Google is finally back with their annual Google Marketing Livestream. Just like in 2020, this year’s event is entirely virtual and streamed online for everyone to watch.
At over 1 hour and 30 minutes, it can be a big chunk of your day to sit down and watch it. Luckily, we’ve rounded up all the important highlights from the event into this easy to digest article.
The Main 2021 Themes
Every Google marketing event has some kind of theme that they focus on and Google’s 2021 marketing livestream was no different. This year the three main themes were:
- Privacy and measurement in the future without cookies
- The growing role of automation in the Google Ad Platform
- Future of commerce
Privacy And Performance
Presented by Jerry Dischler, VP of Google Ads.
Performance Max Campaigns
A new type of campaign that allows advertisers to buy all types of ads from a single campaign (e.g. YouTube, display, Gmail & maps), and can use customer data to enhance performance.
This performance max campaign also helps maximize performance in three key ways.
- Helps find more converting customers across all of Google’s ad inventory
- Drives the best performance against your goals
- Delivers rich insights into automation
Performance max campaigns are currently in BETA but it was announced they are being expanded globally to selected advertisers. The full official release is expected to be later this year.
Prioritizing Internet Privacy
Users now value their privacy more than ever and Google is finally ditching 3rd party tracking cookies. Jerry Dischler also reminded viewers that:
“Our goal at Google has been the same it’s always been, to promote an open internet while also protecting user privacy.“
In response to the removal of 3rd party cookies, Google is investing heavily in advanced anonymization and machine learning. This includes technology such as their Chrome privacy sandbox which will replace 3rd party cookies on all of their platforms.
The Future Without Cookies
Presented by Vidhya Srinivasan, VP of Analytics and Measurement.
Preserving the Future of Measurement
Google is investing heavily in its analytics platforms. Transitioning from cookies to cookieless measurement, Google suggests the following approach:
- Build your measurement strategy on first-party data
- Enable users to make choices about their data
- Fill in gaps with modeled data
Vidhya also introduced a new way to measure conversions even when cookies are not available. Referred to as enhanced conversions, these work by allowing tags to use consented hashed first party data like email addresses.
This type of conversion modeling helps close gaps in data when users don’t consent to tracking. Ultimately this results in better insights that can be used to make marketing decisions. With privacy and consent becoming a key factor of the future, filling in the data gaps with modeled data is going to be key for marketing insights.
New Advertiser Experience
To help advertisers get the most out of their data in a cookieless world Google is releasing a new advertiser experience in Google Analytics.
This new report section allows advertisers to get the most of our data even when cookies aren’t available, using modeling based on machine learning.
The new reporting section will help present deeper insights and track user’s behavior across multiple devices and data points.
In addition to the new section, Google will also be integrating YouTube and display touchpoints into attribution modeling reports.
Future Of Commerce
Presented by Bill Ready, President of Commerce Payments.
Shopify Integration
Google announced an integrationwith Shopify, an online e-commerce platform used by millions of stores.
The integration allows websites and stores to get product inventory discovered on Google’s shopping ad network as well as enabling stores to use Shop Pay, which they claim will be one of the fastest check-out solutions on the market available on products bought from Shopify merchants through Google.
Local Inventory Ads
Matching buyers to the right product requires curated and tailored experiences to meet shoppers needs. How many times have you found the perfect product just to realize its out of stock?
According to Google, searches for local businesses have grown year on year by over 80%. In addition to this, search for “in stock” have also grown globally by over 800%. Putting the two trends together and Google has come up with their new “local inventory ads” campaign.
This new campaign type allows local advertisers to highlight in-store products via in-store pickup, curbside pickup, or pickup later.
Want To Know More?
Although we just covered the main highlights from the event, there’s still plenty of other topics they discussed.
If you do feel like spending an hour and 30 minutes learning about the future of Google then be sure to give the full event a watch below.
