Are you currently considering the Google Marketing Platform to improve the Digital Marketing Maturity of your organisation? According to HG insights, there are nearly 1 million organisations using Google Ads globally and nearly 72,000 in APAC, meaning there is a huge segment of the market that could also potentially leverage the power of Campaign Manager 360 and the Google Marketing Platform.
In this article, we explore the reasons why organisations currently using Google Ads for their paid digital advertising should transition to Campaign Manager 360.
1. Track your Google Ads campaigns in Campaign Manager 360
Are you currently using Google Ads as part of your paid digital marketing strategy? Campaign Manager 360 allows you to track your Google Ads activity through click & tracking ads within the platform. The benefit of this is that you can still leverage your current Google Ads activities but also leverage the advanced features of Campaign Manager 360 which we’ll cover off throughout this article. Importantly, this also allows you to consolidate tracking of your Google Ads activities with your other digital marketing channels.
“Leading companies are 1.5X as likely as mainstream companies to have an integrated marketing and advertising technology stack”
2. Deduplicate your conversions in one platform
As one of the core benefits of Campaign Manager 360, the platform centralises your online marketing by consolidating your conversions across different online channels. Therefore, if you’re currently running campaigns across search, display and social for example, you can combine measurement from these channels in Campaign Manager 360. Importantly, there is plenty of wider research around the benefits of integrated campaigns including integrated campaigns being 31% more effective than non-integrated campaigns (Think With Google) and “by linking data across silos…(there was a) 30% increase in marketing ROI and unearthing new pools of consumers who would be three times less costly to acquire than others” (Boston Consulting Group).
3. Get started on the Google Marketing Platform
With it being recommended you have spend approximately $20,000 per month for platforms like Display & Video 360 (DV360) and Search Ads 360 (SA360), Campaign Manager 360 can be an effective tool for those looking to get started on the GMP with a more modest budget, especially for those looking to scale their digital marketing activities over time.
Importantly, by starting with Campaign Manager 360, you are able to start with the key considerations of measurement planning and tag management across your web, app & ad properties through Floodlight activities.
4. Set up Floodlight activities (Floodlight tags) for your ads
As the conversion tracking mechanism of Campaign Manager 360 and the Google Marketing Platform, Floodlight activities allow marketers and advertisers to create audiences, track conversions and provide data-based signals to power Data-driven Creative, all using a set of unified tags across your web, app and ad properties.
Floodlights can then be utilised to enable more advanced features such as automation (through audience creation) and personalisation (through the set up of Floodlight-based creative feeds).
In addition to this, the unifying nature of Floodlight activities means that the conversions tracked and audiences built can be cross-channel & cross-device, amplifying CM360’s core benefits of an integrated ad technology platform.
5. Access to Studio and Data-driven Creative capabilities
Studio (previously DoubleClick Studio) is the creative and rich media authoring tool of the Google Marketing Platform and with its native connector to Campaign Manager 360 allows for the set up of Data-driven Creative using dynamic templates. While Display & Video 360 (DV360) also has the ability to create Data-driven Creative, DDC built through Studio and trafficked through CM360 has more flexibility for advertisers to drive greater performance from their display ads and can be set up based on a creative feed in Studio.
As discussed above, Floodlight activities allow advertisers to provide data signals to show personalised ads through Data-driven Creative. With our previous article recognising that 70% of campaign performance is down to creative, leading advertisers are using advanced features like this to personalise their creative based on the behaviour of their target audiences.
6. More detailed, granular reporting of campaign data
Given the integrated nature of Campaign Manager 360, there are a number of different reports available in the platform which provide advertisers with the detail and granularity of campaign reporting data to enable data-driven marketing and the research-backed benefits that come with it. In particular, the Campaign Manager 360 Path to Conversion report is a useful tool (that Google Ads does not have available), helping marketers and advertisers to understand the exposure of different channels for a prospect across the user journey.
Along with a number of standard attribution models available in the platform, Campaign Manager 360 also uses automation and machine learning algorithms as part of Data-driven Attribution to provide more calibrated, data-based methods of tracking conversion points across the sales & marketing funnel. With many advertisers (even those already on the GMP) currently only using last-click attribution, organisations are ‘missing a trick’ when it comes to applying a data-driven mindset.
7. Protect your ad spend with ad verification
With research showing that ad fraud could be as high as $50bn by 2025 globally and 2nd to only drug trafficking as the largest revenue source for organised crime, having ad verification in place is important in guaranteeing that your ad spend is being spent wisely. Importantly, Ad Blocking is a standard feature in Campaign Manager 360 to control the specific sites and placements that your ads appear on.
8. Reduce human input by leveraging automation within Campaign Manager 360
With 22% of respondents from FiveStones’ Digital Marketing Maturity Report indicating that digital automation is their number one priority for the next 12 months, automation is another feature that advertisers can leverage as part of a Campaign Manager 360 license. Here are some examples of automation in the platform:
- Data-driven creative: With the connector between Campaign Manager 360 and Studio, it allows advertisers to automatically personalise their display based on different data signals
- Audience creation: Using Floodlight activities, CM360 advertisers can automate the creation of audiences in Campaign Manager 360 to be used for current and future campaigns
- Automated ad verification: If you are an organisation that works with Integrated Ad Science as an ad verification partner, you can automatically have your ad tags wrapped using the platform, meaning you can spend less time trafficking your ads to high-quality inventory.
Conclusion
Campaign Manager 360 provides advertisers with the capability to consolidate different channels, including Google Ads to provide a deduplicated view of an organisation’s digital marketing. With a number of advanced features available in the platform, it also provides advertisers the ability to drive higher performance through the use of Data-driven Creative, more granular cross-channel reporting, 3rd party applications and automation.
For more information on Campaign Manager 360 (CM360) and why you should transition your display and video budget from Google Ads to the platform, please get in touch with your local FiveStones team today.