Tag Archives: Google Marketing Platform

Creativity meets scale in Ads Creative Studio

Last year, we introduced a beta version of Ads Creative Studio as a destination for creative and media professionals to make more effective ads at scale. After a successful beta period, the platform is now globally available with more features to help teams collaborate, create and customize display and video ads.

Increase relevance with customized ads

Consumers expect — and prefer — relevant ads: 80% of viewers say they are more open to advertising or branded content relevant to them. But delivering this experience in practice, and at any kind of scale, can be complex and cost prohibitive, especially for video ads. For this reason, many marketers have had to forgo the effectiveness gains that come from highly relevant, customized advertising. That changes with ad customization in Ads Creative Studio.

Now you can create multiple or even hundreds of versions of a single display or video ad. They can be customized for different audiences, locations, languages or contexts. Simply tell us what element of the ad creative — like a product image, superimposed text or sound — you want to set as ‘swappable’ and provide different versions of that element based on a set of rules you create. The rules include the audiences you want to reach or contexts you want to match.

For example, you might make a rule to change the text overlay on your video creative based on whether your audience is in the market for cold-weather gear or warm-weather travel. We’ll apply the rules quickly to all videos and render the different versions in a matter of minutes. Then, you can create and share a preview that shows every video, along with the rules that apply to that video, with anyone who needs to review it.

These features are available today for video creatives and will soon be launching for display.

Experience easier workflows across all your campaigns

We want to make it easier for media and creative teams to work together and at the same speed. A set of new features ensure that projects made in Ads Creative Studio can be seamlessly shared to all of our media platforms — Google Ads, Display and Video 360 and Campaign Manager 360.

First, you can now export images from the Ads Creative Studio asset library to the Google Ads asset library of any linked account. That means users within Google Ads can easily find those images and use them when assembling creatives for Performance Max campaigns, for example. You can think of the Ads Creative Studio asset library as a single, consolidated home for all creative assets, which you can then share with multiple media accounts for activation.

And second, you can now connect an Ads Creative Studio account to Campaign Manager 360. Ads Creative Studio was already available in beta to Display & Video 360 customers. Today, everyone can upload, manage and export HTML5 creatives directly to either Campaign Manager 360 or Display & Video 360. And, soon, you’ll be able to export video creatives as well.

Improve creative effectiveness and efficiency

Ads Creative Studio has helped brands and agencies cut down on time and costs and facilitate collaboration between media and creative teams. Men in Green, a creative agency out of the Netherlands was able to cut its creative production time in half using Ads Creative Studio and Display and Video 360. By implementing the platform into its workflow, the agency was able to maintain strict quality control for multiple creative assets while having different designers work on them simultaneously.

PepsiCo wanted to increase associations of the bubly brand with different contexts like house parties, barbecues, sports viewing and more. The company ran an experiment using customized videos built in Ads Creative Studio to see if occasion-specific messages aimed at relevant audiences could drive higher brand lift. PepsiCo found that campaigns with creative showing social gathering and food pairing situations were most effective. The path to customization was smoother and more efficient and, with a single tool, the team was able to standardize processes across functions.

In another instance, General Motors South America wanted to boost brand awareness of the Cruze 5 model. The brand decided to customize beyond the basics and needed to produce 14 unique ads without sacrificing time, budget or resources. Using Ads Creative Studio, the brand reduced costs by 30% and the campaign saw a 56% increase in Google searches for “chevrolet cruze” and a reduction in cost per view of 32% compared to the industry benchmark.

Ads Creative Studio is built to provide full support for creative teams and to enhance collaboration, creative effectiveness and scale. To learn how to get started, visit the Ads Creative Studio Help Center.

Creativity meets scale in Ads Creative Studio

Last year, we introduced a beta version of Ads Creative Studio as a destination for creative and media professionals to make more effective ads at scale. After a successful beta period, the platform is now globally available with more features to help teams collaborate, create and customize display and video ads.

Increase relevance with customized ads

Consumers expect — and prefer — relevant ads: 80% of viewers say they are more open to advertising or branded content relevant to them. But delivering this experience in practice, and at any kind of scale, can be complex and cost prohibitive, especially for video ads. For this reason, many marketers have had to forgo the effectiveness gains that come from highly relevant, customized advertising. That changes with ad customization in Ads Creative Studio.

