Marketers have more opportunities than ever before to deliver engaging ad experiences through immersive creative. Many companies are investing in creating 3D assets to bring their products to life and allow consumers to interact with products as they would in real life. For example, a person can explore the interior and exterior of a car before taking it for a test drive, all from the comfort of their home. But it can be challenging to scale these experiences. Now you can extend the reach of these 3D assets to produce more captivating ads, with two new updates coming today.

Showcase your products with Immersive Display

Brands that already have 3D assets can easily create a Swirl ad unit by using the 3D/Swirl component in Google Web Designer, our creative authoring tool. And with a new editor coming to Poly, Google’s 3D platform, it’s easier for brands and agencies to edit, configure, and publish high-quality, photorealistic models to use in immersive display ads. You can learn more in this post. If you’re interested in exploring Swirl but need help building 3D assets, we also have certified 3D production partners to help.

Expand the reach of your YouTube live streams

Increasingly, people are tuning in to live events like concerts, sports and shows through live streams. Brands are noticing this shift and are investing in live stream content through sponsorships and their own branded content. We know it takes a lot of time and resources to build these assets and we want to make it easier to get more out of your live stream investment.

The new live stream format in Display & Video 360 allows you to run your YouTube live stream content in display ads across screens and devices. You can quickly get started by using assets from your existing YouTube live stream campaigns with a new template in Google Web Designer.

With the live stream format people will be able to interact with the video using familiar YouTube player controls. People can preview your live stream, watch full screen, and exit when they’re done, giving them full control over how they interact with your content.

Building better ad experiences

Live stream and Swirl are just two examples of how we’re enabling brands to deliver more interactive ad experiences at scale with Display & Video 360. We want to make it easier for you to build ads that are engaging and valuable to consumers. We’ll continue to share creative solutions to help you build beautiful creative and deliver better ad experiences to users wherever they are online.

Both Swirl and the new live stream format are in a limited beta. To learn more about these new interactive formats, reach out to your Display & Video 360 account manager.

Last year we announced Google Marketing Platform Partners, a new program designed to ensure you have access to the resources you need to do more effective marketing and grow your business with Google Marketing Platform. Whether you want to build out in-house skills or engage a service provider, we’ve developed a robust partner program that allows you to confidently find the expertise you need.

Starting today, Google Marketing Platform Partners is accepting applications globally. We have nearly 600 partners, and are accepting applications for new partners in most major markets around the world. If you’re a prospective partner, you can review the process and policies for product certifications and submit an application.

Trusted sources

From single projects to long-term partnerships, Google Marketing Platform Partners helps you find the right people with the right expertise to meet your business needs. Leading interactive agencies, system integrators, and top technology, data and media companies are available to support multiple areas of your business. And each partner is rigorously vetted by Google with a comprehensive certification process.

The partner program includes:

• Certified Individuals who make up a broad global talent pool of advanced Google Marketing Platform practitioners who have successfully demonstrated expertise through successful completion of product exams.
  

• Certified Companies that provide consulting, training, implementation, operations and technical support services for Google Marketing Platform. These companies not only have individuals certified in one or more products, but they have a high level of knowledge, practical and industry experience, as well as stellar customer references.
  

• Sales Partners that are Google Marketing Platform experts in addition to being Certified Companies. They partner closely with Google to provide consulting and support services, in addition to selling the technology on our behalf.

Google Marketing Platform Partner certifications assess practitioner and corporate competency with regard to campaign setup, strategy, measurement, optimization, and troubleshooting for the following products: Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360, Google Analytics, Campaign Manager, and Google Web Designer. Additionally, certifications for Data Studio, Tag Manager, and Optimize are offered to companies that have become certified on at least one of the core product certifications listed above.

Teaming up

Think of Google Marketing Platform Partners as a way to develop your extended marketing team, backed by Google. To get started, search for partners in your area that match your business needs.

