Written by Nick Yorchak. Posted in Blog
At yesterday’s Google Marketing Next event in San Francisco, we learned much about the future of what the search leader has in store for users and the marketers seeking to reach them.
Before we cover the big news, Google shared a few stats that you will find hard to believe – but they’re true.
1) Half a trillion data points across devices are now collected each day in Google Analytics.
2) Through its network of partnerships, Google tracked details on roughly 70% of all credit card transactions in the US.
Now for the latest products updates.
Google announced the launch of “Google Attribution,” which according to the company will utilize machine learning to assign a weighted value to each touchpoint (digital and real-world) along the path to purchase.
While Last-click attribution as a sole method of measurement has faded among our client base, the need for clear causal relationships between marketing spend and resulting sales will always be a core part of our practice. In many cases we’re using fractional attribution models to understand this, but if the data can be automated we as marketers will save time which is always a plus. Google also stated this product will be FREE for most businesses.
If you haven’t seen it yet in your account, don’t be surprised. The service is in beta, and Google said the release should occur later in 2017.
Google also announced “Attribution 360,” another product with similar functionality but more power and features. With an annual price of $150,000, most Clients won’t need this but if you’re spend is anywhere over $100,000 per month you would likely see benefits from this with the integration elements between your own data, AdWords, and DoubleClick.
It will be interesting to see how the tool performs in early beta testing and we will share any results that are not confidential or protected.
YouTube also rolled out a new feature, announcing that ads can now play at the end of videos and display details like local store hours, directions, and products, and more. While this feature will definitely be more valuable to B2C than B2B campaigns, we will keep an eye on this trend. With a purely digital path to purchase, the effectiveness of this is certainly diminished. But for retail, real estate, food/beverage, and other industries, this is an exciting prospect.
Google announced another step forward in its mission to return related, relevant ads and information to a user’s search query. Digital marketers can now buy placements that appear only when a user is “in market,” meaning they’ve expressed interest in a related product in their search history. How will this work you are probably wondering? Google stated that it plans to analyze trillions of search queries across its user base to identify users with purchase-intent.
To the future of search.
