Google
Marketing Live Webinar
When:
Tuesday, July 10th, 9:00 a.m. PT / 12:00 p.m. ET / 9:30 p.m. IST
Where:
On the Google Ads Blog or Google Analytics Blog or Google Marketing Platform Blog
Register: here
After 18 and 22 years, respectively, the
AdWords and DoubleClick brands will soon cease to be. As part of a
comprehensive effort to streamline its offerings, Google’s flagship advertising
products are getting new names and reorganizing to better reflect their current
capabilities and where the company sees trajectories for growth. Along with
the rebranding, Google is also introducing some
new solutions that further the push toward simplifying its advertising
offerings.
There will now be three primary brands:
- Google AdWords is now Google Ads.
- DoubleClick advertiser products and
Google Analytics 360 Suite are now under the brand Google Marketing
Platform.
- DoubleClick for Publishers and
DoubleClick Ad Exchange are integrated into a new unified platform
called Google Ad Manager.
What’s
under the hood of the products largely isn’t changing. Rather these are
primarily name changes that are “indicative of where we have been directing
products over the last few years,” said Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google’s SVP of ads,
at a press briefing Tuesday.
As
Google has acquired and developed new ad products, formats and measurement
solutions to meet new needs, its offerings have become more complex and
numerous over the past two decades. That’s made it harder for advertisers,
publishers and agencies to identify and select the right Google products for
their needs, Ramaswamy explained. The new branding under three buckets makes
the starting point for marketers easier to figure out, and new solutions are
aimed at helping marketers achieve better outcomes more easily. Here’s
a look at the new brands and solutions announced Wednesday.
Google Ads
When it launched in 2000 with roughly 350 advertisers,
AdWords was a platform for running text ads on desktop Search. Google
co-founder and CEO Larry Page said at the time, “AdWords offers the most
technologically advanced features available, enabling any advertiser to quickly
design a flexible program that best fits its online marketing goals and
budget.”
Fast-forward 18
years, and AdWords has evolved into a platform that supports many different ad
formats — text, shopping, display, video, app install — across Search, YouTube,
Gmail, Maps and a network of partner sites and apps. Millions of advertisers spend
billions on the platform annually. It’s outgrown its name.
If you’re
wondering, as I was, if the AdWords interface that will become the default way advertisers engage with the
platform over the next few months came about in anticipation of
the rebranding and focus on simplification, it turns out it was more of a
coincidence. The UI overhaul really was solely driven by the technology
challenges of an eight-year-old framework.
Small businesses
continue to present a significant growth opportunity for Google. In furthering
the spirit of simplicity, the company announced Smart Campaigns for
small businesses who don’t have the time or resources to manage complex digital
advertising campaigns. Smart Campaigns rely on machine learning and, like Smart Display Campaigns and Universal App Campaigns, the ad creative,
targeting and delivery are largely automated. The campaign type will be the
default for new advertisers in Google Ads. (We’ll share more details on Smart
Campaigns later today.
Google Marketing Platform
For
enterprise customers, DoubleClick advertiser products and Analytics 360 now
integrated under the umbrella of the Google Marketing Platform to help them
plan, buy, measure and optimize digital media buys in one place.
“Marketers
have an increasing need to work across teams,” said Dan Taylor, managing
director of platforms, “and making that possible is both an organizational and
technology challenge.”
The
inspiration for unifying DoubleClick and Analytics 360 in one platform came
from advertisers who were integrating the two products on their own. Google saw
that those advertisers who integrated their analytics with their media platform
saw better outcomes.
“We
had built integrations between analytics and the creative planning and buying
products, but now that will be much easier,” said Taylor. The unification with
Analytics 360 means marketers can analyze results, create audiences and
activate them without having to navigate a multistep process between two or
more products.
Within
the Google Marketing Platform is a new solution called Display & Video
360. It consolidates Google’s enterprise display advertising products:
DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM), media planning and reporting solution
DoubleClick Campaign Manager, rich media ad creator tool DoubleClick Studio and
data management platform Google Audience Center 360.
Google’s
enterprise-level search management platform, DoubleClick Search, is
becoming Search Ads 360.
Google
Data Studio, Optimize 360, Surveys 360 and Tag Manager 360 are also part of the
Google Marketing Platform.
A
new Integration Center explains how the tools work together and to connect
them. Marketers can combine Display & Video 360 + Analytics 360, Google Ads
+ Analytics 360, and Analytics 360 + BigQuery quickly in the Integration
Center.
Google
is often criticized for seeming to favor its own products and integrations.
Google Marketing Platform, Taylor stressed, is “designed to offer choice,” with
more than 100 existing integrations with ad exchanges, third-party measurement
solutions and other products. Google
Marketing Platform will roll out later this month.
Google Ad Manager
The
final piece, Google Ad Manager, unifies DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) and
DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX). Bringing DFP and AdX together has been a
three-year process.Google
beat out Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL to acquire DoubleClick in 2007 for $3.1
billion. It was an ad-serving solution for desktop display ads. Two years
later, Google launched DoubleClick Ad Exchange for
large publishers to sell advertising inventory in real time.
Now,
“marketer demand for addressable advertising has moved us to a place where all
buying will be programmatic,” said Jonathan Bellack, director of product
management for publisher ad platforms, on Tuesday. That also encompasses
programmatic guaranteed and reserved buying.
“That’s
why we broke away from the traditional constraints of ‘ad servers’ and ‘SSPs’ [supply-side platforms] to build new
programmatic solutions directly into the product we now call Ad Manager — from
our programmatic deals framework to features like Optimized Competition that
help you maximize yield across reservations, private marketplaces, and the open
auction,” Bellack wrote in the announcement.
Also
with this change, programmatic and ad network buyers that had been called “AdX
buyers” will now be referred to as “Authorized Buyers.”Google
Ad Manager will help publishers monetize all the new places where people are
engaging, such as live streams, connected TVs, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), mobile games and other apps, and
platforms like YouTube and Apple News, Bellack explained.