Now you can create multiple or even hundreds of versions of a single display or video ad. They can be customized for different audiences, locations, languages or contexts. Simply tell us what element of the ad creative — like a product image, superimposed text or sound — you want to set as ‘swappable’ and provide different versions of that element based on a set of rules you create. The rules include the audiences you want to reach or contexts you want to match.

For example, you might make a rule to change the text overlay on your video creative based on whether your audience is in the market for cold-weather gear or warm-weather travel. We’ll apply the rules quickly to all videos and render the different versions in a matter of minutes. Then, you can create and share a preview that shows every video, along with the rules that apply to that video, with anyone who needs to review it.

These features are available today for video creatives and will soon be launching for display.

Experience easier workflows across all your campaigns

We want to make it easier for media and creative teams to work together and at the same speed. A set of new features ensure that projects made in Ads Creative Studio can be seamlessly shared to all of our media platforms — Google Ads, Display and Video 360 and Campaign Manager 360.

First, you can now export images from the Ads Creative Studio asset library to the Google Ads asset library of any linked account. That means users within Google Ads can easily find those images and use them when assembling creatives for Performance Max campaigns, for example. You can think of the Ads Creative Studio asset library as a single, consolidated home for all creative assets, which you can then share with multiple media accounts for activation.

And second, you can now connect an Ads Creative Studio account to Campaign Manager 360. Ads Creative Studio was already available in beta to Display & Video 360 customers. Today, everyone can upload, manage and export HTML5 creatives directly to either Campaign Manager 360 or Display & Video 360. And, soon, you’ll be able to export video creatives as well.

Improve creative effectiveness and efficiency

Ads Creative Studio has helped brands and agencies cut down on time and costs and facilitate collaboration between media and creative teams. Men in Green, a creative agency out of the Netherlands was able to cut its creative production time in half using Ads Creative Studio and Display and Video 360. By implementing the platform into its workflow, the agency was able to maintain strict quality control for multiple creative assets while having different designers work on them simultaneously.

PepsiCo wanted to increase associations of the bubly brand with different contexts like house parties, barbecues, sports viewing and more. The company ran an experiment using customized videos built in Ads Creative Studio to see if occasion-specific messages aimed at relevant audiences could drive higher brand lift. PepsiCo found that campaigns with creative showing social gathering and food pairing situations were most effective. The path to customization was smoother and more efficient and, with a single tool, the team was able to standardize processes across functions.

In another instance, General Motors South America wanted to boost brand awareness of the Cruze 5 model. The brand decided to customize beyond the basics and needed to produce 14 unique ads without sacrificing time, budget or resources. Using Ads Creative Studio, the brand reduced costs by 30% and the campaign saw a 56% increase in Google searches for “chevrolet cruze” and a reduction in cost per view of 32% compared to the industry benchmark.

Ads Creative Studio is built to provide full support for creative teams and to enhance collaboration, creative effectiveness and scale. To learn how to get started, visit the Ads Creative Studio Help Center.

Display & Video 360 brings Google audiences to connected TVs

Today at Google Marketing Live, we’re unveiling new products and features to help you build resilience for your business, drive results and prepare for the future of marketing.

As streaming continues to rise, that future includes more connected TV (CTV) advertising. That's why we’re unlocking even more CTV inventory in Display & Video 360 and extending Google audiences to CTV devices — helping you reach the right viewers as they watch top streaming content.

Connect with the right CTV audience

We’re committed to helping you deliver high quality ad experiences to all streamers by bringing the best of digital ad technology to the TV screen. One of the most effective digital strategies is creating relevant connections with your core audience. So we're introducing Google audiences for CTV inventory in Display & Video 360, which will work across Hulu, Peacock, YouTube and most other ad-supported CTV apps.

In a few months, you’ll be able to power your CTV campaigns with the same affinity, in-market and demographic audiences you’ve been using for your digital ads for years. Demographics and in-market segments will be available on CTV devices by the end of this quarter. Some affinity audiences are already available and more are coming later this summer.

GoDaddy has been using Google affinity audiences to reach the right people with their digital ads. Now, they can extend that strategy and reach audiences like “Business Professionals” or “Avid Investors” who are watching shows on Discovery’s HGTV Network or YouTube.

