Key takeaways
- Google has removed campaign-level language targeting for Search and AI Max for Search, with language matching now handled automatically.
- The language used in your ad and landing page now matters more, particularly for healthcare organisations advertising to multilingual communities.
- Keep the patient experience consistent after the click – an ad in one language that leads to a landing page in another can weaken trust and conversion.
- There is no need for an immediate campaign rebuild, but now is a good time to review multilingual ads, landing pages and performance.
The AIHW reports that 23% of Australians speak a language other than English at home. That’s around 6 million people. For healthcare organisations serving culturally and linguistically diverse communities, multilingual advertising can therefore play an important role in patient acquisition. Depending on your location and patient population, that might mean advertising in English alongside languages such as Vietnamese, Mandarin or Korean.
Until now, Google Ads has allowed advertisers to select the languages they wanted a Search campaign to target – Italian or Punjabi, for example – at campaign level. For Search and AI Max for Search campaigns, Google is now going to determine the ad language for you, based on signals about the person searching and the language used in the ad and landing page.
What does this change mean in practice?
Google is taking away one manual control, but it is not abandoning language matching itself.
On Search, Google will use signals such as the language of the search itself, a user’s language settings and the languages they regularly interact with. It will then try to serve an eligible ad in a language that person understands. If several ads in different languages could appear, Google says its AI-based ad group prioritisation will favour the most relevant language.
In other words, if your practice runs multilingual campaigns, Google will rely on what your advertising actually says, rather than a campaign setting telling it which language to use.
That means the language of your ad and landing page now carries more weight.
If you’re using translated ads to reach a specific community, the experience needs to be consistent from ad to landing page.
Google is putting more weight on language consistency. If you’re running an ad in Vietnamese, for example, the landing page should continue that Vietnamese-language experience rather than suddenly switching users back to English.
And really, that’s how it should be. If you’ve chosen to speak to someone in their language in the ad, dropping them onto an English-only page creates friction straight away. The language experience should carry through the full journey – from search, to landing page, to enquiry.
Ian Redford
Paid Performance Manager
Performance Max works slightly differently
Performance Max distributes advertising across several parts of Google’s network, including YouTube, Display, Discover and Gmail as well as Search.
The new language-matching approach applies when Performance Max ads appear on Google Search. However, the old, manual campaign-level language setting will continue to apply when those ads appear across channels such as YouTube, Display, Discover and Gmail.
Why is Google making the change?
Google Ads has been steadily removing manual controls and asking advertisers to rely more heavily on its automation. Language targeting is another step in that direction.
That doesn’t mean healthcare advertisers should simply hand everything over to Google. As the platform takes on more of the targeting decisions, the inputs you control – your campaign structure, messaging, landing pages and measurement – become even more important.
What do healthcare advertisers need to do?
You need to make the language and intended audience clear within the campaign itself because you can no longer do so by setting the language manually.
It might look like a small Google Ads setting change, but it affects several parts of Splice’s Healthcare Growth Equation:
Demand
Your ads still need to appear when the right people are searching for services you provide. For multilingual campaigns, that means creating ads (and landing pages) that clearly match the language and intent of those searches.
Trust
Healthcare information needs to remain clear, clinically accurate and credible in the language being used. A patient should not have to decode an awkward translation to understand who you are or what service you provide.
Conversion
The language experience should continue after the click. If someone responds to a Mandarin ad but arrives on an English landing page with an English-only form, you have introduced friction that undermines conversion.
Measurement
Now that the change is live, check whether the new matching behaviour is delivering the audience you expected. Search terms, enquiry quality and conversion performance will tell you more than impressions alone.
Do you need to change your campaigns now?
Not immediately. In most cases, there’s no need for a major rebuild. Google says existing campaigns will continue to operate when the new model takes effect.
However, this is a good opportunity to review your multilingual campaigns now that the change is in place. You may wish to:
- Check which campaigns currently use language targeting
- Look at the actual language used in each ad and click through to the landing page – does the experience remain consistent or does it require you to switch languages?
- Review performance after the change – Google may automate who it thinks should see the ad. It can’t tell you whether those clicks are generating relevant patient enquiries for your healthcare organisation.
Is your Google Ads account ready?
Google Ads changes frequently, and not every platform update warrants a new campaign strategy. This one is relatively small for many advertisers, but it matters more for healthcare organisations actively advertising to multilingual communities.
Splice manages Google Ads accounts specifically for healthcare organisations. We can review your current language targeting, ad structure and landing-page experience, then check whether your measurement is giving you a clear picture of the enquiries those campaigns generate.
If you’re running multilingual Search campaigns, we can review how your account is structured, check the journey from ad to landing page and identify whether this change creates anything worth fixing.
