Tag Archives: Google Marketing Platform

Protect your budget and your brand with Display & Video 360

We support efforts to increase transparency in the digital advertising ecosystem and we’re committed to making it easier for marketers to monitor their digital campaigns and protect their brand. That’s why we’re introducing new ways for Display & Video 360 to help you avoid buying unauthorized web and app ad inventory, and control where your digital ads are appearing.

New default setting to ads.txt-only web inventory

Since it was first conceived in May 2017, Google has supported and contributed to the IAB Tech Lab’s ads.txt standard. It’s a text file that lets publishers openly declare who is authorized to sell their inventory programmatically. Ads.txt increases transparency throughout the advertising supply chain: marketers know they're buying inventory from the actual property owner, or an authorized reseller, and legitimate publishers receive payment. Because of its simplicity and effectiveness, over 93 percent of the web inventory available in Display & Video 360 is authorized by ads.txt files. In fact, ads.txt is one of the most rapidly adopted standards that our industry has seen.

Starting in August, we’ll make ads.txt-only the default setting for all new campaigns created in Display & Video 360 and running on web inventory. This ensures that by default you only buy authorized inventory and is the next step in our ongoing support of the standard.

Support for IAB Tech Lab’s app-ads.txt

Ads.txt was created to reduce fraud for your campaigns running on the web by making it easier to avoid transacting unauthorized inventory. To give you the same level of protection against misrepresented app inventory, the IAB Tech Lab recently introduced the new app-ads.txt standard which supports apps running on mobile, connected TVs and other devices.

While it’s very early days for app-ads.txt adoption, we’re actively working to encourage app developers to publish app-ads.txt files. In the next few months, Display & Video 360 will stop buying unauthorized app inventory as identified by app-ads.txt files. When adoption of app-ads.txt reaches sufficient levels, we will allow marketers and agencies to choose to buy only app inventory that is authorized.

A new home for all brand protections

In addition to knowing that you’re buying inventory from authorized sellers, you also need to ensure your ads appear only in contexts that you define as suitable for your brand. Display & Video 360 offers a comprehensive set of controls to protect your brand, but we’ve heard feedback that it can be difficult to apply these controls consistently—especially if you are managing a large number of campaigns.

To help solve this challenge, we’ve introduced Brand Controls, a new resource available to all Display & Video 360 users that gives you a single view of the brand suitability settings, campaigns using ads.txt-only authorized sellers, and verification services across all of your campaigns. With the Brand Controls dashboard, you can also more easily see how your campaigns are using different controls including content labels, sensitive categories, and keyword exclusions.

The Brand Controls dashboard gives you a snapshot of all the brand protections used in all your campaigns.

The Brand Controls dashboard gives you a snapshot of all the brand protections used in all your campaigns.

Now you can manage and make changes to all of these settings across all the campaigns in your Display & Video 360 account at once--including display, video, apps and TrueView. For example, let’s say you realize that some of your campaigns are not using any digital content label exclusions. You can quickly make bulk edits with Structured Data Files and immediately change the settings across multiple campaigns, right from the Brand Controls dashboard.

With Brand Controls you can also get a report that shows you what percentage of traffic was filtered before a bid was placed using our built-in fraud detection and brand suitability safeguards, and the reasons why. This way you can get full transparency on how Display & Video 360 is protecting your media buys.

With Brand Controls you can get a detailed report of the invalid traffic filtered pre-bid for all your campaigns.

With Brand Controls you can get a detailed report of the invalid traffic filtered pre-bid for all your campaigns.

Finally, the Brand Controls dashboard makes it easy to track any edits that are made to your brand suitability, authorized sellers, and verification settings. This helps you ensure that your media team follows the guidelines you’ve setup to protect your campaigns.

By making ads.txt-only the default setting for new campaigns, supporting the new app-ads.txt standard, and creating the new Brand Controls center, we're making Display & Video 360 a more effective solution to help you protect your budget and your brand.

