Google makes ad measurement tool for post-cookie marketers

Google is releasing a new measurement tool for advertisers that have increasingly turned to marketing mix modeling tactics, the classic method of analyzing ad campaigns from pre-digital days, as marketers contend with changes to the internet such as the deprecation of third-party cookies. On Thursday, Google announced it would release an open-source marketing mix model, which will be available in code form for measurement providers and advertisers to access, analyze, adapt and adopt. Meridian, as it’s called, comes as major advertisers have returned to this type of measurement in recent years in light of privacy changes online that made it harder to track individual consumers and their media habits. “What is happening in the ecosystem, we’re in a massively pivotal year, where all the tools that we’ve been using for measurement have changed,” said Karen Stocks, Google’s VP of global measurement and audience solutions, in an interview with Ad Age. “We’ve got privacy and regulatory changes that are driving a lot of the agenda of what we’re doing, and marketers are part of that.” Media measurement blog Tracking TV, social and digital updates Click here Google is evolving its own platform to restrict data signals, too, as it is phasing out third-party cookies on Chrome. Google plans to shut off the internet-tracking cookies by the end of the year. Apple started deprecating third-party cookies in 2017, and other data signals from the web and devices have been limited as privacy becomes a bigger priority for regulators and consumers. Ad measurement data also gets obscured as marketers can’t directly track a consumer from one channel, app, site or device to another. With that shift, marketers have leaned back into marketing mix models, which rely on aggregate pools of data to analyze campaigns and see where advertising is having its greatest effect on sales. Meta, which owns Facebook, has dabbled in marketing mix models, too, with a tool called Robyn. Ad Age’s advertising guide to cookie deprecation Google’s Meridian was engineered with a “first of its kind methodology” by enabling it to account for reach and frequency and measure search campaigns, according to Stocks. Search has obvious importance for Google. “We’ve spent a lot of time modeling methodology on search,” Stocks said, “so search as you would probably understand it, is fundamentally different than other forms of media. When you’re on, say, display media, you’re getting messages pushed towards you. When you’re on search, you have high-intent and you’re actually pulling in that media … So that we need to model differently.” Google said the measurement model will be available for marketers to inspect and to customize. “Any provider who currently works in the measurement industry, if they choose to,” Stocks said, “can have a look at the code, interrogate the code, test the code, choose to use the code.” Google said Meridian has so far been released in limited availability, but that it would eventually be open to all marketers and data scientists. The model is free to use, according to Stocks. Measurement is a hot issue in marketing as advertisers explore new platforms and media options. There has been an increase in connected TV advertising, where ratings and measurement services are proliferating. With the changes to data sharing online and an increase in platforms for advertising, it is more complicated to track which ads lead to results and which channels are most responsible for any success. As Chrome’s deprecation of third-party cookies continues to be phased in, “we want to make sure that every marketer has a way to measure every dollar that they’ve invested in an apple-to-apples way that doesn’t compromise user privacy,” Stocks said. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs

Google makes ad measurement tool for post-cookie marketers

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