Google Announces Consumer-Driven Analytics Updates

The updates will help companies quickly spot consumer trends and insights that are uniquely customer-centric.

Need to Know

  • Google has unveiled a number of new and improved features within Analytics, including the ability to quickly spot consumer trends, insights that are uniquely customer-centric.
  • Analytics will now also include modeling that compensates for data that may be restricted due to local regulations on cookies and tracking software.
  • The new Analytics tools are geared towards helping marketers do their jobs more efficiently in a rapidly changing consumer ecosystem.

Analysis

Google has released an update to its Analytics tools, fine-tuning its capabilities to better serve marketers in a rapidly shifting retail ecosystem.

On Wednesday, Google’s VP of measurement, analytics, and buying platforms, Vidhya Srinivasan, unveiled the new Analytics updates in a post on Google’s blog. Srinivasan wrote that, while “millions of businesses, large and small, rely on Google Analytics to understand customer preferences and create better experiences for them,” the increased number of consumers who are shopping online and adjustments in privacy policy and data protection have resulted in approaches to analytics that simply “aren’t keeping pace.”

To help Google Analytics users better execute their marketing goals, Google has created machine learning models that now enable Analytics to alert business owners to significant data trends, that can help businesses act on immediate changes and anticipate future actions. Google has added new predictive metrics that can enable users to create new audiences, reach higher-value customers, and take action to better attract and retain new customers.

The overall idea is to highlight data that is important to marketers using Analytics, and to alert them to it immediately. This can enable marketers to make quick, informed, data-based decisions that are rooted in real-time information about consumer behavior.

Google has also more deeply integrated Analytics with Ads, measuring app and web interactions together, and including conversions from YouTube plus organic channels such as Google Search. This provides a more holistic, comprehensive view of how consumers are finding and interacting with products according to a company’s marketing efforts.

Analytics now also includes modeling that mirrors customer behavior when data is not available due to the absence of cookies, or regulatory developments that restrict data sharing and prioritize user privacy. Google has created anticipatory tools within Analytics that can “fill in the gaps where the data may be incomplete,” Srinivasan writes. “This means that you can rely on Google Analytics to help you measure your marketing results and meet customer needs now as you navigate the recovery and as you face uncertainty in the future.”

Google has been working throughout the pandemic—and across its various platforms—to empower businesses who are shifting their marketing and sales priorities due to COVID-19. The company partnered with Ware2Go, a UPS subsidiary, in August, to provide “free and fast” shipping to businesses that could then be advertised within Google Ads. Last month, Google introduced verified business calls, which will display a company’s name and logo to consumers, in an effort to increase consumer trust and brand awareness; weeks later, Google rolled out a Shopping tool that displays the availability of curbside or in-store pickup.