Ad of the month the US – Google Search

The search engine synonymous with the word ‘search’ has achieved the highest uplift in its Ad Awareness in May.

The rise in Google Search’s Ad Awareness score, which measures how many people saw an ad for a brand, coincides with the brand’s multiple announcements that made news in the past month.

Google Search’s ad penetration among US consumers sat at 16% at the end of April. The percentage of people who saw at least one ad relating to Google Search rose to 21% on May 14th and returned to 17% on May 24th.

The rise in Google Search’s Ad Awareness may be attributed to two important announcements.

The first is its addition of animated athletes to the augmented reality (AR) search feature. Google had announced a 3D Augmented Reality search feature at Google I/O in 2019. In May 2021, the search giant added new features to its 3D AR search including live real-time demonstration of athletes and their techniques using AR modelling.

The second, and perhaps one of the most significant changes to the search experiences, is the optimisation of the search experience. Multitask Unified Model (MUM) analyzes search queries and advises search engine users on better search terms. Google Search released the feature to better answer complex questions and multiple queries that don’t have direct solutions.

In addition to the increase in its Ad Awareness score, Google Search also improved its Buzz score, which tracks the number of Americans who heard something about a brand or talked about with friends and family, by two points from 7% on May 6 to 9% on May 26.

Methodology: YouGov BrandIndex collects data on thousands of brands every day. Google Search’s Ad Awareness score is based on the question: Which of the following brands have you seen an advertisement for in the past two weeks? Scores are based on an average daily sample size of 2,557 adults in the US between April 25 to May 24. Figures are based on a 4-week moving average. Learn more about BrandIndex.