Google audiences on CTV gives us the opportunity to create ad campaigns that align directly with our prospective customers’ lifestyles. It's a great way to extend our digital best practices to the big screen. Jacob Jackson
Sr. Marketing Manager, GoDaddy

Reckitt has also found success using Google audiences on connected TV. Reckitt wanted Airborne, their immune support brand, to remain top of mind in the U.S. So they turned to Google’s custom audience segments to reach streamers interested in boosting their immune systems. Display & Video 360 analyzed the keywords Reckitt selected and automatically created tailored audiences that maximized the brand’s reach. This new audience strategy, combined with other digitally inspired approaches, resulted in over 18% more CTV reach for their Airborne campaign.

Our partnership with Display & Video 360 helped us reach CTV viewers in a much more data-driven way. James NT
Senior Performance Manager, Reckitt Benckiser

Access the biggest names in ad-supported streaming

Whether you’re looking for a good movie, the latest music video or a peaceful guided meditation — YouTube is the main stream. According to Nielsen, YouTube reached over 135 million people on connected TVs in the U.S. in December of last year.[d90432]For brands like Uber Eats, YouTube is fundamental to reaching younger demographics, who are lighter TV viewers. And Display & Video 360’s capacity to plan, manage ad frequency and measure performance across YouTube and other CTV buys saves these brands time and money.

Display & Video 360’s capacity to control ad frequency across YouTube and our other video buys makes it the ideal partner. Hanna El Hourani
Global Head of Programmatic, Uber

A majority of ad-supported CTV services — including broadcasters and cable network apps — also offer their inventory through Display & Video 360. According to comScore, Display & Video 360 now reaches 93% of ad-supported connected TV households in the U.S. and provides access to nine of the top ten most-watched ad-supported CTV apps in the U.S.[89917e]

Data visualization that reads “Display & Video 360 now reaches 93% of ad-supported connected TV households in the U.S.”

We’re also continuing to unlock top CTV inventory around the world. Peacock, NBCUniversal’s ad-supported streaming service, is the newest addition to available CTV publishers in the U.S. And you can now reach people watching Channel 4's programming in the UK.

Finally, we’re providing more innovative formats for brands to reach viewers the moment they turn on their TVs. Media and entertainment marketers in the U.S. have found success with the Google TV Masthead, which displays right on the home screen of Google TV devices. Today, in a new beta, we’re expanding the Google TV Masthead to allow more industry types to sponsor entertainment content. This cinematic teaser format can be tested using a Programmatic Guaranteed deal in Display & Video 360.

Check out the video below to learn more about new CTV solutions in Display & Video 360 and how to grow your business for the long run using enterprise ad tools.

Video of two Google product leads describing new Display & Video 360 and Campaign Manager 360 product solutions.
10:25

Register for Google Marketing Live: May 24, 2022

"Register now" button with copy that says "Tuesday, May 24 at 9:00 a.m. PT"

It’s almost time for Google Marketing Live, our annual event showcasing the latest product innovations to help your business thrive. This year’s virtual event will take place on Tuesday, May 24 — starting with a keynote from 9:00 - 10:30 a.m. PT that will be livestreamed across the globe.

After the keynote, you’ll be able to join a variety of on-demand breakout sessions designed to help you meet your business goals. Here’s a sample of what’s in store:

  • Supercharge your full funnel video strategy on YouTube
  • Be ready for the future of commerce
  • Achieve better business results today with measurement that prioritizes privacy

And here’s a sneak peek into our speaker lineup:

Headshots of Philipp Schindler, SVP, Chief Business Officer, Google; Jerry Dischler, VP/GM, Ads, Google; Vidhya Srinivasan, VP/GM, Ads Buying Platforms, Measurement & Ads on Google Properties; Andraéa LaVant, Founder & President, LaVant Consulting; Bill Ready, President, Commerce, Payments & NBU, Google; Tina Edmundson, Global Brand & Marketing Officer, Marriott International

Register now to reserve your (virtual) front-row seat. And keep up with the conversation on social media at #GML2022. See you on May 24th!

