Digital Advertising, Marketing, PPC

Google Marketing LiveStream 2021: Building For The Future Of Marketing

At the Google Marketing Livestream, Google announced 2021 features & rollouts to advertisers. VP/GM, Ads, Google, Jerry Dischler, notes that last year, Google revamped their 2020 product roadmap such as the insights page launched early this year, as well as curbside pickups for local inventory ads and bookings for local services ads due to the digital transformation as a result of the pandemic and at the event unveiled plans for performance max campaign and other features.

There is so much to unpack, but I will be summarizing the main focus of the event below, mainly privacy, measurement, and automation. I highly recommend you check out the full on-demand Livestream for a more in-depth look at Google’s digital transformation Building for the Future of Marketing

Privacy

This continues to be a top priority across all Google products. 81% of people believe the risk of data collection outweighs the benefits. Users are increasingly concerned about how they are being tracked when they are surfing across the internet. Trust is being lost because people value their privacy more, in order to regain trust, Google will protect the privacy of its users by phasing out third-party cookies and not build identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web. Google advises that to transition to a world without cookies there should be a proper use of consented first-party data, automated solutions will support your campaigns and commit to new technologies that preserve privacy such as chrome privacy sandbox. “We are in a new era with privacy at the forefront”, adds Jerry Dischler, VP/GM, Ads, Google

Measurement

Accurate measurement of campaigns is important to know where to invest to drive the most impact. The main measures previously used such as cookies and other identifiers will be eliminated as Google works to get the insights advertisers need in a privacy-safe way. The industry is changing, and “we need to preserve the future of measurement away from cookies” confirms Vidhya Srinivasan, VP/GM Ads, Google, adding “The direct relations you have with your customer should be the basis of your marketing, by receiving consented data by using sitewide tagging”.

Here is how to build your measurement strategy:

Consented first-party data
Enable users to make choices about their data
Keep reporting actionable and fill in gaps with model data

Google announced updates to the way that they will track conversions and their plan to model consent-mode data to help alleviate gaps in tracking, they are adding consent capabilities to Google Tag Manager so that consent solution can be integrated with GTM. On average consent, mode recovers 70% of conversion journey lost due to user consent choices.

Automation

Automation is a big focus area for Google, they continue to work and improve automation so that advertisers drive better results through Google products and features.

Responsive search ads combine your creativity with machine learning to help you deliver relevant, valuable ads. Using broad match and Smart Bidding together can help you reach more relevant queries that meet your performance objectives., 80% of google ads users are using smart bidding to drive results for businesses. When all 3 are combined, advertisers can see an average of 20% more conversions.

Performance Max campaigns will be fully launched later this year, with BETA expanding further. It will bring in the best of Google’s automation to help drive better results across all Google’s channels. Here is how he will boost the efficiency of your campaign:

Brings together all of Google’s ad inventory
Drives the best performance against your goals
Delivers rich insights into automation
Increased transparency

In building the future of marketing, Google is asking that you consider the technologies in the Privacy Sandbox, base measurement strategies on first-party data, and achieve your potential with automation. There will be a continued emphasis on innovative, privacy-first measurement, with marketers relying on sophisticated techniques like conversion modeling to quantify the success of their campaigns.

Tewfic kattan

Tewfic is managing partner and head of Paid Channels at Sandstorm. His 15+ years experience spans both traditional and digital marketing with specialism in PPC, Analytics and E-commerce Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) working with some of the region's largest brands including Aramex and DAMAC.