Last week, Google announced it would be re-branding its entire advertising product portfolio, in hopes that this change will make it easier for brands to understand its complex advertising ecosystem.
As a part of this re-branding effort, Google will be retiring two of its most-recognized advertising brand names – AdWords and DoubleClick.
According to Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior VP of Ads at Google, this consolidation is “the solution to assuage the consistent feedback from advertisers over the past few years about the confusing plethora of ad products and brands. This is primarily a name change, but it is indicative of where we have been directing the product and where we want the product to go.”
Moving forward, Google’s lineup of ad products will be streamlined into three main verticals: Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform, and Google Ad Manager.
Google Ads
What is known to many as Google AdWords will soon become Google Ads, which Ramaswamy has said will serve as “the front door for advertisers to buy on all Google surfaces,” whether that is for search, Google Shopping, Youtube, app ads on Google Play, display ads and more.
We had the chance to talk to several of our expert analysts and strategists on the matter.
This is what Alicia Tobey, Analyst at ROI Revolution, had to say:
“The majority of management and traffic for Google AdWords has shifted from a Search network focus to the Shopping, Display, and Video networks, and this change reflects that transition in marketing spend and presence. The word ‘AdWords’ itself limits the marketing capabilities of the brand since it is based around ‘words’ (i.e. Search campaigns). With the influx in traffic to Shopping and Display, there is less of a focus on bidding at the keyword level and more of a focus on the audience member”.
While for now, Google Ads is mostly a simplified and rebranded version of AdWords, it will come with some new capabilities right off the bat that are sure to please advertisers of small and medium sized businesses.
First, Google Ads will give users the option to opt into their new Smart Campaigns, which create real-time AI-powered ad campaigns based on specific business goals set by the user. Whether an advertiser wants to increase their web traffic, or maybe their daily number of customer phone calls, Smart Campaigns can automatically tune and adjust ads and their content to cater towards these specific objectives.
Additionally, with Google Ads comes a brand new ad extension named Google Ads Click Identifier. This extension will allow B2B advertisers to pull detailed contact information about the businesses that have clicked on their ad campaigns, including business name, key employee contacts and email information.
For B2C, this extension will identify the exact keywords and ads that a site visitor clicked — giving advertisers a much better understanding of who their prospective customers are, and how they can better market to them.
Google Marketing Platform
Google Marketing Platform is intended for larger enterprise level advertisers as it combines DoubleClick and Google Analytics 360 to make it even easier for users to buy and track the effectiveness of their ads. The platform includes a new Integrations Center, where marketers can view all of the different ways they can connect their Google tools. This gives advertisers the ability to view their ads and analytics more easily, giving them a much broader view of the customer journey across multiple platforms and devices.
According to Farra Iaccarino, Analyst on the Paid Search Team at ROI Revolution:
Besides this integration, Google has also introduced Display & Video 360 to the Google Marketing Platform, which joins features from DoubleClick Bid Manager, Campaign Manager, Studio and Audience Center to allow advertisers on creative, media and agency teams to collaborate and execute ad campaigns from start to finish in one place.
Google Ad Manager
Lastly, we have Google Ad Manager which brings together DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) and DoubleClick Ad Exchange (DAE), in a single unified platform. DFP helps publishers manage their available ad inventory, while DAE powers programmatic advertising.
According to Jonathan Bellack, Director of Product Management at Google:
“Once upon a time, there was a huge gap between a publisher’s direct salesforce and their programmatic auction, but the marketer demand for addressable advertising has moved us steadily into a future where every transaction—whether it’s negotiated or auctioned—will be programmatic. By bringing all of a publisher’s ad demand together in one place, we can leverage machine learning and other technologies to optimize revenue holistically.”
In today’s ecommerce landscape, customers are accessing content in more ways than ever. Pair this with the fact that programmatic ad-buying is being utilized across more and more types of advertising and Google’s reasoning behind merging the two products becomes clear. To optimize revenue, publishers must be able to easily manage their businesses Google Ad Manager will allow them to do so more easily, and more efficiently than ever.
The Bottom Line
While most of the changes that are to come with these new ad products are merely cosmetic, there are several reasons advertisers should be looking forward to their implementation. According to Olivia Byrd, ROI Revolution PPC Analyst:
As Google continues to introduce these new ad products over the next month, it will be interesting to see how they will continue to transition customers from several other DoubleClick products, and the overall consumer reaction to this drastic rebranding.
Regardless, by streamlining their lineup of ad products, Google has fully realigned their platform, allowing advertisers and publishers of all sizes to reach their consumers more easily and efficiently than ever before.
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