Helping advertisers make the most of connected TV

Connected TV (CTV) has become the go-to spot for people to kick back and enjoy their favorite content. According to Nielsen, over 50% of ad-supported streaming watch time happens on YouTube CTV for people ages 18 and up.[879425]

It’s also helped advertisers reach their audiences in smarter and more efficient ways. But we know there are challenges — like the ability to effectively plan and measure cross media, from creator shows to live TV. So we've been focused on bringing better digital ad capabilities to CTVs to allow for consistent planning and measurement across platforms, while improving the viewer experience. And today, we’re sharing some of our newest solutions.

We’re partnering with Nielsen to help advertisers understand how their YouTube CTV and YouTube TV reach delivers in comparison to other services. New tools will also help advertisers measure their total audience reached by YouTube CTV and deliver an even stronger CTV viewing experience.

Invest with confidence

Last year, we launched Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings (DAR) and Comscore Campaign Ratings (CCR) to help you more easily measure your YouTube CTV campaigns alongside other media. Later this year, YouTube CTV and YouTube TV will be available in Nielsen Total Ad Ratings (TAR) in the U.S. This release will include deduplication of YouTube inventory across all platforms — CTV, computer, mobile and linear TV — to better compare YouTube reach to linear TV.

Later this year, YouTube CTV and YouTube TV will be available in Nielsen Total Ad Ratings (TAR) in the U.S.

You’ll also see CTV device metrics within your media mix model (MMM) data feed, which can help measure sales outcomes and share insights on the impact of your YouTube CTV investment. To make the data analysis process faster for clients and easier for our measurement partners, we’ve launched a new data platform for MMM providers and advertisers to request data, track the status of those requests and ingest data directly.

We know MMMs provide one of the most important litmus tests for any video platform — does it actually work? On the most important metrics, YouTube is driving strong business results for customers. According to an MMM meta-analysis Google commissioned with Nielsen, on average, YouTube CTV was 3.1 times more effective than TV across U.S. consumer packaged goods (CPG) MMMs that measured YouTube CTV and TV (2021).[32b28f]

A graphic that shows a bar graph comparing YouTube CTV to linear TV effectiveness. The text reads “In an MMM meta-analysis Google commissioned with Nielsen, on average YouTube CTV was 3.1x more effective than TV across US CPG MMMs that measured YouTube CTV and YT (2021).”

Account for everyone

Just like the decades-old tradition of gathering around the TV set, people are watching YouTube with their friends and family. In a study with Nielsen, we found that 26% of the time, multiple 18+ viewers are watching YouTube together on the TV screen, compared to 22% on linear TV.[9e1744]Across the industry, this is often referred to as “co-viewing.”

Accounting for multiple people, or “co-viewers,” has been a core part of TV measurement for years. To help you measure the same behavior with YouTube CTV and get an accurate picture of the total audience you’re reaching, co-viewing will be included in Nielsen's DAR guarantees ad reporting in the U.S. Advertisers will also have access to co-viewing metrics across Google’s planning and measurement solutions globally.

To help you measure the same behavior with YouTube CTV and get an accurate picture of the total audience you’re reaching, co-viewing will be included in Nielsen's DAR guarantees ad reporting in the U.S.

Whether you’re forecasting an upcoming campaign or reviewing post-campaign reports, you’ll soon see reach, frequency and an additional impression metric that accounts for all viewers on CTV. This means more accurate reach forecasts and campaign reports with an apples-to-apples comparison between YouTube and the rest of your linear and connected TV buy — ultimately helping you make smarter investment decisions. Our methodology is designed to meet the industry standard of co-viewing measurement. Learn more about how it works.

Co-viewing metrics will roll out globally across Google Ads and Display & Video 360 planning and measurement tools by the end of Q2 2022.

Reach the right audience, at the right frequency

We know it’s not all about reach. You also want to reach the right audience at the right frequency. Last month, we announced a new CTV frequency solution that allows for a better viewer experience and more efficient use of your CTV media dollars.

For the first time with Display & Video 360, you can manage CTV ad frequency across YouTube, YouTube TV and other connected TV apps. This lowers your risk of triggering ad fatigue for viewers, while adding more reach for the same ad budget. Early results show that this new functionality also significantly improves media performance for advertisers.

For the first time with Display & Video 360, you can manage CTV ad frequency across YouTube, YouTube TV and other connected TV apps.
A visualization of a data point that reads “Brands see a 5% increase in reach per dollar on average when managing CTV ad frequency across YouTube and other CTV apps rather than separately.”