Dynamic audiences in Google Analytics for Firebase

For businesses to make the best decisions about where to invest their marketing budget, it’s critical that they understand user behavior on both their web and app properties. And while a website is often the first customer touchpoint, for many businesses, apps are where customers are spending more of their time. As a result, marketers need to capture audience insights from their app analytics that they can then take action on, both within and outside of their apps.

Google Analytics for Firebase, our app analytics solution, has historically given you the ability to organize your audiences around events, device type, and other dimensions. These criteria were not exhaustive, however, or dynamic as user behavior changed over time.

That’s why we’ve made enhancements to the audience builder experience, with a few major updates to help you identify relevant app audiences more easily and with greater precision:

  1. Dynamic audience evaluation: Audiences are now dynamic by default, meaning Analytics will automatically include users as soon as they meet your criteria, and automatically exclude users when they no longer do. This allows you to “set and forget” your audiences while they populate, without the hassle of constantly re-evaluating them.
  2. Audience exclusion: Audiences can be more precisely defined by adding exclusion criteria. For example, you can create a list of users that added an item to a shopping cart and of those users, exclude those who have also made a purchase.
  3. Membership duration: Audiences can now include a membership time frame, such as “users that have converted in the last 30 days,” so your audiences and messaging remain fresh and timely.  

These new tools make audiences more powerful, flexible and actionable than before, so you can be confident that your insights reflect relevant users and activity on your apps. In 2019, we will continue to enhance the Google Analytics for Firebase audience builder, offering even more ways to precisely create audiences.

Take action once you’ve identified relevant audiences

Once you’ve improved your understanding of users, you can also deliver personalized experiences based on varying user needs. For example, through push notifications or Remote Config in Firebase, or customized ads in Google Ads.

Let’s say you have an e-commerce app. Using these advanced audience capabilities, you can build an audience of users that visit your app for the first time and add an item to their cart, but don’t make a purchase — and only include those who do so in a 30 day window.

Build a dynamic audience for first time users that have abandoned their cart.

Build a dynamic audience for first time users that have abandoned their cart.

You can now reach that audience with tailored messaging relevant to their experience with the app, and encourage them to make the purchase through an in-app promotion, email notification, or personalized ad. Once these users have returned to the app, made a purchase, and/or exceeded the 30 day window however, they will no longer meet the criteria for that audience, and you will not adversely affect their experience with marketing that is no longer relevant to them.

With the ability to create dynamic audiences, you are able to understand your users with better precision. A better view into your audiences means more insight into the customer journey, so you can invest in your marketing activities with confidence and see better results — keeping users happy, and your app growing.

A deeper connection between Google Analytics 360 and Salesforce Sales Cloud

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.


Build a custom audience in Analytics 360 that you can then share to Google Ads or Display & Video 360.

Build a custom audience in Analytics 360 that you can then share to Google Ads or Display & Video 360.

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.

Reach customers via additional marketing channels with Analytics 360 + Salesforce Marketing Cloud

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.


Create an Analytics 360 audience and share to Marketing Cloud.

Create an Analytics 360 audience and share to Marketing Cloud.

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.

The Analytics 360 Solution Guide: How today’s top brands gain a deeper understanding of the customer journey

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.


In our new Analytics 360 Solution Guide, we share how leading marketers are building their strategies around the customer, adopting technology to help teams better collaborate, and integrating their ads and analytics data.

Put the customer at the center

Across our research, one thing became clear: Leading marketers are putting
customers at the heart of their strategy. Interactive entertainment company Electronic Arts Inc. has organized their teams around the customer. Marketing, analytics, and publishing teams all start from a single source of truth: customer insights.


Use technology to help teams collaborate

Leading marketers are adopting the same connected technology across the company to help teams work more effectively together. The professional baseball organization, Major League Baseball, has seen a significant reduction in time spent pulling and sharing reports since adopting a single platform.