Whether it's their favorite YouTube channel, the latest news or that hot show everyone is talking about, connected TV lets people watch what they want anytime. This creates new opportunities for brands to engage with their audience, while bringing together the reach and familiarity of TV with the precision and measurability of digital video. In the last year, the number of connected TV ad slots available to advertisers using Display & Video 360 has increased 8X, which has helped more advertisers reach their audiences using this channel. In fact, the number of advertisers running connected TV campaigns on Display & Video 360 has increased 137 percent in the past year.

To help marketers build on this success, we’re continuing to invest in new TV capabilities for Display & Video 360. First, we’re implementing privacy-forward standards for connected TV that ensure responsible audience management practices by giving users transparency and choice over their ad settings. Second, we’re launching new linear TV capabilities so you can extend your reach to traditional TV viewers by purchasing ads on national broadcast networks and local TV stations. And finally, to help you deliver consistent TV strategies across delivery methods, we’re creating a consolidated TV workflow to buy connected TV together with linear TV.  

Putting people first with connected TV

In today's environment, privacy is top of mind for users, advertisers, and content providers—and connected TV is no exception. As people gain more control over what content they watch, they also want to be in control of how their data is used to inform the ads they see. It’s critical that the industry adopts user-first practices to help build a sustainable connected TV advertising ecosystem.

This is why we teamed up with the IAB Tech Lab’s OTT Technical Working Group to design shared industry guidelines for creating high-quality and privacy-safe connected TV advertising experiences. These guidelines formalize the Identifier for Advertising (IFA), which allows advertisers to reach audiences and measure their campaigns in a way that gives users more transparency and control than alternatives, such as solutions that use the IP address of a viewer's device.

IFA was designed to protect user privacy. It gives users the ability to choose how their data is used. This means they can reset the ID associated with their data or fully opt out of experiences like interest-based advertising. They can also be assured that their choices will remain unchanged if they move their device to a new location.

Display & Video 360 now supports the IAB Tech Lab guidelines, allowing marketers to manage frequency, measure reach, and begin developing responsible audience segmentation strategies while protecting user privacy. We’re also adding support for these guidelines in our publisher platform, Google Ad Manager.

We’re seeing momentum across the industry with key players adopting the IAB Tech Lab guidelines. TV and device manufacturers like Roku and measurement vendors such as Nielsen are adopting IFA. Nielsen, for example, has built IFA-based audiences into Digital Ad Ratings to bring greater understanding of reach on mobile and connected TV audiences.

Adding linear TV to the picture

Connected TV is growing quickly, but traditional linear TV is still an important way people watch. There are some moments, such as sporting events or the big season finale, that just have to be enjoyed live. And many of us still tune in to watch programs from our favorite ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX local network stations. To help you reach people in those moments and on those channels, Display & Video 360 provides access to buy ad slots on national broadcast and cable networks and thousands of local TV stations. Today, U.S. network affiliates are accessible through a beta integration with WideOrbit. And soon, premium national broadcast and cable channels will be available through our partnership with clypd.

To help you easily execute these campaigns and give you more control over your linear TV investments, we’re introducing new buying functionality in Display & Video 360. For example, you can now set up detailed campaign parameters such as geography, daypart, program genre or TV network directly. And throughout the campaign, you can quickly manage budget allocation and optimize reach by adjusting these parameters.

Up next: Consolidated TV buying

With Display & Video 360, you can now expand your digital strategy to reach connected TV audiences in a privacy-safe way. You can also connect with viewers as they sink back on the couch and see what’s on network television thanks to self-service linear buying workflows. Stay tuned as we roll out new features and bring on new partners throughout the year.

Last week, we shared that the ability to share audiences from Analytics 360 to Salesforce Marketing Cloud is beginning to roll out. Today, we’re highlighting a number of enhancements to the integration between Analytics 360 and Salesforce Sales Cloud. This integration allows you to import sales pipeline data from Sales Cloud directly into Analytics 360, making it easier to connect your offline and online data.

Now, to get a more complete understanding of the customer experience, we’re helping you bring even more Sales Cloud insights to Analytics 360.

More customer signals

In addition to lead status and conversion data, now you can bring other useful information about your customers from Sales Cloud into Analytics 360—like the state where they are located or their industry type. And once that data is in Analytics 360, you can use it to create audiences, custom dimensions or custom metrics.