In addition to frequency management, you can use other Google audience solutions with YouTube CTV to help boost performance and reach the most relevant viewers for your brand.

Drive results with leading CTV capabilities

Top brands are taking advantage of these digital-first capabilities to grow their business.

In 2021, DoorDash, alongside its agency Kepler Group, ran a six-week CTV campaign on YouTube to reach a large audience quickly, which ultimately drove a 50% incremental uplift in DoorDash driver sign-ups.

While viewers are watching the content they love on YouTube CTV, brands are driving real results. Reach out to your Google sales team to learn about YouTube CTV ads and these new planning and measurement solutions.

Supporting a diverse set of publishers in Display & Video 360

Last year, we introduced new ways to support Black-owned publishers in Display & Video 360’s Marketplace. We’ve heard from marketers that they also want to invest in publishers owned by members of other historically underrepresented communities. So we’ve added Latino- and Women-owned publishers attributes in Display & Video 360's Marketplace for U.S. advertisers.

When accessing Marketplace, you can find inventory packages with attributes that feature inventory from Latino- and Women-owned publishers. We use those same attributes to make it easier to discover publishers owned by individuals from these communities, so you can add these properties to your media plans. Working in coordination with our Display & Video 360 exchange partners — Google Ad Manager, BidSwitch, GumGum, Kargo, Magnite, TripleLift, Xandr, Yahoo and Yieldmo — these publishers have self-identified as being part of these communities and have opted to participate in this program.

As always, Display & Video 360 doesn’t allow advertisers to personalize ads based on categories such as race, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation — and this program doesn’t change that.

On the left, an orange and red circle with a black heart on top symbolizes Black-owned publishers. In the center, a stylized blue, yellow and red flower symbolizes Latino-owned publishers. On the right, a red circle with a small cross underneath symbolizes Women-owned publishers.

Agency partners are already finding success using Marketplace to discover new publishers. “Online media is primarily funded by advertising, so investing in a more diverse set of voices ensures their thoughts continue to be shared, heard and supported,” says Mary Kotara, a media consultant at Adswerve. “We’ve seen many of our partners continue to run campaigns month after month on Black-, Latino- and Women-owned publishers. The more advertisers spend their budgets more responsibly, the more publishers owned by members of underrepresented communities can become more visible.”

Prepare for the future with Google Analytics 4

In today's measurement landscape, businesses need to navigate new challenges to understand the complex, multi-platform journeys of their customers — all while prioritizing user privacy.

Two and a half years ago, we introduced Google Analytics 4 to address these evolving measurement standards and help businesses succeed. Google Analytics 4 has the flexibility to measure many different kinds of data, delivering a strong analytics experience that’s designed for the future. It allows businesses to see unified user journeys across their websites and apps, use Google’s machine learning technology to surface and predict new insights, and most importantly, it’s built to keep up with a changing ecosystem.

Without a modern measurement solution, you leave essential insights on the table that can impact your business. So now is the time to make Google Analytics 4 your cross-platform Analytics solution. We will begin sunsetting Universal Analytics — the previous generation of Analytics — next year. All standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits on July 1, 2023. Given the new Analytics 360 experience was recently introduced, Universal Analytics 360 properties will receive an additional three months of new hit processing, ending on October 1, 2023.

Moving on from Universal Analytics

Universal Analytics was built for a generation of online measurement that was anchored in the desktop web, independent sessions and more easily observable data from cookies. This measurement methodology is quickly becoming obsolete. Meanwhile, Google Analytics 4 operates across platforms, does not rely exclusively on cookies and uses an event-based data model to deliver user-centric measurement.

And though Universal Analytics offers a variety of privacy controls, Google Analytics 4 is designed with privacy at its core to provide a better experience for both our customers and their users. It helps businesses meet evolving needs and user expectations, with more comprehensive and granular controls for data collection and usage. Importantly, Google Analytics 4 will also no longer store IP addresses. These solutions and controls are especially necessary in today’s international data privacy landscape, where users are increasingly expecting more privacy protections and control over their data.

Starting your measurement with Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 is designed with your key objectives in mind — like driving sales or app installs, generating leads or connecting online and offline customer engagement.

