Tech behemoth Google has introduced a rebranded and refreshed set of advertising and marketing solutions ahead of its Google Marketing Live event in July.
Google now has three advertising products designed to help advertisers and publishers of all shapes and sizes: Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform, and Google Ad Manager.
The change means the company is retiring the AdWords brand, which launched in 2000, as well as the DoubleClick brand, which it acquired in 2007.
As part of this change, Google is releasing new solutions to help advertisers get started with Google Ads and drive greater collaboration across teams.
For small businesses specifically, the company is introducing a new campaign type in Google Ads that makes it easier for them to get started with online advertising called ‘Smart campaigns’.
Google Marketing Platform represents the unification of the company’s DoubleClick advertiser products and the Google Analytics 360 suite.
Part of Google Marketing Platform is Display & Video 360, a new product that brings together features from DoubleClick Bid Manager, Campaign Manager, Studio and Audience Center to allow creative, agency, and media teams to collaborate and execute ad campaigns end-to-end in a single place.
Google Ad Manager will be the company’s new programmatic platform, having been working to bring together DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange for the last three years.
The new brands will be rolled out over the next month.
Speaking on a media conference call, Google’s managing director of global display, Dan Taylor, said the company didn’t evolve its brands based on concerns that have been happening in the programmatic ecosystem.
“The decision to evolve the names of our brands, specifically on the programmatic side with Google Marketing Platform, was not related to any exogenous market factors like brand suitability,” he said.
“Things like ad blocking and invalid traffic are also a conversation happening in the ecosystem right now, and we don’t feel that is a motivation for the brand change at all.
“We’ve been talking about evolving these brands for a couple of years, but we remain very committed to having an advertising ecosystem that works for everyone – good value for publishers, good results for advertisers and good, relevant ads with control and transparency for users.”
Taylor said Google hasn’t made a forecast of revenue or customer growth due to the product rebranding exercise.
“The only place I would say where we do have some expectations is within Smart campaigns,” he said.
“We’re hoping to get more new small businesses to start advertising with Google who maybe had a difficult time navigating the more complex AdWords interface as it existed previously, but we haven’t set any set any monetary or number of activation goals.”
