The ads measurement system that Google originally created for analyzing YouTube campaigns now includes data from the Google Display Network and DoubleClick. The expansion was announced by Google, and the beta release of As Data Hub last week.
the expanded idea of the cloud-based system further underscores the industry’s shift from relying on cookies to user and device IDs for tracking and reporting on ad performance as mobile usage surpassed that of desktop. The design of Ads Data Hub is meant to help advertisers measure the value of their campaigns as ads are distributed over an always-expanding amount of devices. One of the early test partners that signed on is Omnicom Media Group.
So what does Ads Data Hub offer? The system gives anonymized cross-device impression-level data from campaigns running on Google Display Network, DouleClick Ad Exchange and YouTube. Marketers will be able to hook in CRM, DMP or other marketing databases into the system to analyze campaign impact on the customer journey.
Ads Data Hub is running out of Google’s data warehouse, BigQuery. Due to privacy reasons, marketers won’t be able to extract any of the impression-level data from Ads Data Hub. Advertisers are able to give third-party measurement vendors, such as comScore, DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science, Moat and Nielsen access to the system. Even then, t he vendors have to rely on Google’s own data for measurement. This has been a point of pain for those advertisers who have pushed Google to lower their walls and support independent tracking for measurement and verification.
Right now, the Ads Data Hub supports analysis only. According to Google though, they will eventually allow advertisers to “act on the insights they get from Ads Data Hub and buy media with greater precision.”