Precious Nwonu, Enugu
Google has introduced new artificial intelligence-powered advertising features aimed at helping businesses, including those in Nigeria, better understand the performance of their online campaigns and manage their advertising strategies.
The technology company announced the developments as part of new updates to its AI Max for Search campaigns, including a new reporting feature and an expanded version of its AI Brief tool.
Google Director for East and West Africa, Olumide Balogun, disclosed the developments in Lagos on Friday.
The new reporting feature will provide advertisers with a unified view of the customer journey, bringing together information on the search terms that triggered an advert, the creative content displayed to the user and the webpage the user visited after clicking the advert.
Google said the information, which had previously been available across different sections of Google Ads, will now be presented in a single view, making it easier for advertisers to assess campaign performance and understand how customers interact with their adverts.
Balogun said the development would give Nigerian businesses greater visibility into how their advertising budgets are being used, particularly as businesses prepare for major shopping periods such as Black Friday and the festive season.
The reporting feature was unveiled at DMEXCO 2026 in Cologne, Germany, and Google said further details on its availability would be released later in the year.
Another update is the expansion of AI Brief, a Gemini-powered feature that allows advertisers to provide instructions to AI Max using ordinary language.
Through the tool, advertisers can give detailed information about their businesses, target audiences and key messages and use those instructions to guide how AI Max develops and manages campaign elements.
For instance, businesses can provide instructions about the type of searches they want to prioritise, messages they want highlighted or information they do not want included in advertisements.
Google said advertisers can also preview sample advertisements and searches before campaigns go live, allowing them to adjust their instructions where necessary.
The closed beta of AI Brief is being expanded to seven additional languages: Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish.
Google said the latest changes are part of its broader effort to adapt advertising tools to changing search behaviour as consumers increasingly use more conversational and detailed queries when looking for products and services.
The company has also expanded AI-powered features across Google Search. AI Overviews are available in more than 200 countries and territories, while AI Mode has also expanded to more than 200 countries and territories.
Google has been developing AI Max as a broader AI-powered system for Search advertising. The company said AI Max moved out of beta in 2026, with additional controls for targeting, creative content and campaign performance.
The company also said AI Max campaigns using its full feature set recorded an average of seven per cent more conversions or conversion value at a similar cost per acquisition or return on advertising spend, compared with campaigns using search-term matching alone. Google described the figures as based on its internal 2026 data for non-retail advertisers.
Google Vice-President of Global Ads, Dan Taylor, said changing consumer behaviour was also influencing the way businesses connect with potential customers through Search.
According to Taylor, users are increasingly turning to longer and more detailed questions, voice commands and images when searching for information, products and services.
Google has previously reported that queries made through AI Mode are nearly three times longer than traditional searches, reflecting the growing use of conversational search.
Google said AI Max, launched in 2025, is now being used by hundreds of thousands of advertisers globally.
The company has also continued to expand AI-powered advertising formats as Search becomes increasingly conversational, including new advertising experiences being tested in AI Mode.
Balogun urged Nigerian businesses preparing for the Black Friday period and the end-of-year shopping season to begin planning their campaigns early.
He said the new tools would enable businesses to better understand their advertising results and make more informed decisions about where to allocate their marketing budgets.