Google on Tuesday launched an analytics service, Google Analytics (GA) 360 Suite, designed specifically for enterprise marketers.
The suite consists of six products: the former GA Premium as the centerpiece; Adometry, rebranded as Attribution 360; the data management platform (DMP) Audience Center 360; Optimize 360, a website optimization and personalization product; Data Studio 360, an enhanced dashboard and visualization tool; and an expanded tag management product.
The DMP, site personalizer/optimizer and the data visualization product are all in beta, and will be rolled out slowly over the coming months.
A Google spokesperson said the company won’t be breaking out numbers for projected customers or advertisers who were involved in early testing, but the service will be limited. The Google blog post on the product suite only said, “We’ll let you know when you’re eligible to join the new betas.”
“Our largest, most complex partners are struggling with the volume and influx of data touch points,” said Google VP Paul Muret, who founded Google Analytics and runs engineering for the GA 360 Suite.
The GA 360 Suite isn’t the first of its kind. Adobe and Oracle, for example, have also woven together a DMP, data visualization UI and optimization solutions. But, being Google, Muret said a differentiator for its offer is how the products can be leveraged in search advertising.
Competitive services also have to “marshal data between systems,” which Muret said can “often result in loss of fidelity or an incomplete customer journey.” As a media company, measurement vendor, data supplier and tech stack, Google is uniquely positioned to “connect the value of (marketer) data across advertising systems.”
He added that while enterprise marketers need rich analytics services, they have been inadequately served by measurement firms.
One of the biggest hurdles is that large brands struggle with sharing data across internal divisions (like operations, human resources, engineering and business development).
“As we work with larger businesses, we see the value prop of measurement break down in terms of accessibility to the whole organization,” he said.
Muret said the GA 360 Suite was designed by “taking an open approach,” meaning any CRM, DSP, optimization specialist or data vendor can be integrated if it works with a Google client, and also that data will be transparently tracked on Google’s own platform and properties.
L’Oréal is one of the early clients for the enterprise suite, and its native integration with DoubleClick “is a game-changer,” said the cosmetic giant’s director of media and data optimization, Khoi Truong. “Now I can personalize my media based on website user behaviors, such as what they purchase.”
Unlike, say, when Google opened up first-party data matching for search and email advertising, the enterprise analytics suite does not represent a change in “any of our privacy policies or data-usage constraints when it comes to Google data,” said Muret. Marketers will be able to simultaneously target an audience segment for display, search, email and mobile on Google’s stack, but won’t be able to pull that data for off-platform use.
For those in the independent ad tech ecosystem, the extensive GA 360 Suite is a familiar instance of Google leveraging its size and scale, and its ability to bundle offers across a wide platform, to squeeze competitors. Now Google will be applying the same strategy in the mar tech industry.
