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As a company that derives almost all of its revenues and profits from internet advertising, Google has a lot to gain from helping businesses better understand how effectively their marketing campaigns are working across Google’s online properties.
Towards that end, Google this week introduced Ads Data Hub, a cloud-based measurement platform that according to the company gives advertisers detailed information on mobile user interaction with ad campaigns across YouTube, DoubleClick, the Google Display network and other ad platforms.
Ads Data Hub is built on Google’s cloud infrastructure and is integrated with the company’s BigQuery big data analytics service. It gives advertisers a way to look at impression-level data about their marketing campaigns across mobile and other screens, said Geoff Samek, senior product manager, Ads Data and Privacy at Google in a blog.
“Mobile has fundamentally changed how we live our lives,” Samek said. “With our devices never more than an arm’s length away, people can find, watch or buy anything at anytime.”
Ads Data Hub is designed to help marketers deliver more targeted and timely advertisements to mobile users by giving them a way to combine information about a user’s activity across devices, including past search and demographic information.
In addition, users of Ads Data Hub will be able to pull in and analyze data from other systems, such as a marketing database or a CRM system, to better understand how people engaged with their campaign, from first encounter to purchase Samek said.
When Google first announced plans to develop Ads Data Hub, the company had described it as primarily a tool for helping advertisers better measure how users were interacting with YouTube campaigns on mobile and other devices. With this week’s rollout, the company the tool is able to measure ad performance across multiple Google online properties.
In addition to its own measurement tools, Google has committed to working with third-party measurement vendors including Nielsen, comScore and DoubleVerify to help advertisers and agencies measure the effectiveness of their campaigns on Google’s sites.
Ad measurement has become a hot button for Google and for other Internet giants like Facebook. Many advertisers have become increasingly unhappy over the ad performance metrics provided by Google and Facebook. They are also frustrated at the relative lack of access to the data and methods that companies like Google and Facebook use to measure ad performance on their properties.
Many of Google’s biggest advertisers are also unhappy with the way Google’s automated ad placement system presents their marketing messages on YouTube and Google’s display network. Earlier this year, several major brands in the U.S. and U.K for instance withdrew their ads from YouTube after an investigative report by the London Times showed their ads being placed next to videos posted known terrorist organizations and hate groups.