Caroline Rainsford, Google New Zealand Country Director, is a speaker at Digital Day Out 2025. NZ Marketing brings you this exclusive version of her keynote address.
The marketing landscape is in constant flux, but every so often, a shift occurs that fundamentally reorients our industry. We are in the midst of one such monumental transformation: the unprecedented pace of AI innovation. This isn’t a future trend. AI-powered advertising is here today, reshaping every facet of the industry. And marketers who invest in adopting AI-powered advertising tools now will reap the greatest rewards.
At Google, we believe technology can be applied in ways that benefit humanity and help billions of people reach their goals. This ethos has been a hallmark of our approach, whether it’s through search, email or online video.
It’s also our approach to AI with bold and responsible innovation. Our decade of leadership in AI, from infrastructure and chips to cutting-edge research and product integration, delivers tangible benefits worldwide.
Here in New Zealand, Google AI can help with forecasting floods, tracking birdsong of threatened species and enabling more Kiwis to discover te reo Māori.
For businesses, we believe the new reality of consumer choice is defined by four key behaviours: streaming, scrolling, searching and shopping.
With over a billion shopping moments happening across our platforms every day, consumers now expect a seamless, frictionless shopping experience, whether through a retail newsletter, a shoppable YouTube ad, or an in-app checkout. The future of search is not just text, it’s voice, image, video and live interaction.
Foresee the future
This multimodality is going mainstream – as evidenced by the surge in Google Lens usage. A visual tool to search the internet using images or camera, Lens now handles nearly 20 billion searches a month globally with one in five searches showing commercial intent.
That’s why Google is already building for that future. To keep up with changing consumer behaviour, we’re moving marketers from simply responding to the market to predicting it.
How? We help them foresee future opportunities by providing deeper insights and measurement that can help steer future strategy rather than just looking back at what happened in the past.
The integration of AI makes all of this infinitely more interconnected, with our AI-powered tools and tailored experiences designed to make every interaction count, delivering more valuable and helpful interactions that create stronger connections, generate sales and better business outcomes.
AI adoption is key
While 80% of marketers have begun testing or using AI-powered campaigns, the sheer scope of harnessing AI can feel overwhelming1.
However, the effort is crucial. According to a September 2024 study by Google and BCG, marketers who are leading in AI adoption reported 84% greater revenue growth than their peers and the ability to adapt twice as fast, demonstrating the massive upside for those who advance their AI adoption2.
AI is truly reshaping marketing, offering personalised marketing, predictive insights and real-time decision making.
We’re already seeing incredible results. Globally, advertisers are more likely to say Google Search drives business growth more than any other paid advertising platform3.
An unparalleled opportunity
Around the world every single year we see five trillion searches (and that’s not counting the volume of searches on YouTube), and early testers of AI Mode – our most powerful AI search – are asking longer queries, two to three times the length of traditional searches4.
With more advanced reasoning and multimodality, AI Mode is particularly useful for more complicated tasks like comparing products, with the ability to ask follow up questions and helpful links to the web.
This perennial curiosity from consumers, along with enhancements in AI, presents an unparalleled opportunity.
Thrive with AI
I challenge the marketers of Aotearoa to capture this moment.
Start by reaching consumers in the moments that matter. AI-powered tools are key here, ensuring your ads appear on the right platform precisely when your audience is most receptive.
Next, prioritise video as a core element of your outreach. The immense active video consumption today offers a powerful way for brands to engage audiences.
Finally, transform measurement from a lookback tool into a predictive engine for growth. Implementing a mix of attribution, media mix modeling and incrementality testing will help you move at the speed of your customers and directly link marketing efforts to the bottom line.
By embracing AI-powered marketing tools, you can move from simply reacting to predicting future opportunities, brands can create meaningful connections with compelling ads that appear at precisely the right moment and businesses can not only keep pace with the “new reality of consumer choice” but truly thrive within it.
- https://www.bcg.com/pub lications/2024/blueprint-for-ai-powered-marketing#:~:text=About%20the%20Study,on%20their%20AI 2%20adoption%20journey ↩︎
- Google/BCG, Path to AI Excellence, Global N=2,135, Europe N=751, marketing AI decision-makers/influencers at small to large companies, September, 2024 ↩︎
- Google/Ipsos/Kantar, AdsGeist Wave 1 2024, US, UK, DE, FR, CA, BR, AU, JP, CN, IN, 2024, n=4,096 media decision makers/influencers, May-August 2024. ↩︎
- https://blog.google/intl/en-in/products/google-search-introducing-ai-mode-in-india/ ↩︎
Digital Day Out is an annual event, brought to you by the Marketing Association.
