Google has introduced new artificial intelligence-driven advertising features aimed at helping Nigerian businesses better understand the performance of their online campaigns and manage adverts more effectively.
The company’s Director for East and West Africa, Olumide Balogun, disclosed this on Friday in Lagos, explaining that the new tools were being introduced through its AI Max for Search platform.
According to Balogun, one of the major additions is a new Google Ads reporting feature designed to give advertisers a clearer picture of how customers interact with their Search adverts.
He said the tool brings together information on customers’ searches, the adverts they were shown and the webpages they visited afterwards, which were previously available across different sections of Google Ads accounts.
“With the new report, business owners will see on one screen the question a customer asked, the ad she saw, and the page she landed on,” Balogun said, adding that the feature would help businesses determine how best to allocate their advertising budgets.
He disclosed that the reporting feature, unveiled at DMEXCO 2026 in Cologne, Germany, would be introduced globally, including Nigeria, later this year.
Balogun also highlighted an expanded version of AI Brief, a Gemini-powered tool that enables advertisers to provide campaign instructions using ordinary language.
He explained that businesses could instruct the system on what their adverts should communicate, including whether to avoid mentioning prices, focus on particular searches or promote specific offers to selected groups of customers.
Advertisers would also be able to preview sample adverts and searches before campaigns are launched and make adjustments to their instructions where necessary.
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The AI Brief expansion is currently being tested in a closed beta and includes support for seven additional languages: Japanese, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French and Italian.
Google also announced that adverts could appear above and below AI Overviews in more than 200 countries, including Nigeria. Balogun advised Nigerian businesses preparing for Black Friday and the festive shopping season to begin planning their campaigns early.
Meanwhile, Google Vice-President of Global Ads, Dan Taylor, said changing search habits were affecting how businesses reached potential customers online.
Taylor said consumers were increasingly using longer queries, voice commands and images when searching for products and services. He added that searches through Google’s AI Mode were three times longer than traditional searches, while one in six searches was conducted through voice or images.
He further stated that AI Max, which Google introduced in 2025, had been adopted by about 500,000 advertisers globally.
According to Taylor, advertisers using the product recorded 27 per cent more conversions, including sales and enquiries, at a similar cost.
He, however, clarified that the performance figures were based on global data presented at DMEXCO 2026 and did not represent results specifically from Nigeria.