Let's chat

01158 242 212

Get in touch with our team

27.08.2020

4 min read

An Introduction To The Google Marketing Platform

This article was updated on: 07.02.2022

The Google Marketing Platform is a suite of advertising and analytics solutions hosted within one single platform, with cross-channel integration and reporting features so that you can monitor key objectives and obtain a full view of your performance.

The platform launched back in July 2018, unifying Google’s DoubleClick advertiser products and the Google Analytics 360 Suite under a single brand.

Whilst it’s common for many businesses to use a few of these products, which still has many benefits, the below may make you reconsider your options, especially if you’re a large business managing a lot of data.

So what products are a part of this platform and what can they do for your business?

Search Ads 360

Search Ads 360 (also known as SA360) is Google’s advanced search marketing platform, and unlike Google Ads or Microsoft Ads, this platform comes with a price tag.

The platform itself helps agencies and marketers manage large search marketing campaigns, across multiple engines and media channels, all in one place.

One of the most useful elements of using SA360 is being able to manage your campaigns, ads, and keywords, on a single platform, rather than analysing performance on each search engine individually. This gives you a clear overview of performance across all channels, and on top of this, you are able to optimise, introduce rules, apply bidding strategies, and more, across all engines in one go.

By using Search Ads 360, you will also have access to their powerful automated bidding strategies. You can find more on this on my recent blog Search Ads 360 Bidding Strategies.

Display and Video 360

Following the launch of the Google Marketing Platform, DoubleClick Bid Manager, Campaign Manager, and Studio Audience Center evolved into the Display and Video 360 platform (also known as DV 360).

It is now a single tool which enables you to plan Display, Native, Video, and Audio campaigns. This includes managing creatives, analytics, TV, and digital teams and combining cross-channel data.

Similar to SA360, DV 360 is useful as you can consolidate your advertising data which gives a holistic view of your marketing efforts.

Google Analytics 360

Google Analytics 360 is the premium version of Google Analytics. It comes with enterprise-level features and a hefty price tag.

Whilst the free version of Analytics provides plenty of actionable insights into your marketing efforts, the premium version means your team can access advanced tools like Unsampled reports, BigQuery Export and Data-Driven Attribution. This also includes access to analytics support specialists and a service level agreement which covers data collection, data freshness and reporting, and a higher processing limit.

Google Data Studio

Unlike most of the products listed above, Google Data Studio is a free tool which turns your data into fully customisable dashboards and reports. You can tailor your dashboard with different charts, colours, images, viewer filters and date range controls, and even more.

By using Data Studio, you can connect your dashboard to all Google Marketing Platform products, as well as the below:

  • Social Media Platforms (such as Facebook or Twitter).
  • Google Sheets
  • YouTube
  • Search Console
  • BigQuery
  • MySQL
  • PostgreSQL
  • CSV File Uploads
  • Google Cloud Storage

Optimise 360

Optimise 360 is integrated with Google Analytics 360 and offers different experience types to fit your website testing and personalisation needs.

By using this platform, you are able to run A/B tests, allowing you to create multiple variations of the same web page to identify which page works best for your users.

You can also create multivariate tests, which allow you to test multiple elements on a page to see which combinations drive the best results.

Optimise 360 can also allow you to create redirect tests, server-side experiments.

Google Surveys 360

Google Surveys 360 is a market research tool which allows you to gain valuable insights on your customers, by using online and mobile surveys.

Tag Manager 360

The final Google Marketing Platform product is Tag Manager 360 and similar to other products within the Google Marketing Platform, it’s simply a premium version of Google Tag Manager.

There are a few huge differences between using the standard version and the premium version of this product, however, this will mainly benefit you if you’re a large business as these are enterprise-focused features.

These features include unlimited workspaces for concurring tag projects (instead of a limit of 3), approval workflows, and zones for large-scale implementations and to controlled access to tagging (both of which aren’t available for the standard version).

You will also get access to dedicated support specialists.

If you’d like to find out more about the Google Marketing Platform, then explore the benefits here, and if you’d like a hand managing your Google Marketing Platform and using it to the fullest extent, then please get in touch with our experienced team of specialists here.