Google unveils comprehensive AI advertising suite at Think Week 2025

Google unveiled its most ambitious advertising platform update at Think Week 2025, held September 10, 2025, in New York City. According to the company's comprehensive announcement, the event introduced "new Google AI-powered advertising tools to help retailers and merchants connect with customers this busy holiday shopping season." The collection spans five major product categories designed to build high-performing campaigns with reduced manual effort.

What is Think Week 2025?

Think Week 2025 represents Google's annual showcase of advertising innovations, bringing together retailers, merchants, and marketing professionals to preview upcoming platform capabilities. According to Google's event documentation, Think Week 2025 focused on "new innovations to connect with shoppers on Search, deliver compelling creative, and use performance tools to turn customers into loyal brand advocates."

The event structure organized announcements across five distinct categories: Search Ads, Video & Apps, Creative tools, Agentic capabilities, and Measurement & Data. Each category received substantial feature additions designed to address specific advertiser challenges during the critical holiday shopping season.

Google positioned Think Week 2025 as a comprehensive response to evolving consumer behavior, noting that "today's shoppers are more deliberate than ever." According to Google's research, US impulse purchases dropped from 30% to 26% last year as consumers increased research activities to maximize purchasing decisions.

Google Ads AI Essentials 2.0: The Holiday Framework

Google introduced two comprehensive AI frameworks targeting different advertiser segments. According to the announcement, "Google Ads AI Essentials 2.0 for Holiday" provides retailers with "AI solutions designed to help retailers drive ROI for your campaigns this holiday season." The framework organizes features into three strength categories: AI Data Strength, AI Content Strength, and AI Performance Strength.

AI Data Strength focuses on first-party data utilization through Data Manager enhancements and cross-channel measurement improvements. Retailers can now connect data sources including ActiveCampaign, BigQuery, HubSpot, Salesforce, Shopify, Google Sheets, and Zoho, with additional sources available through Zapier integration.

AI Content Strength encompasses creative generation capabilities through Asset Studio and Product Studio enhancements. According to Google's specifications, these tools enable "original, user-focused content for paid media" while leveraging Creator Partnerships for authentic audience connections.

AI Performance Strength delivers campaign optimization through AI Max for Search, enhanced Demand Gen capabilities, and Performance Max improvements. The framework promises to "engage and convert highly considered shoppers during key decision moments with the help of the Power Pack."

The Power Pack: Campaign Combination Strategy

Google introduced The Power Pack as "the engine that will drive next-level performance across Search and YouTube." According to the announcement, this represents "our next generation of AI-powered campaign solutions, built for this new era of Search and multi-modal experiences." The Power Pack offers two strategic approaches for different advertiser objectives.

For advertisers wanting channel control with Search and YouTube, The Power Pack combines AI Max for Search campaigns with Demand Gen campaigns. This configuration provides "the best of Google AI for Search campaigns with a suite of targeting and creative enhancements" while enabling demand creation across YouTube and Google's visual surfaces.

For maximum reach across channels, The Power Pack utilizes AI Max for Search, Demand Gen, and Performance Max campaigns simultaneously. According to Google's guidance, this approach delivers "the full power of Google's channels and AI, all in one campaign to help maximize performance" across the entire advertising ecosystem.

The Power Pack addresses campaign complexity through automated optimization that "mix and match campaigns according to your goals." Google's machine learning algorithms analyze performance across campaign types to optimize budget allocation and audience targeting dynamically.

Search Ads: AI-Powered Query Expansion

Think Week 2025 introduced significant Search advertising enhancements focused on AI-driven query expansion and creative optimization. According to Google's announcement, AI Max for Search campaigns now operate globally in open beta, providing "14% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA/ROAS" for most advertisers.

The platform unveiled Ads in AI Overviews, enabling advertisements within Google's AI-powered search responses. According to Google's specifications, this placement allows advertisers to "place your business into responses that are growing user satisfaction and engagement as consumers find information in faster and easier ways."

Ads in AI Mode, currently in US testing, integrates advertisements into Google's most advanced search experience. The feature positions ads within conversational AI responses, enabling businesses to appear as "highly relevant and logical next step as customers shop and search options with AI Mode's help."

Channel performance reporting and diagnostics received substantial improvements for Performance Max campaigns. According to the announcement, advertisers can now access "channel-level breakdowns of performance in your PMax campaigns" with bulk reporting capabilities across multiple campaigns simultaneously.

Campaign total budgets expanded from Demand Gen and YouTube campaigns to include Search, Performance Max, and Shopping campaigns. This enhancement allows advertisers to "set a start date, end date and a total budget for key shopping periods between 3 to 90 days" with automatic optimization during peak demand periods.

Loyalty Features: Personalized Member Experiences

Google unveiled comprehensive loyalty program integration across advertising and organic surfaces. According to the August 26, 2025, announcement by Jyotika Prasad, retailers can now "personalize member-only pricing and shipping benefits across both free and paid listings on Google, driving deeper engagement with their most valuable shoppers."

