Exciting times are ahead for the Digital Marketing aficionados and ‘data scientists’ among us. To be more specific, Google has recently released their new enterprise solution: Google Suite 360. Google tells us it’s a revolution, but isn’t it rather a logical and (long)expected evolution?
The new premium suite places data more central than ever before, it forms the core of all online activities. It allows you to combine and integrate the different Business Intelligence products (Analytics, GTM, Attribution modelling, …) with(in) each other. Analytics 360 is Google’s answer to the increasing demand for a more holistic data-approach. Without a shadow of a doubt this is also Google’s way to position itself against it’s competitors in this field, like Adobe for instance.
Our lives exists out of a string of many, many ‘micro-moments’. These are intent-rich moments where we reach for the nearest smartphone, tablet or desktop to search for the nearest shop, buy a concert ticket or just to find the answer that’s been on the tip of your tongue. Paul Muret (Googles VP for Video, Display and Analytics) stated that the Google Analytics 360 suite was developed to help companies identify and win these ‘micro-moments’.
The full-stack will consist out of six different products (four out of which are brand new) that will allow us to track the complete ‘user-journey’ and to interact with this user on the exact right moment. Hereunder you’ll find a brief overview of the different products:
1. Google Analytics 360: a GA Premium rebranding
Briefly said, GA 360 is a rebranding of the current Google Analytics Premium platform. We don’t really see any big updates here. Google did mention that we could expect ‘many new and exciting updates and functionalities’.
The vision here is that GA 360 will serve as the central measurement hub. This means it will serve as the central platform to analyse user (behavioral) data and to then integrate these insights with Google’s Ad platforms such as AdWords or DoubleClick. All to improve your marketing effectivity & efficiency.
We’re counting down the days until Google I/O (18 – 20/05) for more juicy details about GA 360!
2. Google Attribution 360: an Adometry rebranding
‘Attribution modelling’ is one of today’s hottest topics in marketing-land. Something Google didn’t miss out on. Google claims to have reworked Adometry from scratch to aid marketers in this challenging quest. With Attribution 360 you can follow your clients, prospects and leads across all devices and channels in order to determine the most efficient and ROI optimal marketing mix.
In short: Attribution 360 is Google’s own Marketing Mix Modelling tool, but it’s mainly a refurbished version of Adometry.
3. Google Audience Center 360 (beta)
Probably the biggest surprise of this release. Google is presenting its very own Data Management Platform (DMP). This update will allow marketers to better identify and define their customers and use those insights to target them cross-platform. These segments can be used on other platforms like DoubleClick or AdWords.
Ever since Facebook launched their ‘Atlas’ product last year, Google’s dominant position in user-data was being challenged. With this release Google takes a huge step forward into the right direction in the battle for user and audience segmentation data.
4. Google Optimize 360 (beta)
Google’s own website testing and customization tool will help marketers to offer their website visitors a better and improved internet experience. Identifying leads and bringing them to your website is one thing, making them convert is a whole other challenge. Until recently, Google didn’t really have a concrete answer to the latter. All of this changes with the introduction of Google Optimize 360. Google Optimize 360 is much more than a pimped-up, chromed-out version of ‘Google Experiments’. Remember the times you’ve had to manually tag and track the different A/B testing pages? Nowadays Optimize 360 will take care of this.
Without any IT or coding skills, you can now create different versions of a webpage (through a drag & drop system) and test them immediately in real-time on live users and audiences.
5. Google Data Studio 360 (beta)
This new data analysis and dashboarding tool will integrate data from all Suite products and from other external data sources. These data will allow us to build and create very interactive reports and intuitive dashboards. As this tool is built upon the foundations of the Google Docs technology, real-time sharing and collaboration are all part of this package-deal. In other words, different users will be able to work together at the same time on the same dashboard, a very interesting aspect of this tool.
6. Google Tag Manager 360
Based on Google’s Tag Manager product, this premium solution will allow marketers to easily measure and monitor website or application data. All this without having to ask the local IT department for a hand. It will also ensure for improved data accuracy and more simple workflows.
Google takes some big steps forward with this update. The integration of these different tools into one premium stack will create a lot of additional synergies and possibilities in the land of measurement and analysis. On top of that, this (r)evolution also perfectly answers the increasing demand for a more holistic approach. Due to Google’s dominant position, we will all be impacted by this update. But to what extent, remains to be seen.
Author: Maxime Vandenbussche
