Item: Google Marketing Platform
Rating: 5
Author: Tegan Jenner

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use several Google products within our organization that [is] part of the Google Marketing Platform -- specifically, Google Analytics, Data Studio, Tag Manager, Campaign Manager. We had been using these products individually to run ads, manage site tags, and check website traffic performance. We are also heavy utilizers of Google Data Studio (in combination with Improvado and Google Big Query) to provide live performance dashboards to our clients that show performance from Google and non-Google platforms.

Pros and Cons

Acts as a hub to access all your most common Google Products.
Tag Manager in particular simplifies website tag implementation and centralizes the information.
Allows for better data sharing/connectivity between your Google products (ex: Search ads and Google Analytics).

I find the Campaign Manager menu + UI to [be] very inconvenient to use. You end up opening several windows just to access different information from the same platform. They break up Campaign Manager 360 into Trafficking, Planning, and Reporting & Attribution. I would prefer if these 3 sections were more seamlessly integrated together. They almost act as separate UIs.

Return on Investment

The conversion tracking is the major strength of GMP. I like the flexibility with attribution modeling.
When it comes to [spending] an impression delivery for display campaigns set up through GMP, we basically avoid any data created from the platform. Most of the Display work we do involves flat-rate contracts that are not accurately represented through GMP's reporting. When we integrate GMP data into our reporting, we only use it for Conversion reporting and pull all other performance from our DSP UI.

Alternatives Considered

I have not used any competitor products to Google Marketing Platform.

Key Insights

Do you think Google Marketing Platform delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Google Marketing Platform's feature set?

Did Google Marketing Platform live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Google Marketing Platform go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Google Marketing Platform again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

I feel pretty neutral about Google Marketing Platform. For the longest time, my company wasn't using it because each of the features (Data Studio, Analytics, etc.) could be accessed separately. In fact, most of the time, I don't even go into Google Marketing Platform because it's easier to directly navigate to the individual platforms. There are very few features about GMP that can only be accessed from the GMP UI. The Integrations Center is probably the main feature I utilize from the GMP UI, which allows me to see a summary of the integrations I have in place across all my client properties and accounts.

I only really use a couple features in GMP

Overall Satisfaction with Google Marketing Platform (formerly DoubleClick)