The loyalty features operate through two primary mechanisms: member-only pricing displays and retention goal optimization. Member-only pricing shows authenticated customers specific discounts and shipping benefits based on their loyalty tier, while retention goals help "retailers optimize budgets for their highest value shoppers, tailor their bids and drive higher lifetime value."

Sephora US demonstrated early success with the loyalty features, according to Google's data. The beauty retailer achieved "a 20% increase in click-through rate for personalized ads shown to loyal customers" by using personalized annotations to show signed-in shoppers specific discounts based on their loyalty tier.

Implementation requires retailers to configure loyalty program information within Google Merchant Center and enable loyalty mode within Performance Max or Standard Shopping campaigns. The system utilizes customer match data to identify target audiences and applies intelligent bidding strategies that prioritize high-value members.

Creative Tools: Asset Studio and AI-Powered Generation

Think Week 2025 positioned Asset Studio as Google Ads' centralized creative destination. According to Mindy Lin, Product Manager for Google Ads, Asset Studio serves as "the one-stop-shop for bringing your creative vision to life" with generative AI tools supporting entire creative workflows for active accounts.

Asset Studio introduces several key capabilities including product showcasing, bulk image transformation, and brand consistency maintenance. Advertisers can upload product photos and use text prompts to generate lifestyle photography, with Google AI preserving product details while creating campaign-ready assets.

The platform supports bulk operations, enabling transformation of up to 100 photos simultaneously. According to Google's specifications, advertisers can "take your arts-and-crafts creation, like Pierre the Penguin from The Woobles, and drop it into a winter wonderland, and even give it a winter sled."

People and lifestyle image generation expands creative capabilities to include adult faces and people. According to the announcement, this enables businesses to "visually demonstrate how your business supports people through pivotal life moments" while maintaining full creative control through text prompt customization.

Performance Max asset optimization experiments provide A/B testing capabilities for creative elements. This feature enables advertisers to "run A/B experiments to better measure the impact of adding new assets to their Performance Max campaigns" with systematic testing of different creative approaches.

Product Studio: Enhanced Commerce Creative

Product Studio received significant enhancements focused on bulk creative generation and video transformation capabilities. According to Google's announcement, the platform now offers "expanded creative genAI capabilities to help your products look their best" with professional-grade content creation tools.

The "Generated for you" feature automatically identifies content opportunities within product catalogs, suggesting optimizations and seasonal content. According to Google's specifications, this proactively creates "on-brand images and videos for you to review and publish across Google" based on catalog analysis.

Scene transfer functionality enables replication of high-performing visual treatments across product catalogs. Retailers can now "reuse winning backgrounds across many products (e.g., 50 at once)" to maintain consistent visual branding while reducing creative production time.

Image-to-video transformation represents a major enhancement, enabling advertisers to "upload a product image and let AI (Veo2) turn it into a video clip." This capability addresses the growing demand for video content across Google's advertising surfaces while maintaining product-focused messaging.

Video & Apps: YouTube Integration and Cross-Platform Reach

Video advertising capabilities received substantial enhancements focused on YouTube integration and cross-platform measurement. According to Google's announcement, Demand Gen campaigns now deliver "a 26% YoY increase in conversions per dollar driven by over 60 improvements to ramp time, bidding upgrades, and more."

The Creator partnerships hub centralizes YouTube creator collaboration within Google Ads. According to the announcement, this feature makes it "easy to manage collaborations with YouTube creators directly inside Google Ads" with integrated reporting for both organic and paid creator content performance.

Attributed branded searches provide always-on measurement for YouTube advertising impact on search volume. According to Google's specifications, this metric "helps advertisers understand the impact of their video ads on organic search behavior by measuring the number of searches for a brand by users who saw an advertiser's video ad."

Shoppable Masthead transforms YouTube's most prominent placement into a commerce-focused advertising format. Advertisers can now "announce new product launches and drive website traffic during key events by showcasing products alongside Masthead's immersive video ad format" on mobile devices.

Web to App Connect for YouTube enables deep linking from video advertisements to specific in-app pages. According to Google's data, "advertisers can see a 2x increase in overall conversion rates when implementing Web to App Connect for YouTube" by providing seamless transitions from video content to app experiences.

Agentic Capabilities: AI-Powered Account Management

Think Week 2025 introduced three AI-powered advisory systems designed to provide expert guidance across Google's advertising and analytics platforms. According to Google's announcement, these "agentic capabilities" learn about advertiser businesses to provide personalized optimization recommendations and strategic guidance.

Your Ads Advisor operates as "an always-on expert for comprehensive help in Google Ads" that learns account structures and business objectives to suggest campaign optimizations. The system analyzes performance data to "streamline reporting by extracting actionable insights" while proposing strategic adjustments for continuous improvement.

Your Google Analytics Advisor provides "simple answers and make decisions with confidence" through expert analysis of website and app performance data. According to Google's specifications, this advisor delivers "precise data and clear visualizations (e.g. trendlines, bar charts)" for complex analytical questions while providing direct access to relevant reports and settings.

