Google Marketing Platform: Data Management Platform Review

Google Marketing Platform is a data management platform (DMP) that specializes in online advertising and analytics for both enterprises and small businesses. 

As an expansion of other Google advertising tools, like Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform consolidates marketing and advertising activity and aids with process management and automation. 

This review provides an in-depth look at Google Marketing Platform, some of its most common use cases, and competitors in the advertising data management space:

A Closer Look at Google Marketing Platform

• Google and the DMP market

• Key features of Google Marketing Platform

• Key benefits of Google Marketing Platform

• Google Marketing Platform use cases

• Pros of Google Marketing Platform

• Cons of Google Marketing Platform

• Google Marketing Platform ratings

• Cost of Google Marketing Platform

• Conclusions

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Google and the DMP market

Google’s Marketing Platform sits between two different business technology markets: the data management platform market and the marketing analytics market. Both of these markets are growing, as companies pursue new business goals with big data and digital marketing in mind.

The data management platform market reached about $2.15 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach $5.65 billion by 2027, according to a report by Maximize Market Research. The marketing analytics software market reached $2.83 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow to $7.43 billion by 2027, according to a report by Grand View Research.

Although this platform meets a specialized need for enterprise-level ad buying and analytics that some companies require, it’s a market with several other vendors offering large-scale advertising, targeting, marketing campaigns, and customer analytics. Some of the top competitors for Google Marketing Platform include:

• Adobe Advertising Cloud
• Amazon DSP
• Adzooma
• Oracle BlueKai
• theTradeDesk
• Salesforce CDP
• MediaMath
• Marketing 360
• Bonzai

Learn more about the Data Management Market.

Key features of Google Marketing Platform

Depending on if your team decides to pursue the enterprise or small business version of Google Marketing Platform, you’ll be able to access various key features for digital advertising, data management, and analytics:

Enterprise version features:

• Analytics 360
• Campaign Manager 360
• Display & Video 360
• Optimize 360
• Search Ads 360
• Surveys 360
• Tag Manager 360

Small business version features:

• Analytics
• Data Studio
• Surveys
• Optimize
• Tag Manager

Learn about top analytics solutions: Top Data Analytics Tools & Data Analysis Software

Key benefits of Google Marketing Platform

Google Marketing Platform gives its customers several digital advertising advantages, including:

• Flexible scaling: Users can purchase the whole platform or individual components based on their use cases.
• Enhanced video campaigns: With Google’s investment in several video and digital media platforms, focused video features and analytics help companies that want to optimize their video advertising experiences.
• Improved analytics: With the Google Analytics backbone and several other built-in analytics, Google Marketing Platform makes it possible for companies to easily measure the success of advertising campaigns. The platform also simplifies dashboarding by hosting all of this information in one place.
• Automation and connectivity: This platform offers several different campaign and targeting automation opportunities, and it also goes beyond the basics found in other Google tools with advanced API functionality.

Google Marketing Platform use cases

Google Marketing Platform is designed to help companies with traditional ad buying, targeting, and analytics management, but it isn’t only for product vendors that want to advertise their products. Other use cases include helping organizations target their messages to the most relevant digital audiences.

Learn about how two different organizations and business models used Google Marketing Platform to advance their digital audience management goals:

“Data Studio can help you understand the e-commerce story as a whole or with extreme granularity by using intuitive data modeling to illustrate a wide range of KPIs.” -Mark Estrada, global omnichannel operations and UX manager for Lucky Brand, review of Google Marketing Platform

“UNICEF USA business can be very segmented because of the many types of emergencies and topics that we’re reacting to, ranging from helping prevent childhood disease to providing emergency relief during times of crisis. We wanted an integrated platform that could help us make sure we’re communicating the relevant message to people reacting to our various charitable efforts.” -Tobes Kelly, director of digital revenue for UNICEF, review of Google Marketing Platform

“Google Marketing Platform enables DELVE to identify and market only to audiences who are most likely to respond to UNICEF USA’s message and conversely, stop spending media dollars on audiences who are least likely to donate.” -Anton Lipkanu, head of media for DELVE, a Google Marketing Platform partner that worked with UNICEF on platform implementation

Pros of Google Marketing Platform

Based on user reviews and comparisons to the platform’s competitors, Google Marketing Platform’s top pros are:

• Small and enterprise business solutions: This product offers two different product packages to meet different enterprise and small business needs, which offers flexibility for cost and functionality.
• Customizability: This tool is considered customizable, especially when focusing on its analytics dashboards and data visualization features.
• Integrated insights: The platform is made up of several individual advertising and analytics components, but the Integration Center offers integrated insights across all of these individual modules.
• Tag Manager: Many users praise the tag management feature and its metadata capabilities.
• APIs: Google Marketing Platform offers several easy-to-deploy API integrations.
• Automation: This product includes several helpful automation features, such as auto-bidding.

Manage your metadata: Top Metadata Management Tools

Cons of Google Marketing Platform

Based on user reviews and comparisons to the platform’s competitors, Google Marketing Platform’s top cons are:

• Pricing: Although pricing is not mentioned on their site, some reviewers explain that more advanced components can be cost-prohibitive to implement.
• User interface: Some users comment on the complexity of the user interface. Some of their focused feedback relates to the Campaign Manager menu and the difficulty of using and opening certain menu bars on a single screen.
• Social media integration: Google Marketing Platform offers several social media integrations, but some users say setting up the integrations is difficult.
• Data syncing frequency: Some users express a desire for more frequent syncing with Google Ads and other data platforms for more consistent metrics.
• Campaign search: The campaign feature allows for search in its search bar, but it’s limited to certain types of queries and URLs.
• Campaign portfolio management: A few customers report difficulty with campaign archiving in particular.

Find other digital marketing solutions that fit small business needs: Top Digital Marketing Tools

Google Marketing Platform ratings

For a more comprehensive look at customer opinions on Google Marketing Platform, take a look at these aggregated user ratings on several user review sites:

Cost of Google Marketing Platform

Certain tools and modules, such as Google Analytics, are free, which is helpful for smaller businesses that want a lower starting cost for advertising. With small business and enterprise solution paths already in place, customers also have curated cost packages that fit the size and complexity of their advertising models.

Most individual components and the overall marketing platform package do not have prices listed on the site. For a full understanding of Google Marketing Platform pricing, prospective customers will need to talk to the sales team for a quote. Some features offer free trials to get started.

Conclusions 

Google Marketing Platform is a top solution for companies that build their whole reputation and revenue on large-scale advertising. Google is one of the leading vendors in the digital advertising space, and especially with their acquisitions over the years, the company offers the sophisticated toolsets and companion platforms necessary to expand your digital voice.

However, it’s important to remember that many other high-quality Google analytics and advertising tools, such as Google Ads and Google Analytics, are available as individual products. Many businesses may not need the full functionality of this platform, so do your research and firmly establish your budget before deciding on a comprehensive platform like Google Marketing Platform.

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