In the Spring of 2007, Google ended a heated bidding battle against Microsoft by acquiring DoubleClick for $3.1bn, almost twice the $1.65bn paid for YouTube the previous year. For the search giant, DoubleClick provided a major footing into the display advertising landscape, with its leading advertising software, and relationships with publishers and agencies.
Fast forward more than ten years later and Google announced today that they will be bringing the Analytics and DoubleClick products into a unified set of tools, named the Google Marketing Platform. The search engine will also be renaming the products to sunset the DoubleClick brand.
So, what exactly is changing?
At least for the time being, all Google Analytics 360 Suite and DoubleClick products will continue to function in the same way. The DoubleClick products will be renamed to adopt the ‘360’ branding of the Analytics suite:
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DoubleClick Search will be named Search Ads 360
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DoubleClick Campaign Manager and DoubleClick Studio will be named Campaign Manager and Studio respectively
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DoubleClick Bid Manager will become Display & Video 360, which will bring together planning, creative, buying, and measurement features in a single tool
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Google Analytics 360 Suite Home will become Platform Home
Google is also releasing a new ‘Integration Center’ to help advertisers manage the native integrations between the various products in the platform. Google Marketing Platform also supports more than 100+ integrations with exchanges, measurement solutions and other technology providers.
How will Analytics and DoubleClick integrate?
The integration between products in the Google Marketing Platform means brands can implement a single measurement solution, Analytics 360, and share data seamlessly to other tools such as Optimize 360, an A/B testing and personalization tool.
The integration of Campaign Manager to Analytics 360 allows full visibility of a user journey from campaign to performance on site, including impressions. Furthermore, Audiences built in Analytics 360 can then be used easily in Display and Video 360 to target personalized campaigns based on site behaviors or prospect new customers using Similar Audiences.
How will this change impact advertisers?
Although there is a new name for the suite of products, the functionality is essentially remaining the same, so there is no immediate impact to how advertisers are using the products today. However, as Google brings the products from Analytics and DoubleClick closer together, and launches the integration center, there is likely to be even more focus on the advantages for ‘full stack’ users of products across the Google Marketing Platform.
iProspect are one of the few Google Partners to be certified across the full Google Marketing Platform from launch. As we have already been doing for more than a decade with DoubleClick and the Analytics 360 Suite, we are excited to continue leveraging this enterprise technology platform for our clients to drive performance at scale.
