation, these tools enable marketers to focus on strategy while AI handles execution.

As Google continues to innovate—with immersive ads, AI overviews, and enhanced creative tools—brands that embrace AI early will gain a competitive advantage. For brands ready to explore AI-driven advertising, working with Topkee experts can unlock its full potential.