Google is splitting its data tool Ads Data Hub into two entities, one for marketers and one for measurement partners, a move that will give advertisers new opportunities to use their own first-party data to target ads on Google’s ad network.
Google announced the evolution of Ads Data Hub today, creating one unit called Ads Data Hub for Marketers and another reserved for measurement. “Marketers require tools to quantify a consumer’s path to purchase and the ability to activate new audiences,” Prema Sampath, Google Ads product director, said in an announcement. “At the same time, measurement partners conduct third-party assessment of metrics such as video viewability, audience reach, and brand lift.”
Google launched Ads Data Hub in 2017 for brands to bring data into a secure environment to study their media spend, which goes through Google’s ad network, and to understand how effective those ads were in converting customers. The ads hub is among an assortment of “data clean rooms” proliferating in advertising. Amazon, for instance, has Amazon Marketing Cloud and Disney launched Disney Select as part of its ad tech and data products as it builds ad-supported media on channels like Disney+.
Publishers and platforms are building these data clean rooms so brands can play with the information they collect on consumers, and use it to plan ad campaigns, without technically revealing that data to outside partners. The publishers and platforms also don’t want to hand over the data they have about users of their services. Google’s Ads Data Hub was in many ways a template for the clean room boom.
With the new data hub devoted to marketers, Google is creating a place for brands to import data sets and use them to find new audiences for their ads bought on Google’s Display and Video 360 ad network. Google will also allow brands to create ad targeting audiences on YouTube through the data hub for marketers, Sampath said.
“[Marketers] can seamlessly access insights to better inform the way they purchase media,” Sampath said in the announcement. “This means a simplified experience for marketers running queries and activating their first-party data.”