Here are just a few ways Google Analytics 4 can support your business.

Understand your customers across touchpoints
Get a complete view of the customer lifecycle with an event-based measurement model that isn’t fragmented by platform or organized into independent sessions.

For example, UK-based fitness apparel and accessories brand Gymshark used Google Analytics 4 to measure across its website and app, allowing the Gymshark team to better understand how users moved through the purchase funnel. As a result, they reduced user drop off by 9%, increased product page clickthroughs by 5% and cut down their own time spent on user journey analysis by 30%.

Google Analytics 4 was the perfect choice in understanding and improving our new e-commerce app. Maxwell Petitjean
Head of Product Insights, Gymshark

Improve ROI with data-driven attribution
Use data-driven attribution to analyze the full impact of your marketing across the customer journey. It assigns attribution credit to more than just the last click using your Analytics data, and helps you understand how your marketing activities collectively influence your conversions. You can export that analysis to Google Ads and Google Marketing Platform media tools to optimize campaigns.

Measure engagement and conversions with business and compliance needs in mind
With new country-level privacy controls, you can manage and minimize the collection of user-level data — like cookies and metadata — while preserving key measurement functionality.

Get greater value from your data
Machine learning generates sophisticated predictive insights about user behavior and conversions, creates new audiences of users likely to purchase or churn and automatically surfaces critical insights to improve your marketing.

Easily activate your insights
Expanded integrations with other Google products, like Google Ads, work across your combined web and app data, making it easy to use Analytics insights to optimize your campaigns.

McDonald’s Hong Kong met its goal to grow mobile orders using a predictive audience of “likely seven-day purchasers” and exporting it to Google Ads — increasing app orders more than six times. The team saw a 2.3 times stronger ROI, a 5.6 times increase in revenue, and a 63% reduction in cost per action.

“Google Analytics 4 has equipped us with a strong measurement foundation. We are able to get valuable insights from our first-party data with machine learning and utilize them in our marketing, driving impressive results to future-proof our business.”
— Tina Chao, McDonald’s Hong Kong Chief Marketing and Digital Customer Experience Officer

And now, Search Ads 360 and Display & Video 360 integrations are available for all customers. This means that any Google Analytics 4 property — standard or 360 — can activate its Analytics data, like conversions and audiences, in Google Marketing Platform buying tools to strengthen campaign performance.

Address your enterprise measurement needs
New sub and roll-up properties in Analytics 360 allow you to customize the structure of your Google Analytics 4 properties to meet data governance needs. This ensures that different teams or partners, like advertising agencies, can access the data they need in accordance with your policies.

Analytics 360 also offers higher limits to meet increasing demand — up to 125 custom dimensions, 400 audiences and 50 conversion types per property. And you’ll have peace of mind with service legal agreements (SLAs) across most core functionality, including data collection, processing, reporting and attribution.

"As a large enterprise business with a wide product portfolio, the new Analytics 360 has unlocked insights for our teams to make data-driven decisions, while providing the ability to meet our complex data governance needs with ease and flexibility.”
— Rashi Kacker, Director of Marketing Technology Innovation, Constellation Brands

What happens next?

All standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits on July 1, 2023, and 360 Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits on October 1, 2023. After that, you’ll be able to access your previously processed data in Universal Analytics for at least six months. Learn more about what to expect.

Make the move over to Google Analytics 4 as soon as possible to build the necessary historical data before Universal Analytics stops processing new hits. For guidance, check out our Help Center resources.

Save the date for Google Marketing Live, May 24, 2022

Add Google Marketing Live to calendar: Google Calendar, other calendars
Tuesday, May 24, 2022 at 9:00 a.m. PT

Google Marketing Live is a highlight for me every year because it’s a time when we get to meet with businesses around the world to exchange ideas. Your perspectives have shaped our roadmap in so many ways. Products like Performance Planner, pickup today in local inventory ads and conversion goals were all developed directly from conversations with marketers who attended this event. Together, we are building products to shape the future of advertising.

Please join us on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 at 9:00 a.m. PT for the opening keynote of our annual Google Marketing Live event. The keynote will be livestreamed globally along with a whole suite of on-demand, virtual breakout sessions built to help you achieve your business goals. We hope to bring the industry back together with some in-person programming to complement our global livestream. We’ll confirm official plans closer to the event.

