US search giant Google has announced today it is retiring the current branding for two of its digital ad products, DoubleClick and AdWords. The move is framed by Google as an effort to simply its suite of advertising services, making it easier for brands and advertisers unfamiliar with the digital advertising world to use Google’s products.
Google’s senior vice president for ads Sridhar Ramaswamy said this morning that the previous branding had been confusing for new advertisers, saying for example that some were thrown off by having to buy YouTube ads through Google AdWords. As a result three new brands have been introduced to replace the AdWords and DoubleClick products.
Google AdWords, first launched 18 years ago, has been renamed to ‘Google Ads’, with a renewed focus on being pitched towards small businesses in particular. Google product management director Kim Spalding described the new brand as “our effort to help businesses of all sizes connect with relevant customers across all of our channels and partner sites”.
As part of this renewed pitch towards small businesses, Google has launched a new campaign format called ‘Smart campaigns’. Not much information has been given about what Smart campaigns are, but Spalding described them as a preset customisation of the ad tech available through Google Ads geared towards helping small business owners in particular. Spalding said Smart campaigns are designed to drive real world interactions such as store visits, calls and purchases, and claimed them to be three times better than regular campaigns at getting small businesses’ ads in front of the right audiences.
Meanwhile DoubleClick, which was launched in 1996 and bought by Google in 2007, has been bundled with the Google Analytics 360 Suite and renamed as ‘Google Marketing Platform’. “Google Marketing Platform brings together DoubleClick Digital Marketing and the Google Analytics 360 Suite to help you plan, buy, measure and optimize digital media and customer experiences in one place,” said Google’s Vice President of display and video advertising Brad Bender. “Google Marketing Platform helps you deliver more relevant and effective marketing, while ensuring that you respect your customers’ privacy and give them control over their data.”
Again this rebranding is accompanied by some changes to the products. Google said it hopes to make it easier to use its ads and analytics tech together, partly through a new ‘Integration Centre’ which it says will help companies “discover and easily setup valuable connections between products”.
Under the Google Marketing Platform umbrella, Google has also renamed DoubleClick Search to ‘Search Ads 360’ and launched ‘Display and Video Ads 360’, which is said brings together features from DoubleClick Bid Manager, Campaign Manager, Studio and Audience Centre.
Finally, Google is bringing together DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX) and DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) under the new united branding of ‘Google Ad Manager’. Google director of product management Jonathan Bellack said the company has been working to bring AdX and DFP together over the past three years, and while there don’t appear to be any changes to how the product will work, the rebranding seems to be an effort by the company to present its programmatic offering as one unified product.
“These new brands reflect all of the ways that we help advertisers connect with consumers and make it easier for advertisers and publishers to choose which products are right for their businesses,” said Ramaswamy. The new branding will start being rolled out across the products over the next few months.
