According to Google, marketers and advertisers will not be able to create or edit standalone Gmail campaigns or Gmail ads after July 1, 2021. All existing Gmail ads will become “read only” by then. To continue serving ads on Gmail, Google is recommending migrations to Discovery ads which allows you to reach up to three billion people as they browse their Google feeds (YouTube, Gmail, and Discover).

From Gmail Ads to Discovery Ads

In early 2020, Google launched Discovery ads as a new way to reach customers browsing across Google feeds, including Gmail. With Discovery experiencing fast growth in usage for performance advertisers, Google believes that merging Gmail ads into Discovery ads will help centralize the Google ads buying experience.

Will I be able to target only Gmail in Discovery ads?

The answer is NO, per property targeting is not available through Discovery ads. Yet there’s a good rationale behind.

The intention is to help marketers and advertisers to natively integrate their ads into popular Google feeds across YouTube, Gmail and Discover, with automated bidding to drive the best business results, instead of  having scattered campaigns in individual channels. 

Recommendations

To stay ahead of your competitors, marketers and advertisers are recommended to start gradually transferring their budgets to Discovery ads as early as possible to gain sufficient performance history for competitive bidding in the future.

As Google’s premier partner, our digital marketing team is all ready to help you migrate your existing Gmail ads to Discovery ads. We work with our clients as well as Google closely to formulate digital advertising strategies and expand digital reach. You can find out more about our digital marketing solutions. We’re always happy to help!