Google just Retired its AdWords Service in a Major Rebranding Overhaul

Once again, Google is shaking things up with its ad-related services. On July 24, Google officially retired its existing advertising brands, Google AdWords & DoubleClick. The move comes as the search engine looks to rebrand its advertising services, in the hopes of transforming Google’s “fragmented” system into a recognized marketing technology platform.

“Over the years, Google ads have evolved from helping marketers connect with people on Google Search, to helping them connect at every step of the consumer journey through text, video, display and more,” said Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google’s senior vice president of ads & commerce.

“That’s why today we are introducing simpler brands and solutions for our advertising products: Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform, and Google Ad Manager. These new brands will help advertisers and publishers of all sizes choose the right solutions for their businesses, making it even easier for them to deliver valuable, trustworthy ads and the right experiences for consumers across devices and channels.”

In addition to creating a marketing platform that encompasses all aspects of the advertising process, the search engine needed to address recent criticisms regarding privacy and monopoly concerns from academia and legislators. The new platforms allow users to integrate non-Google tools with their services, hopefully alleviating the issue of a potential monopoly.

There are several other reasons behind the platform rebranding, including:

• To simplify and consolidate the entry points for all users of Google’s marketing services (specifically, ad buyers and sellers).
  
• To provide a single collaboration hub for creative, agency and media teams to work together on ad campaigns.
  
• To offer more choices regarding third party products and services, instead of its current preference of only offering Google’s services and products.
  

Google plans to accomplish each of these goals with Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform and Google Ad Manager.

The search engine reorganized its advertising suite into three new platforms, as mentioned above:

1. Google Ads: Google’s new version of AdWords.

2. Google Marketing Platform: Merging DoubleClick Digital Marketing and Analytics 360.

3. Google Ad Manager: Merging DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange

As the main replacement for AdWords, Google Adswill become the default interface for advertisers. It will be a simplified and largely automated way for businesses to manage their PPC ads within Google, YouTube and its many other partner sites.

In addition, Google also announcedthat it is introducing Smart Campaigns, which it claims will be a more efficient option for marketers to design and launch ad campaigns for small businesses. The Smart Campaigns feature will use machine learning to automate targeted ads. According to Google, this should help with improved audience targeting for small businesses compared to the previous AdWords format.

Geared toward enterprise customers, Google Marketing Platform will combine DoubleClick advertiser products with Analytics 360. This will also include Display & Video 360, which merges DoubleClick Bid Manager, Campaign Manager, Google Data Studio and Audience Center.

The aimfor this platform is to help marketing and creative teams collaborate on ad campaigns in one place. Google saw that many advertisers were already integrating the two products on their own, and those who included analytics with media platforms saw better results. Now, marketers can more easily create platforms and analyze results in one place.

Where Google Ads and Google Marketing Platform help create and manage campaigns, Ad Manager’s purposeis to help with the selling of advertisements across different platforms. Merging DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange, Google Ad Manager creates a programmatic advertising platform for ad buyers.

Search Engine Land explains, “Google Ad Manager will help publishers monetize all the new places where people are engaging, such as live streams, connected TVs, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), mobile games and other apps, and platforms like YouTube and Apple News.”

If you manage a paid ad account for your business or a client, you’ll certainly notice some changes in how each platform operates. Luckily, Google will be providing a new Integration Centerto explain how the tools work and how to connect the ones you need.

In terms of overall costs, you shouldn’t see any changes in the forms of fees, CPC (cost per conversion) or impression share because of this rebranding effort. The biggest changes will come in the form of platform use and capabilities.

It looks like the newly rebranded Google advertising services will address issues and questions users have had for years. And while the platforms are just rolling out this week, Google’s future in PPC looks as bright as ever.