Between the years 2000 and 2002, I worked as a Client Server Analyst for DoubleClick. The title was vague enough to ease me through most dinner party introductions, not least because DoubleClick was listed on the Nasdaq, but the reality was that I was working long and odd hours trafficking banner ads with very few of the automation tools available today. It was very early in my digital marketing career so I was quite willing to pay my dues but I have distinct memories of feeling disconnected from the onward journey of the banner ads I was setting live. This sense of not having visibility on performance seemed unnecessary because I knew that the ad-serving technologies I was using allowed advertisers to find out exactly what happened to their banners – who saw them, when, where and on what device.
During my years at Google, the guiding principle was to put the right ad in front of the right person at the right time. Nobody doubted that this was an excellent goal for a digital marketing campaign. However, the fact that everyone agreed about this vision didn’t change the reality that some pretty intimidating technological obstacles had to be overcome first.
The task at hand was to integrate the entire spectrum of technology, tracking and trafficking platforms associated with each and every user journey from awareness to purchase. Integration became the buzzword and rightly so. The year before I founded The Media Image 2008, Google acquired DoubleClick. And so the integration began.
The hard work and technology wins of the last 10 years seem to have really paid dividends. Last month Google launched Google Marketing Platform (GMP) which brings together DoubleClick Digital Marketing and the Google Analytics 360 Suite. Because of this, all the elements of the user journey will be available to agencies and advertisers in one place. What I find truly exciting about this development is the fact that GMP will allow users to integrate over 100 exchanges, measurement solutions and other technology providers.
In 1665, Isaac Newton revolutionised the world of mathematics with his invention of calculus.
This technique laid the foundations for much of the scientific progress and technological innovation that gave rise to the modern world. Integration – an aspect of calculus – solves very difficult problems by combining the smallest possible units of analysis to give a better understanding of the whole issue. The heart and soul of GMP is the new Integration Centre which will allow campaign managers to set up and monitor the connections between all the technologies they use. This fantastic feature of Google’s integration project is, in my opinion, digital marketing’s Isaac Newton moment.