For instance, let’s say you’re a commercial insurance company and your customers have shared their industry in a lead form on your website. Before, that information may have been difficult for Analytics 360 customers to easily access. Now, with this integration Analytics 360 can pull in a customer industry field from Sales Cloud and you can create a custom dimension using that information directly in Analytics 360. Then, you can build a report in Analytics 360 that combines marketing acquisition metrics with this custom dimension. By doing so you may find that certain marketing campaigns perform better with customers in service-focused industries vs. retail or manufacturing.

Deeper product data

If your customers purchase products or services offline (on the phone, for example), your teams are likely documenting these transactions in Sales Cloud. With the Analytics 360 and Sales Cloud integration, this transaction information can be easily shared to Analytics 360, and used to better customize your marketing campaigns based on customer purchase history.

For example, you may have customers who submit a form on your website to express their interest in placing an order, but who don’t actually complete the purchase until speaking to your sales team on the phone. With Sales Cloud opportunity data available in Analytics 360, you can now create an audience of all customers who have ordered specific products or services from your company in the last three months, even when orders happened offline. And by sharing this audience to Google Ads or Display & Video 360, you can build a marketing campaign that reaches people with similar characteristics who may also be interested in purchasing from you.

Get started quickly

Connecting Analytics 360 and Sales Cloud opens up many opportunities for you and your team.

You can set up this integration in three steps. First, set up your Sales Cloud account. Then, make a small change to your website’s lead form to share your Analytics 360 property ID and client IDs with Sales Cloud. Then, in the admin section of your Analytics 360 account, enable data sharing from Sales Cloud to Analytics 360.

To learn more about the integration between Analytics 360 and Sales Cloud, check out our new feature brief here.

Last year, we shared our plan to make Google Analytics 360 audiences available for activation in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, so that marketers can deliver more timely and relevant messages via additional marketing channels like email and SMS. Today, we’re excited to share that this capability will become available to customers in the next two weeks.

Use the power of Analytics 360 audiences in Marketing Cloud campaigns

With over 250 site engagement dimensions and metrics available in Analytics 360, marketers can create precise audiences to deliver more relevant messages to their customers. By sharing Analytics 360 audiences within Google Marketing Platform, marketers can deliver personalized search and display ads and customized site experiences. Now, by sharing Analytics 360 audiences to Marketing Cloud, marketers can use the insights from Analytics 360 to customize their Marketing Cloud campaigns — extending the reach of Analytics 360 audiences to email, SMS, and push notifications.

Let’s say you want to re-engage valuable customers who have just visited your site for the first time in a while. Now you can reach them directly by email soon after they leave your site. Simply create an audience of these users in Analytics 360 and share it with Marketing Cloud. Then, you can reach them in a Marketing Cloud email campaign that includes a special promotion to bring them back to your site and purchase.

Get complete campaign reporting across channels

In addition to sharing Analytics 360 audiences to Marketing Cloud, marketers already have access to another important capability through this integration: deeper campaign reporting.

With Analytics 360 and Marketing Cloud integrated, you can connect customer site engagement from Analytics 360 into your Marketing Cloud reporting. Marketers can now see campaign metrics like conversion rate and site engagement metrics like time spent on site related to Marketing Cloud campaigns. No more switching back and forth between platforms — instead, you can see end-to-end campaign performance right within Marketing Cloud.

To learn more about the integration between Analytics 360 and Marketing Cloud, you can check out our new feature brief here or reach out to your Analytics 360 sales team.

Today, digital technology and mobile devices have put the consumer in control. The traditional, linear customer journey from awareness to purchase has been replaced with unique, unpredictable journeys—where no two are exactly alike. Understanding how customers engage at each step along the way is a key priority for marketers and an opportunity to deliver improved customer experiences that drive better marketing results.

Put the customer at the center

Use technology to help teams collaborate

Integrate ads and analytics data

Download the Analytics 360 Solution Guide now and learn how these companies and more are bringing their ads and analytics data together in Analytics 360.