From more ways to keep up with changing consumer trends to better tools to measure marketing performance in a privacy-safe way, we can’t wait to share our newest innovations with you. Save the date and stay plugged in to the ongoing conversation at #GML2022.

Sincerely,
Jerry Dischler

Introducing the new Search Ads 360

A lot has changed since Search Ads 360 was developed more than ten years ago. The ways people search and the expectations for the ads they see have evolved and expanded. As a result, advertisers are managing more complexity than ever before and turn to platforms like Search Ads 360 to simplify campaign management, measure performance and grow their business.

Today we’re introducing the new Search Ads 360 to help advertisers be ready for what’s next. We’re making the platform easier to use with a new user interface, and adding support for more search engine features and campaign types based on feedback from advertisers who told us they want an easier and more convenient way to build campaigns across advertising platforms. You’ll now have immediate support for most new Google Ads features and improved support for other channels and search engines, like Microsoft Advertising and Yahoo! Japan. We’ve also built new enterprise features that are only available in the new Search Ads 360 which will give you new ways to centralize and scale your day-to-day tasks across engines and accounts. As a result, now you’ll be able to get more of your work done from one place, which will save you time and help you drive better results.

Rebuilt on a Proven Platform

In order to help advertisers keep up with today’s demands, we redesigned and rebuilt Search Ads 360 using the same technology that powers Google Ads.

With this new common technology in place, the new Search Ads 360 will be able to manage and process more data than ever before — while still conforming to strict latency guidelines to deliver a fast user experience — which will unlock new enterprise innovations to help you centralize and scale your work. Second, it’ll offer immediate management support for most new features in Google Ads like Performance Max and Discovery campaigns.

It’s a total game-changer that most Google Ads content is now available for management. This not only extends productivity and automation, but unlocks the ability to activate things like Value Based Bidding in a way that was never before possible. Brent Ramos
Product Director, Adswerve

Let’s take a look at some of the key changes in the new Search Ads 360.

New Look, Faster Navigation

The refreshed look and feel of Search Ads 360 introduces a familiar user experience that closely resembles search engine tools like Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising — platforms that many Search Ads 360 users are familiar with — making navigation faster and easier for enterprise marketers to manage campaigns and drive performance.

I found the new simplified user interface easier to navigate and use. The new budget forecasting capabilities, reporting features, and reduced complexity allowed me to streamline workflows and minimize my workload by at least 20% last month.* Elizaveta Markina
Search Specialist, OMD NZ
Gif of the new interface

The new Search Ads 360 interface

Improved Search Engine Support

With a more modern infrastructure, the new Search Ads 360 is also able to offer better support across multiple advertising channels and search engines, including third-party partners. This means advertisers can access more features from other search engines than ever before. For example, the new Search Ads 360 introduces support for a number of new Yahoo! Japan features, like Dynamic Ads For Search and sitelink extension scheduling, as well as over ten additional Microsoft Advertising features including responsive search ads, call extensions, local inventory ads and additional Microsoft audience types like customer match.

The new user interface in Search Ads 360 help Media.Monks account teams identify optimization opportunities on a more streamlined basis. In fact, since we started using the new experience, the team is saving 2-3 hours per week. Jorie Fox
Director, Media.Monks (formerly MightyHive)

This added support will enable less task switching between advertising platforms so you can focus on getting more of your work done all in one place. We’ll continue to add more features and channel support in the coming quarters, and we encourage you to continue sharing feedback on what you’d like to see added.

Advanced Enterprise Innovations

We’ve also added a number of features unique to the new Search Ads 360. For instance, the new Search Ads 360 takes enterprise workflows to the next level by giving you new ways to centralize and scale your day-to-day tasks and key activities — like campaign management, automated rules and labels — and you'll now be able to make these changes across multiple advertisers at the same time.

"The new Search Ads 360 has unlocked value for our team: from the ability to manage new extensions for Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising, to cross-engine performance overviews, and editing campaigns from multiple accounts in a unified and familiar interface. All of these improvements have enabled us to manage paid search much more easily."
—Rodrigo Pozos, SEM Manager, Aeromexico

Gif of the rules builder UI

Automated rules builder in the new Search Ads 360

Current Search Ads 360 customers use automated campaign building features like inventory management and ad builder to efficiently manage their marketing at scale. In the new Search Ads 360 these will become a single unified feature called “Templates.” We expect this to become available later this year, at which point you’ll be able to activate business data across client accounts to automatically build and update your ads at scale using your own data feed.

