Fresh From Google Think: New Ads Features to Power Holiday Campaigns & Lead Gen in 2025

If you’ve ever wished you could peek inside Google’s playbook for the upcoming year, the Think Lead Gen and Think Retail events are about as close as it gets. These aren’t your average industry conferences with lukewarm coffee and awkward small talk. Nope—this is Google’s annual stage for unveiling the features that will shape how advertisers capture leads, drive sales, and keep loyal customers coming back for more.

This year, the events were held in New York City, and White Shark Media was there in person to soak it all in. We’re bringing the best of the announcements straight to you.

Spoiler alert: there’s a lot to be excited about. Smarter lead forms, flexible campaign budgets, omnichannel optimization, AI-powered campaigns, enhanced YouTube metrics, and shiny new loyalty features all took center stage. If your 2025 strategy isn’t fully ready for the Q4 holiday season, it will be by the end of this read.

AI Essentials 2.0: Be Ready for Tomorrow, Today

Here’s where things get really futuristic. Google’s AI Essentials 2.0 is a curated collection of AI solutions designed to make advertising smarter, faster, and more effective.

Highlights include:

• Improve targeting with data-driven signals.
• Enhance ROI through AI-optimized creative and campaign execution.
• Save time on repetitive tasks while still scaling campaigns effectively.

The Power Pack for Lead Generation

Think of this as your AI Swiss Army knife for campaigns. Google’s Power Pack offers specialized AI tools for different campaign types:

• AI Max for Search: Target new, relevant queries, and automatically customize creative and landing pages.
• Demand Gen: Create and convert demand on YouTube and Google’s most visual surfaces with lookalike audiences and video enhancements.
• Performance Max: Access Google’s channels and AI in one campaign, maximize asset variety, and use final URL expansions to capture more traffic.

The Power Pack makes it easier than ever to mix and match automation, creative, and targeting to meet your specific goals—whether you want more channel control or just massive scale.

And the stat Google kept repeating? 

71% of U.S. holiday shoppers are omnichannel. That jumps even higher for Gen Z, who shop with one hand on their phone while browsing in-store. If you’re still treating online and offline as separate strategies, 2025 is the year to merge them.

Campaign Total Budgets Expand Beyond Video

Budgeting has always been a tug-of-war between control and flexibility. Enter Campaign Total Budgets, now expanding from Video into Search, Performance Max, Demand Gen, and Shopping campaigns.

Here’s why this is big news:

• Set it and forget it: Define your total spend across a campaign (3–90 days). No more babysitting daily budgets.
• Holiday promos made easy: Run seasonal or event campaigns with hard caps.
• Smarter pacing: Google shifts spend dynamically across high- and low-demand days to maximize performance.

Imagine planning a Black Friday blitz without fearing your campaign will blow through half your budget before Thanksgiving turkey is even carved. This is holiday sanity insurance.

How to Drive Holiday Sales with Google’s PMax Campaigns

Always-On Attributed Branded Searches

Finally, some love for measurement nerds (we say that with affection). Attributed Branded Searches is now an always-on metric for YouTube campaigns.

Here’s what it means:

1. Performance indicator: Instantly see how YouTube ads are driving search activity.
2. Impression-tied: Only counts branded searches from people who saw your ad.
3. No setup required: It just… works.

Think of it as a pulse check for brand lift—you’ll know faster if your YouTube ads are sparking curiosity and sending people to search for your brand. No more waiting weeks for incrementality test results.

New Loyalty Features in Think Retail

Retention may not be as glamorous as acquisition, but Google just gave it a glow-up. Loyalty-focused ad features are designed to keep your best customers engaged and spending.

What’s in the package?

• • Member-only pricing & shipping: Reward loyal customers with perks.
  • Retention bidding goals: Ensure your ads hit the eyeballs of your highest-value cohorts.
  • Tiered insights: See how different loyalty levels drive conversions and revenue.

If you’re running a membership or subscription model, this one’s gold. Even if you’re not, the ability to identify and target your most profitable customers is a huge step toward sustainable growth.

Smarter Lead Forms With Conditional Rules

Let’s start with a feature that had the room nodding in approval: lead forms are finally catching up with the times.

Google Ads lead forms now support conditional logic—yes, just like the ones you’ve seen on Meta. This means your forms can actually adapt to what people answer, instead of serving everyone the same “one-size-fits-all” set of questions.

Why this matters:

• Better quality leads: Qualify prospects before they hit your CRM.
• Actionable insights: Tailor follow-ups based on responses.
• Higher completion rates: Ask fewer, more relevant questions to stop scaring people away.

In short, this is a win for everyone. Advertisers get fewer wasted clicks, and sales teams don’t have to sift through leads who thought “budget” meant “I’ve got $20 and a dream.”

Tis the Season… for Smarter Marketing

From conditional lead forms to campaign-wide budgets, omnichannel bidding, AI-driven campaigns, loyalty perks, and new YouTube metrics, Google’s 2025 updates are built to make advertisers’ lives easier—and campaigns more profitable.

For marketers, the message is clear:
✅ Capture higher-quality leads
✅ Stretch your budget smarter
✅ Meet customers wherever they shop
✅ Harness AI to optimize campaigns and creative
✅ Build loyalty that lasts

Want to make the most of these updates before the holiday rush? Let’s get in touch and make it happen!