Integrate ads and analytics data

Bringing together ads and analytics data in one platform gives marketers the opportunity to establish a deeper, more meaningful relationship with every
customer. With an integrated technology stack, online travel company BookIt was able to segment visitors by specific vacation destinations and then tailored its ad creative to match the vacations visitors were looking for.


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.  

The Analytics 360 Solution Guide: How today’s top brands gain a deeper understanding of the customer journey

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.


In our new Analytics 360 Solution Guide, we share how leading marketers are building their strategies around the customer, adopting technology to help teams better collaborate, and integrating their ads and analytics data.

Put the customer at the center

Across our research, one thing became clear: Leading marketers are putting
customers at the heart of their strategy. Interactive entertainment company Electronic Arts Inc. has organized their teams around the customer. Marketing, analytics, and publishing teams all start from a single source of truth: customer insights.


Use technology to help teams collaborate

Leading marketers are adopting the same connected technology across the company to help teams work more effectively together. The professional baseball organization, Major League Baseball, has seen a significant reduction in time spent pulling and sharing reports since adopting a single platform.


Integrate ads and analytics data

Bringing together ads and analytics data in one platform gives marketers the opportunity to establish a deeper, more meaningful relationship with every
customer. With an integrated technology stack, online travel company BookIt was able to segment visitors by specific vacation destinations and then tailored its ad creative to match the vacations visitors were looking for.


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.  

A Look Back at 2018 with Google Marketing Platform


With the launch of new solutions and new resources, 2018 has been a busy—and exciting—year. As the calendar turns to 2019, now is a good time to reflect on a few noteworthy moments from 2018.

1

A new brand for ads and analytics

We announced Google Marketing Platform, which brought together DoubleClick Digital Marketing and the Google Analytics 360 Suite, to help you plan, buy, measure and optimize digital media and customer experiences in one place. Google Marketing Platform allows you deliver more relevant and effective marketing, while ensuring that you respect your customers’ privacy and give them control over their data.
2

Stronger collaboration with Display & Video 360

As part of the rebrand of our ads and analytics products, we also introduced Display & Video 360, a single, integrated product that helps creative, data and media teams work together to execute end-to-end ad campaigns. This blog series shows how leading brands are using Display & Video 360 to better collaborate during the campaign creation process and get better business outcomes as a result.
3

Deeper analysis in Analytics 360

We introduced three new powerful techniques that help you better understand how customers interact with your website via Advanced Analytics in Analytics 360. Using Exploration, Funnel Analysis, and Segment Overlap, you can dive deeper and surface hard-to-find insights that you can then easily put into action. Our feature brief takes a closer look at the ways Advanced Analysis helps you use data to get the answers you need to make critical business decisions—keeping your customers satisfied and your business thriving.

4

Cross Device capabilities in Google Analytics

We help you see when users visit your website from two different devices, instead of seeing metrics that show two separate sessions, with the launch of new Cross Device capabilities in Google Analytics. These features offer a more complete view of your marketing impact so you can run smarter campaigns that deliver more tailored experiences to your customers.


5

Data Studio for everyone

Data Studio moved out of beta and is now generally available. This launch showed our continued commitment to helping teams identify and share insights from their data, so they can take steps to improve business outcomes.
6

New Media Rating Council accreditations

To ensure the metrics our advertising solutions provide continue to be trusted and aligned with industry standards, we announced new Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditations in September. YouTube video ad impressions and viewability metrics for desktop, mobile web, and mobile in-app are now fully MRC accredited in Google Ads, Display & Video 360, and Campaign Manager.

We hope 2018 was a great year for you and your business and we thank you for your partnership. Stay tuned for what’s to come in 2019!

New Google Marketing Platform connectors available in Data Studio

When marketers can access all of their data in one place, they are able to make smarter decisions about where and how to spend their resources. While data tends to be siloed and it can be a challenge to connect all of it in one place, your marketing investment will go further if you do.


