Technology company, Google says it has unveiled new Artificial Intelligence-powered advertising features to assist Nigerian businesses better track the performance of their online adverts and manage campaigns.
Mr. Olumide Balogun, Google’s Director for East and West Africa, made this in a statement on Friday in Lagos.
Balogun said that the features, introduced under its AI Max for Search platform, would give advertisers clearer information on customer interactions with Search ads. and comprised a new Google Ads reporting feature and an expansion of AI Brief, a Gemini-powered tool that allowed advertisers to guide campaigns using plain language.
According to him, the reporting feature brings together information on what customers searched for, the adverts they see and the webpages they subsequently visit. The information, currently accessed from different sections of Google Ads accounts, would now appear in a single view.
“We are excited to give Nigerian businesses a clearer view of what their advertising delivers.
“Every naira matters, especially in the weeks before Black Friday.
“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.
“This makes it far easier to decide where their budget works best,” Balogun said.
He said that the reporting feature, unveiled at DMEXCO 2026 in Cologne, Germany, would be rolled out globally, including Nigeria, later in the year and AI Brief would also allow businesses to specify, in everyday language, what their advertisements should or should not communicate.
An advertiser, he explained, could instruct the system not to mention prices, prioritise particular searches or highlight specific offers to certain categories of customers, while advertisers can preview sample adverts and searches before campaigns go live and adjust their instructions where necessary.
“AI Brief was being expanded as a closed beta, with support for seven additional languages – Japanese, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French and Italian”.
He urged Nigerian businesses preparing for Black Friday and the festive shopping season to begin planning their campaigns early.
“With Black Friday on Nov. 27 and the festive season close behind, now is the time for businesses to set up their peak-season campaigns,” he said.
Google’s Vice-President of Global Ads, Mr. Dan Taylor, said at DMEXCO that changing search habits were influencing how businesses reached potential customers online.
During the event, Google Vice President Philip Taylor outlined a noticeable shift in consumer behavior, reporting that users are increasingly turning to longer, more detailed questions, voice commands, and images when searching for products and services.
According to Taylor, searches conducted through Google’s AI Mode are now three times longer than traditional text queries. Additionally, one in six searches worldwide is now performed using voice commands or image recognition tools like Google Lens.
The gathering also provided updated adoption metrics for AI Max, Google’s automated campaign platform introduced in 2025. Taylor noted that approximately 500,000 advertisers globally have adopted the tool to date. Early performance tracking indicates that businesses leveraging AI Max recorded a 27 per cent increase in conversions encompassing direct sales and business inquiries while maintaining a similar cost per acquisition.
Addressing regional applicability, Taylor clarified that these performance figures represent aggregated global data presented at the conference and do not reflect metrics isolated specifically to the Nigerian market.
DMEXCO 2026 is an international digital marketing and technology conference, held in Cologne, Germany, from Sept. 23 to Sept. 24.
