Google launches cross-device reporting feature

Advertisers, agencies, and publishers can now turn to Google Signals (GS) to track prospects, instead of devices. The new feature promises to help with the optimization of both advertising expenditure and the user experience across devices.

According to Prantik Mazumdar, CEO of Happy Marketer, cross-device advertising has been shown to increase conversions by around 40% in comparison to single-device marketing. He adds that a marketer can tailor the messaging and targeting of an ad in a more precise manner through the capability, potentially driving higher conversions.

GS is currently in beta testing and is part of wider effort to integrate the company's web analytics service portfolio into the rebranded Google Marketing Platform, granting users the ability to base targeting on datasets generated in Google Analytics. In the age of GDPR, only users that have turned on Ads Personalization will be tracked.

"The consent-based opt-in nature of Ads Personalization means that users may be more receptive to the ads being served," said Danish Ayub, CEO of MWM Studioz. "We could potentially save ourselves the trouble of displaying an awareness-focused ad to a prospect on all her devices. This means we can map ads to appear in a sequence of the user-awareness journey, serving new ads with every in-device impression, increasing CTR or conversions over time."

As the bridge between the analytics and marketing capabilities of Google, GS aims to offer advertisers, agencies, and publishers a better understanding of customers across devices.

"Given the popularity and prevalence of the Google stack globally, the global rollout of Google Signals will make cross-device tracking and marketing very accessible to a lot of marketers, and they would get a step closer to taking meaningful marketing actions based on the single view of the customer,” said Mazumdar.

Paid search

Another update this week pertains to Google AdWords. The paid search service is now offering advertisers and agencies the ability to include a third line of text in ads. This feature will go into effect at the end of August, with Responsive Search Ads exiting beta by September.

An Apple exclusive?

The final update pertains to the launch of Cameo, an app by Google for iOS. Similar to WIRED's YouTube series featuring celebrities answering the web's most searched questions, the Cameo app allowers celebrities and public figures to respond to questions asked about them or their area of expertise. Potential use cases could pertain to avenues of PR, including stakeholder engagement, reputation management or customer service.