Google Analytics 360 Suite – Google’s solution to all our analytics problems.

The nirvana all digitally connected brands dream of is to offer personalised experiences in an ever evolving multi-screen world; a world where micro-moments increase the need for immediate information to make snap decisions on product or service. Is ‘data-driven’ the answer? Being data-driven isn’t just about the data. It’s also about the technology.

We already established in our trends report that the collection of data isn’t a problem these days. Instead, the trending problem we see include brands which are collecting so much data that they struggle to distil holistic insights, let alone act on it. Technology helps to solve this via:

• Flexible and real-time data visualisation to quickly and accurately report, analyse, and surface insights

• Even more easily put insights into action either by optimising the user experience (without delay in deployment cycles), or by more efficiently reaching niche segments of users at scale

When selecting technology providers to solve the problem of using data, one could look at the latest Gartner or Forrester Wave reports to then decide on the best DMP, the best Analytics platform, and the best experience optimisation tool etc. But if not thought out properly, this may pose even more problems when all these different tools become too hard to use and too hard to integrate. Gathering, analysing, and acting on data suddenly feels like using a chainsaw to hammer in a nail.

Alternatively, one could invest in a single stack of tools that seamlessly integrates and that significantly reduces the effort (mainly time and expertise) needed for data plumbing.

Introducing Google Analytics 360

The Google Analytics 360 Suite, launched on 16^th March 2016, aims to be that saviour to our business and data needs with a collection of enterprise marketing analytics tools. The announcement explains that the 360 Suite aims to address the most common needs of brands:

• Seeing the complete customer journey from impression, to engagement on site/app and subsequent conversion
• More easily share insights across the organisation
• Deliver personalised experiences in those micro-moments

The 360 Suite rolls up six different products, including GA Premium and Adometry, to also include four new tools:

1. Google Analytics 360, formerly known as GA Premium, is promised to roll out new capabilities over the next couple of months. Like most other Enterprise Analytics tools, serve as the measurement centrepiece by analysing customer data from all touch-points.
2.  Google Attribution 360, formerly known as Adometry, has been rebuilt from the ground up to help advertisers value marketing investments and allocate budgets with confidence. Marketers can analyse performance across all channels, devices, and systems to achieve their most effective marketing mix.
3. Google Tag Manager 360. The enterprise version of the existing Google Tag Manager, mainly offered as part of Google Analytics 360
4. Google Audience Center 360 (beta). This DMP offers native integration with Google and DoubleClick, plus it’s open to third party data providers, DSPs and more.
5. Google Optimize 360 (beta). A CRO and personalisation product used to show consumers multiple variations of their site and then choose the version that works best for each audience.
6. Google Data Studio 360 (beta). A new data analysis and visualization product that integrates data across all suite products and other data sources – turning it into beautiful, interactive reports and dashboards. Built-in real-time collaboration and sharing is based on Google Docs technology.

Resolution’s POV

Resolution see this announcement as long overdue since Google acquired the ad attribution company, Adometry back in May 2014. GA Premium (now Analytics 360) initially entered the enterprise analytics market and gave Adobe Site Catalyst a run for its money. It’s no secret that the launch of 360 Suite places Google directly against the Adobe Marketing Cloud (at least in the Australian market). Filling this gap in the market has been much needed as we believe it will also force Adobe to improve and simplify the use of its products.

We are still understanding the intricacies of the full suite, but we speculate that:

• Attribution 360 will leap beyond the data-driven attribution modelling feature in GA Premium and DoubleClick.
• Think offline to online attribution. Optimise 360 is not a rebrand of the ‘content experiments’ feature, rather it should allow you to personalise your site/app layouts using segments from either GA or the DMP
• Data Studio 360 should have capabilities to visualise external data (an example being organic keyword rankings, POS) alongside Analytics reports

For agencies and data consultancies, it hasn’t yet been said what type of partnership opportunities are available for these products. As an existing GA 360 reseller we are in a good position to find updates on this as they come through from internal Google channels.

With half of the products still in limited beta, you can expect more news in future months. Feel free to contact us directly to discuss Analytics 360 Suite or read more on Google’s product page.

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