Google Ads is receiving a major upgrade in 2019 with the addition of several new mobile ad formats.

As an affiliate marketer, being aware of major changes to traffic sources like Google Ads is a must. A new ad format or technical upgrade could be the difference between a low and high conversion rate when you’re promoting a campaign.

Before we look the new ad types, let’s first look at the purpose of this update.

Google explained their reasoning behind these new ad formats in their blog post earlier this week:

People turn to Google to communicate, find answers and stay entertained. And increasingly, they’re swiping and scrolling through feeds as part of that journey—whether it’s browsing videos in the YouTube home feed, checking timely offers in the Gmail Promotions tab or swiping through Discover to catch up on the latest news. These are opportunities for advertisers to engage them when it matters.

– Prabhakar Raghavan, SVP, Google Ads & Commerce

The two new specific ad formats to come out of this update are Discovery Ads and Gallery Ads. Google will be giving worldwide access to both at some point later this year.

Let’s look at what each brings to the table.

Discovery Ads

Native ads are definitely in style, and Google is launching Discovery Ads as a form of native advertising to provide their advertisers with more mobile advertising options.

Discovery Campaigns will be a non-search mobile campaign type that incorporates consumers’ past site, app, video, and map data to deliver highly-targeted ads.

Creating a Discovery Ad will involve uploading several ad elements such as copy and images that Google will then optimize into the best performing combinations. These ads will appear on the Google Discover Feed (which reaches 800 million+ users globally), in Gmail, and on the mobile YouTube feed.

The selling point of this format is their  massive reach and the opportunity to advertise in front of a different audience.

Gallery Ads

Gallery ads are a new type of mobile search ad that aims to improve the visual appeal of traditional Google search campaigns.

This format will display your ad as a gallery of multiple images (between 4-8) that are each allowed up to 70 characters. You’ll pay for this format on a CPC (cost-per-click) basis once a user clicks on your ad or swipes past the 3rd image of the gallery.

During the testing phase, Google found that Gallery Ads received 25% more interactions than their traditional search campaign format. This is likely because users are more enticed by something that is interactive. In theory, this should translate to a higher conversion rate for you and other advertisers.

At the moment, Gallery Ads are exclusively a mobile search ad format.

In addition to these two new formats, Google is expanding on their Showcase Shopping Ads by extending them to Google Images and both the Discover and YouTube feeds. They’re also implementing app deep linking and improved reporting functions.

You can learn more about all the details of this update and each new ad format here.