Data Studio gives marketers access to a diverse and growing catalogue of connectors for over 500 data sources to help centralize your datasets for simple reporting and visualization in one place. And we’ve recently added two more. Earlier this fall we launched connectors for Display & Video 360 and Search Ads 360. These two connectors enable access to your Google Marketing Platform advertising data in your Data Studio dashboards and reports. Explore the data independently, or join it with your other marketing data from Google Analytics, Google Sheets, Google Ads, and other first party data sources to surface powerful insights you can easily share and take action on.


Once your Google Marketing Platform data is in Data Studio, you can customize your reports based on your needs. For example, you can add custom branding or repurpose visualizations like charts or graphs that your team already uses elsewhere to make it your own. And, Data Studio reports are easily shareable outside of the interface. With Display & Video 360 and Search Ads 360 data now accessible in Data Studio, you can share dynamic Google Marketing Platform advertising reports with anyone, using Google Drive sharing permissions you have complete control of.


Let’s say you want to build a report to compare how your advertising is performing across Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360 and Google Ads. You can use the out-of-the-box, new Google advertising performance template to view top-line metrics with your own data, or create a custom report, using connectors to import your data.  From there, you can use the Explorer functionality to experiment with visualizations and organize the data to your liking. You can also blend the data together and do analysis across all three (or more) datasets. Add your Google Analytics data for example, and see aggregate trends in customer behavior on your site alongside your advertising campaign performance. Then share with your media team or agency and take action to optimize your campaigns based on the insights you find.

Google Advertising Performance Dashboard Template

Google Advertising Performance Dashboard Template

With Data Studio’s rich visualization and reporting features, marketers can elevate insights from their ad campaigns and breakdown silos among many disparate datasets. By bringing Google Marketing Platform advertising data into Data Studio, you can now see a fuller picture across your customer touchpoints and make more informed, faster marketing decisions.

Four ways top brands deliver faster, smarter marketing with Google Marketing Platform

When today’s consumers need answers, they expect to find them in just a few swipes and taps. For brands, it’s become a race against time to meet those needs.

Consumers are making more decisions in less time, based on what they need in the moment, and they demand an experience that can keep up with their fast-paced lives.

Today we’ve published a new guide featuring research and best practices from top brands, including adidas and Sprint, that use Google Marketing Platform to win those moments. The guide, “Race against time,” covers the four ways leading marketers use advertising and analytics together to set themselves apart.

These leaders:

  • Understand audiences on a deeper level by building a connected data strategy
  • Deliver faster, smarter marketing using automation and machine learning
  • Gain more visibility and control by bringing ads and analytics technology together
  • Share insights across teams and improve business outcomes
Four brands share their Google Marketing Platform success stories

Download our new guide to learn more about “How top brands win consumer moments.”

Disney and Google expand strategic relationship

People today exercise greater control over what they view and when—and on which screens—they view it. They watch sitcoms in taxis and on trains, and stream news and documentaries at the gym. All of which contribute to a striking new reality: TV is no longer a stationary box anchored to a corner in your living room.

People also expect the same content they love in the living room on every screen, which can be the difference between a loyal fanbase and a lost audience. Advertisers want to deliver quality ad experiences that are relevant, seamless and measurable across screens, inspiring media companies to reimagine the commercial break.

Disney DTC

That’s why we’re excited to announce today a new global strategic relationship with The Walt Disney Company.

Disney and Google share a passion for bringing quality content and information to everyone, everywhere. With this new relationship, Disney will bring its entire global digital video and display business onto Google Ad Manager, which will serve as its core ad technology platform. 

Disney CTV Image

That means that Google will now power advertising for Disney’s unmatched collection of brands and properties—including Disney, ABC, ESPN, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars—across multiple channels, including live streaming and direct-to-consumer content offerings. Disney will be able to serve video ads effortlessly on the web, in mobile apps, streaming through connected TVs and for live events.

Together, we plan to build an advanced video experience for Disney that will transcend devices, platforms, and living rooms to bring the magic of premium video content into people’s hearts, minds, and screens—everywhere. 

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Source: Google Ads