Last week, Google unveiled a new suite of marketing tools called Google Analytics 360. In addition to an update of Google Analytics Premium, the suite includes five other marketing technology products designed to help advertisers and marketers manage and analyze digital data. The new technologies provide improved functionality that allows marketers to see all the touchpoints in a buyer’s journey through different channels and devices. It also offers better integration across Google products and other third party platforms, like Google Adwords and DoubleClick.
Let’s take a closer look at each product:
Google Analytics 360
This is essentially a rebranded version of Google Analytics Premium. It tracks website and mobile app traffic and behaviors, including offline interactions. The 360 version has more versatile capabilities, including more accurate data measurements and a broader reach.
Google Attribution 360
Previously known as Adometry, Google Attribution analyzes the buyer journey across all digital touchpoints, and enables full attribution for marketing channels. Google Analytics does the same job to some degree, but Google Attribution is more in-depth and thorough, and the process of uncovering touchpoints is simpler. This tool is particularly useful in discovering the best ways to allocate marketing budgets with a higher degree of accuracy in ROI measurement. This product works across various channels, devices and systems to deliver the optimal mix of media avenues.
Google Audience Center 360
Audience Center is a new data management platform that helps marketers manage paid media, store data and improve targeting across channels and devices for multiple campaigns. It integrates with DoubleClick, and it also works with third-party data providers and DSPs.
Google Data Studio 360
This is a business intelligence platform that allows marketers to manage multiple data sources in one place. It can pull from a variety of technologies, including Google Analytics, BigQuery, Google Sheets, and others. The Data Studio creates interactive reports and dashboards using real-time data and analytics.
Google Optimize 360
Similar to industry favorite Optimizely, this new platform facilitates a/b and multivariate testing, so marketers can see what content performs best on their site by serving different versions of content to their audience. It also works as a personalization platform that tailors content to different audiences of the same website.
Google Tag Manager 360
An evolution of Google’s free Tag Manager, this product offers an easy way to gather site information and streamline code script changes and conduct performance measurements. Expect the new version to be much more user friendly and accessible.
Google Analytics 360 poses direct competition to the Adobe Marketing Cloud by offering a fully integrated ad tech solution. Its emphasis on ease and simplicity will come as a sigh of relief for marketers who have had to maneuver tedious tools on incompatible platforms. The 360 suite is currently in beta testing, so expect to see some new features trickle down to the free versions of these products once they have been vetted by premium subscribers.