Your cross-website marketing advisor extends beyond Google's ecosystem to provide "tailored marketing advice for all advertisers" through a Chrome extension. This system offers "instant business advice and task completion, wherever you are online" with voice interaction capabilities and cross-platform task management.

The agentic systems utilize natural language processing to understand advertiser questions and provide actionable recommendations. According to Google's technical documentation, these advisors combine account-specific data with platform best practices to deliver personalized guidance that evolves with business performance.

Measurement & Data: Enhanced Attribution and Insights

Think Week 2025 delivered substantial measurement improvements focused on cross-channel attribution and incrementality testing. According to Google's announcement, the new conversion lift experience reduces spend thresholds from $100K to $5K, making incrementality testing "more accessible to more customers."

Cross-channel measurement in Google Analytics introduces enhanced multi-touch attribution capabilities. The system will soon enable advertisers to "effectively measure the entire customer journey across Google and other platforms to gain deeper insights into your marketing ROI" through comprehensive attribution modeling.

Data Manager received expanded capabilities for first-party data utilization across Google's advertising products. According to the announcement, retailers can now connect "data sources including your website and CRM to unlock new signals" with streamlined integration processes and enhanced security protocols.

The Meridian Scenario planner transforms measurement insights into actionable budget allocation strategies. This interactive tool enables advertisers to "model future investments & better allocate spend" through data-driven optimization scenarios that inform cross-channel budget decisions.

Commerce Media suite provides SKU-level measurement for retail advertising partnerships. According to Google's specifications, this enables "retailers and brands to convert customer intent into action at every stage of the journey and track your results down to the SKU level" through comprehensive commerce analytics.

Technical Implementation and Availability

Think Week 2025 announcements include specific availability timelines and technical requirements for each feature category. According to Google's documentation, AI Max for Search campaigns operate globally in open beta with support for multiple languages, while Ads in AI Overviews remain limited to US English initially.

Asset Studio launches globally with English language support, expanding to additional languages including German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese, and Italian in subsequent releases. Performance Max enhancements deploy globally with immediate availability across all campaign types and advertiser segments.

Agentic capabilities launch with phased rollouts targeting English-speaking users initially. Your Ads Advisor reaches 50% of eligible users globally, while Your Google Analytics Advisor targets 10% of users for initial testing. The cross-website marketing advisor remains in closed pilot testing with limited participant selection.

Measurement enhancements including the new conversion lift experience and Data Manager improvements deploy globally with immediate availability. Cross-channel measurement capabilities in Google Analytics launch later in 2025 with English language support and gradual geographic expansion.

Timeline of Think Week 2025 announcements

• August 26, 2025: Google announced loyalty features for retailers in Google Ads and Merchant Center with member-only pricing capabilities
• September 3, 2025: Google updated loyalty features documentation with implementation guidelines
• September 10, 2025: Think Week 2025 commenced in New York City with comprehensive AI advertising platform announcements across five major categories
• September 10, 2025: Google introduced AI Max global availability and Performance Max transparency improvements including channel performance reporting
• September 10, 2025: Asset Studio launched as centralized creative destination with AI-powered generation capabilities and Imagen 4 integration
• September 10, 2025: Product Studio enhanced with video transformation, scene transfer, and bulk optimization features
• September 10, 2025: Agentic capabilities unveiled with AI-powered advisors for Google Ads, Analytics, and cross-platform marketing
• September 10, 2025: Text guidelines introduced for AI Max and Performance Max campaigns providing enhanced brand control
• September 10, 2025: Video management tools launched in Merchant Center for comprehensive video asset organization
• September 10, 2025: Demand Gen omnichannel features introduced with local offers and Store Visits optimization
• September 10, 2025: Creator partnerships hub launched for YouTube creator collaboration within Google Ads
• September 10, 2025: Journey Aware Bidding announced for closed pilot testing later in 2025
• September 10, 2025: Commerce Media suite unveiled for SKU-level measurement and retailer-brand partnerships
• End of 2025: Cross-channel measurement enhancements scheduled for Google Analytics deployment with enhanced multi-touch attribution
• End of 2025: Ads in AI Overviews expansion to select English-language countries on mobile and desktop planned

Summary

Who: Google announced Think Week 2025 innovations targeting retailers, merchants, and marketing professionals seeking AI-powered advertising solutions for holiday shopping season optimization and long-term customer engagement strategies.

What: The event unveiled comprehensive AI advertising enhancements across five categories including Search Ads improvements, Creative tools expansion, Video & Apps integration, Agentic advisory capabilities, and Measurement & Data attribution advances.

When: Think Week 2025 occurred September 10, 2025, in New York City, with feature availability spanning immediate global deployment to end-of-2025 rollout schedules depending on technical complexity and market readiness.

Where: The announcements impact Google's entire advertising ecosystem including Search, YouTube, Display, Shopping, Gmail, Maps, and Discover surfaces, with initial availability varying by geographic market and language support requirements.

Why: Google positioned these innovations as responses to evolving consumer behavior showing increased purchase deliberation and research activity, requiring retailers to adapt advertising strategies for longer consideration periods and higher customer lifetime value optimization.