New name for Google AdWords in major shake-up

The main advertising products from search giant Google have been split into three key areas, in a significant rebranding exercise aimed at allowing advertisers to focus more on getting better outcomes and worry less about product selection.

The move follows ‘consistent’ feedback in recent years that the range of different products had started to confuse those using them. Equally, according to Google’s Senior Vice-President of Advertising, Sridhar Ramaswamy, it’s a response to increasing opportunities for advertisers and growing consumer expectations of mobile search.

In an extensive streamlining operation, the search engine’s flagship advertising products have been renamed and reorganised in a bid to better reflect what they do now, some two decades after Google advertising was launched.

Clearly, over the last 20 years, Google’s offerings have become more varied, numerous and complex, making it harder for advertisers to choose the product that best suited their needs.

The DoubleClick brand, the Google subsidiary acquired in 2007 which develops and provides web-based ad-serving services, is going to be discontinued. The AdSense and AdMob brands, however, will be continued, and core functionality generally is to remain unchanged.

AdWords is now known by the name of Google Ads, covering search, display and YouTube advertising, alongside ads in Google Play and Maps. What is Google Ads?

However, this is more than a mere change of name. Google has launched Smart Campaign, and this is the default mode for small business advertisers, allowing them to pinpoint the actions they’re prioritising, from phone calls to sales or store visits. Google Ads can then encourage more of those actions by using machine learning to optimise images, text and targeting.

Google Marketing Platform, combining features from the firm’s marketing analytics tools DoubleClick Digital Marketing and Google Analytics 360, is the second brand. A fresh product has been launched under this banner – Display & Video 360, combining elements from Campaign Manager, Studio and Audience Center and DoubleClick Bid Manager.

According to the corporation’s Dan Taylor, Managing Director for Platforms, this was a response to an increasing need for collaboration. There’ll also be a new Integrations Center, where marketers can see all the ways Google tools can be connected.

The final brand, Google Ad Manager, combines the corporation’s monetisation tools for publisher, including DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange. In fact, merging of these two products had already been happening over the last five years as programmatic ad buying is used across an increasing number of advertising formats.

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Please contact us at Front Page if you have any queries about how this might be affecting your online advertising.