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We’ve spoken a lot about the role of
algorithms, data, machine learning and
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for humans to play in the automated future?
Absolutely.
In fact, by doing everything we’ve
discussed, we’re freeing up people’s time
so they can spend it on more interesting
creative work, the real custom stuff that
can’t be forced into a template.
For the release of the Pixel 2, we partneredThe beauty of digital marketing is how
easy it is to be contextually relevant.
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all approach, with digital you can take one
creative template—incorporating all the
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and then modify it to match hundreds, if
not thousands, of different use cases.
These use cases span unexpected
moments and contexts, where we
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location, weather or even sports scores,
or expected moments for which we have
planned scenarios built.
For example, for the release of the
Google Home Mini, we did what we
call a moment-mapping exercise. We
outlined all the big and small moments
where we thought our product could be
useful, everything from sporting events
like the World Series to holidays like
Thanksgiving to small daily moments likemaking a grocery list. We then tailored
our template to each of these cases and
used programmatic technology to serve
up the right ad to the right person in the
right moment. If someone was searching
for a turkey recipe, say, we could serve
them a contextually relevant ad.
Thanks to this automated marketing
strategy, we were able to balance
dynamic creative and scale, delivering
more than 1.5 billion impressions while
driving a 6% lift in awareness and a 5%
lift in consideration.ADWEEK | SEPTEMBER 2, 2019
- Use the time
you’ve freed up to
think beyond ads
- Build templates
that can scale
But what good is all this data if
you’re not optimizing for it? That’s
why, rather than relying on out-of-
the-box optimization solutions,
we’re increasingly using marketing
automation tools like Google Marketing
Platform’s custom algorithm.
Marketers can feed in their proprietary
data and the tool then uses machine
learning to optimize campaigns against
the parameters they’ve set.
The results so far have been
promising. For example, in recent Pixel
and Google Assistant campaigns,
we customized our optimization
algorithm based on predictive signals
data collected from over 300 previous
campaigns and ran it directly against
out-of-the-box optimization tools to
see which one was more effective. We
found that our custom algorithm drove
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brand awareness.with The Guardian on a branded content-
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both buzz and real business results,
including a 40% increase in purchase intent
and a 76% increase in people describing the
device as “prestigious.”
But this type of creative work is only
possible if long-standing norms and
processes, built for the old way of doing
things, are dismantled. That means we’re
changing how we staff our teams, adding
more creative talent. In fact, in just the
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the Google Media Lab and across agency-
supporting media is up 5X.
We’ve also changed our processes. For the
Pixel 2 campaign, for example, we split what
is normally one process into two streams,
each one with its own timeline and budget.Stream one, which included all the
automated template work, got 20% of
our time and 90% of our spend. Stream
two, which consisted of all the custom
elements of the campaign, got 80% of
our time and 10% of our spend. We’ve
found that by setting up our teams and
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want to achieve, we’re more likely to make
it happen.
The idea that we might one day
work 15 hours a week still seems
far-fetched. But by following these
four steps, we’re confident we can
make the second promise—of a
marketing industry that uses automation
to unlock new efficiencies, freeing up
people’s time to focus on the more
creative work—a reality.- Optimize for
those data points