Another great feature in the new Search Ads 360 is “Performance Center” — an improvement to budget management — that will take you beyond simply managing budgets. We expect this to become fully available later this year, at which point you’ll be able to incorporate enterprise planning capabilities like improved forecasting across search engines where you can explore different hypothetical scenarios to plan your media budgets.

Gif of the Performance Center UI

Performance Center in the new Search Ads 360

If you’d like to learn more about these and other new features in the new Search Ads 360, please reach out to your account representative or contact the support team.

The Road Ahead

This is an exciting new chapter for Search Ads 360 that paves the way for the next generation of enterprise innovations to optimize workflows and help you maximize performance. We look forward to building the future of enterprise Search together, and we encourage you to share your feedback so we can continue improving Search Ads 360.

Over the next couple of months, current Search Ads 360 users can expect to start gaining access to the new Search Ads 360. To get started, we recommend diving into the new Skillshop learning pathGet Started with Search Ads 360 for an in depth overview.

*Individual results may vary

Control your ad frequency on connected TV

I love everything about the Big Game — the suspense, the halftime performances and, of course, the commercials. Watching the much-anticipated ads on my living room’s connected TV (CTV), with buffalo wings in hand, has become a family tradition. But as much as I like the ads, seeing them over and over again after the game can ruin the fun.

At Google, we’re helping advertisers deliver a better CTV viewing experience. As part of that, we’re launching new CTV frequency management solutions in Display & Video 360 that allow marketers to control the number of times people see their ads across YouTube and other CTV apps. This gives CTV streamers a smoother viewing experience and limits the risk of brand backlash because of ad overexposure.

Early results show that this new functionality also significantly improves media performance for advertisers. On average, brands see a 5% reach per dollar increase when managing CTV ad frequency across YouTube and other CTV apps rather than separately.[561496]In other words, if your Big Game campaign is scheduled to reach five million CTV viewers, you can now reach a few football stadiums worth of new streamers at no extra cost.

Better viewer experience and use of your CTV media dollars

With Display & Video 360, you can already control how many ads CTV viewers see across YouTube and YouTube TV apps. Separately, you can also set a frequency goal for ads running across other CTV apps. Now, for the first time, you can manage CTV ad frequency across both.

Let’s say you set a frequency goal of five ads per week for your CTV campaign. Instead of showing up to five CTV ads on YouTube and five ads on other CTV apps, Display & Video 360 will now aim to show your ad no more than five times total. Viewers won’t see your ad more than they should as they navigate across YouTube, Hulu or any of their other favorite CTV apps. This more user-centric approach lowers your risk of triggering ad fatigue.

It can also help you get more bang for your buck. By more evenly distributing CTV ad budgets across viewers, you can get more reach for the same budget. But don’t just take our word for it — to determine the reach benefit of this new feature on your next CTV campaign, you can run a Unique Reach report or use the cross-channel frequency quantification tools in Display & Video 360.

Display & Video 360’s cross-channel CTV frequency management solution works for all formats, exchanges, CTV devices and deal types. This includes content on the YouTube and YouTube TV apps watched on CTV devices. For example, you can set a single ad frequency goal across an ESPN Programmatic Guaranteed deal and your YouTube sports campaign.

Cross-channel management that puts
privacy first

To determine the number of times a CTV ad is shown, Display & Video 360 uses Google data on YouTube and the IAB standard Identifier for Advertising on other CTV inventory.

To identify overlaps of people who watch both YouTube CTV and shows on other CTV apps, we use Google’s Unique Reach model. This method — which uses a combination of data sources like census data, panels and surveys — is based on over a decade of understanding deduplication across devices and environments, and is designed to work in a post-cookie world. Once we’ve modeled that duplication of viewers across YouTube and other CTV apps, we can determine the appropriate budget placement to control average ad frequency.

To start using this new feature, just combine YouTube CTV and other CTV strategies under the same campaign or insertion order, and set your frequency goal at that level.