The world of digital information technology and communications continues to change incredibly. One day you're in, the next day you're out! Companies keep innovating and online marketers keep learning. Of course, so does the biggest online marketing mechanism worldwide: Google. Every year Google presents its new innovations during Google Marketing Next.
We tell you what awaits you in the time ahead.
New design Google Adwords interface
The most important update is the new design of the Google Adwords interface. This redesign is a lot more user-friendly and, through insightful campaign reports, lets you see at a glance what is working well, what aspects you can optimize and where new opportunities lie. This is important in the multi-channel and multi-device society we are in now.
2. Targeting innovations
The wealth of information that all Google products provide allows you to create relevant audiences. By connecting all the information, Google is delivering new ways of targeting starting this year:
- Consumer Behavior and Life Events
Based on search behavior and other online signals, Google compiles relevant target groups for you. With this new audience you can Target users on YouTube and Gmail who - based on their search and viewing behavior - indicate that they are about to experience a major life event. Examples of these life events could include people getting married or buying their first home.
- In-market audiences now also for search network
In addition to the introduction of these new targeting methods, it was also announced that the well-known in-market audiences will be launched in the search network. This means that advertisers can target an audience based on purchase signals, and show a relevant ad based on keywords. In-market audiences have been available for Display and YouTube campaigns for several years.
2. Better measure your returns.
Another key innovation during Google Marketing Next is the new tool to better measure your returns. The current cookie-based attribution models from Google were limited until now. These do not measure the impact of an ad that the user sees on a smartphone, for example, but later makes a purchase via a tablet. There is billing according to the last-click model. But in order to properly assess performance, data-driven attribution is actually very important.
For this reason, Google introduces the right solution for this: Google Attribution. This new free tool makes it possible to measure the impact of online marketing activities across different devices and channels.
Google Attribution
Google Attribution links data from AdWords, Analytics and DoubleClick for Search and gives the ability to use different attribution models. The data in Attribution can then be imported into AdWords and DoubleClick for Search to optimize advertising campaigns. To use the tool for DoubleClick Campaign Manager, an extended version is required: Attribution 360.
3. Better understanding of unique reach
The fact that people use multiple devices not only makes your returns difficult to measure. This also makes it difficult to determine how often your ads reached the right audience. Current metrics for unique reach, measure the total number of users who saw your video or display ad.
Reach and frequency are important metrics for your campaign performance. Google knows that too, which is why they are now introducing two new metrics:
- Unique users
- Average number of impressions per user.
Despite not being the biggest innovation announced by Google, it is a very important one. The benefit of this reporting is that data is de-duplicated on each campaign. This data provides insight into the intensity of campaigns and can be used for audience optimization. This allows advertisers to remove brand experiences that are perceived as useless.
It was announced during Google Marketing Next that the new updates will be available to every advertiser in December 2017.
