Winning the Infinite Customer Journey: 3 Must-Haves for Canadian Marketers
The traditional customer journey—a predictable, linear path from awareness to purchase—is a relic. Today's Canadian consumer engages in a complex, multi-faceted journey that involves searching, streaming, scrolling, and shopping across countless touchpoints, often simultaneously. In fact, every day, consumers interact with around 130 mobile touchpoints.
This new reality demands that we think beyond the funnel and embrace a more holistic, interconnected approach to consumer engagement, offering value, inspiration, and seamless experiences across those moments. To thrive amidst infinite, intersecting journeys, Canadian brands need to focus on three things: understanding the evolution of discovery, showing up on the right platforms, and leveraging the power of AI to make it all happen.
Understanding the evolution of discovery
Thanks to advances in AI, searching is now more natural and intuitive. Queries like “Best hiking boots” are evolving into complex questions like: “What are the best hiking boots for a beginner hiker who’s travelling to Jasper in the Spring?”
AI Mode, which launched in Canada this year, offers a new way to address these types of complex, multi-part questions and follow-ups. It’s particularly helpful for exploratory questions and for more complicated tasks like comparing products, planning a trip or understanding complex how-tos. In fact, we’ve found that early users of AI Mode are asking questions that are two or three times the length of traditional search queries.
We’re also seeing an evolution of visual search, with products like Google Lens and Circle to Search. Google Lens in particular is one of the fastest-growing search methods on Google, with people conducting over 25 billion visual searches every month. And, 1 in 5 Lens searches are commercial in nature.
The growing ways people search provide richer signals of context and intent. And our AI models are getting better at understanding the “why” and not just the “what,” so we can anticipate what a user will need next, allowing your business to show up in the moments people are most open to discovery.
Show up on the right platforms
We’re in the midst of a shift back to the living room's biggest screen, but this time for a new generation of viewers. This "new TV" is interactive and includes everything from short-form video and podcasts to livestreams. When it comes to streaming, YouTube is the undisputed leader. According to a Kantar survey, if viewers in Canada could only watch one service for an entire year, the #1 platform they chose was YouTube.
At the heart of YouTube is its booming creator community. In Canada, YouTube contributes $1.8 billion to Canada’s GDP and creates over 35,000 jobs. Creators are trusted curators and authentic storytellers, helping guide purchases and decisions. A recent Ipsos study found that online users are 98% more likely to trust the recommendations of creators on YouTube versus those on other social sites or apps.
To tap into this influence, we just launched the Creator partnerships hub, a dedicated tool within Google Ads that lets advertisers see and manage all their creator campaigns. By combining the trust of creators with AI-powered campaigns, you can get much more from your strategy on YouTube.
Activate your AI toolkit
A recent study conducted by BCG, found that marketers who have deeply integrated AI tools report 60% greater revenue growth than their peers. AI can become an advertiser's most valuable partner, and our goal is to provide Canadian marketers with the tools to find the next customer, no matter where their journey takes them.
Tools like Performance Max (PMax) are built for this new reality. PMax uses AI to help you reach customers across all of Google's channels—YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail, and Maps—from a single campaign. For those crucial discovery moments, our Demand Gen campaigns use rich visuals on YouTube, Shorts, and Discover to capture attention and turn inspiration into sales. And we also recently introduced AI Max for Search. It’s a one-click feature suite that uses Google AI to find new, relevant search queries you might be missing, giving you expanded reach with the granular controls and reporting you expect.
The new Canadian consumer is more discerning and resourceful than ever. For marketers, this presents a significant opportunity. By embracing the new face of discovery, meeting customers on their favourite platforms, and leveraging powerful AI tools, you can turn an infinite journey into infinite opportunities.
