Posted by Minhaz Kazi, Google Analytics team

The Data Studio team has been hard at work launching new features to allow for richer visualization and new views on data. Today, we'll highlight some of these recent launches.

Pivot Tables

Pivot tables let users narrow down a large data set or analyze relationships between data points. Additionally, they reorganize user's dimensions and metrics to help quickly summarize data and see relationships that might otherwise be hard to spot.

[フレーム] Example Pivot Table (Help center doc here)

Coordinated Coloring

Coordinated coloring allows users to bind colors to specific data. When a user creates visualizations, Data Studio automatically binds colors to data, so that color:data pairs stay consistent between visualizations and when filtering. This feature is automatically turned on for all new reports, and available in old reports.

[フレーム] Example Coordinated Coloring (Help center doc here)

Google Analytics Sampling Indicator

Google Analytics samples data in order to provide accurate reporting in a timely manner. Data Studio now shows a sampling indicator in Data Studio reports when a component contains sampled Analytics data.


Field Reports Editing

Data Studio has also recently added new options to the chips in reporting. These new options allow you to:

• Rename fields
• Change aggregation types
• Change semantic types
• Change date functions
• Apply % of total, difference from total, or percent difference from total to a metric from within the report.

Example of new field editing options (Help center doc here ).

Submitting and voting for new features

The Data Studio team will continue to introduce new features and product enhancements based on your submissions. You can view requests submitted by other users, upvote your favorites, or create new ones. Learn more here.

Posted by Dave Oleson, Product Manager, Google Data Studio

Now we’re adding new features to make it quicker to access your data.

Community Connectors Developer Launch
We want to make it easy to access all your data within Data Studio. Today we are launching a new Data Studio “Community Connectors” developer program allowing you to visualize data from any source.

Community connectors are created using Google Apps Scripts and are easy to build! (our UX team even built one to monitor bitcoin prices). Once created, a connector can be shared with other users, who can use the connector to access their own data.

Today we have over 10 partners who have built connectors to over 200 sources and we’re excited to welcome more developers and data providers to the Data Studio community. Check out the Community Connector Gallery to explore what our partners built.


Embedded Reports


Data Control
Large organizations and agencies often have access to many accounts; for example, thousands of AdWords accounts, or hundreds YouTube channels. To simplify reporting, the new data control allows you to reuse a single report across all your accounts, dramatically reducing the time it takes to view data in a report. The data control can also be used to templatize reports, allowing viewers to see their data in a report without having to create anything in Data Studio. The data control supports the following connectors: AdWords (Account & MCC), YouTube Analytics, Search Console, DoubleClick Campaign Manager, and Google Analytics. We plan to add support for more connectors in the future.


Data Studio report with AdWords, Search Console, YouTube, and DoubleClick Data Controls

And a few other updates
We’ve also added a couple of additional capabilities. You can now export any chart data directly to Google Sheets. We added a new Google Cloud Storage connector, making it easy to use Data Studio with your data in Google Cloud Storage. We’ve added SSL support for the MySQL connector. We’ve added the ability to see the totals in the table visualization. And finally, we’ve made the product available in Russia.

These announcements make accessing your data within Google Data Studio easier than ever. We’re excited to see what people do with them. For more information, check out:

• Community Connector Gallery
• Community Connector Developer Program
• Report Embedding help center
• Data Control help center
• Google Cloud Storage Connector help center

Thanks!

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, on behalf of the entire Data Studio team

The Data Studio team is constantly working on new features to improve the user experience for both report creators and viewers! In this blog post we’ll highlight some recent launches that you may have missed.

Filter controls: search
Filters give report viewers a powerful way to slice data by specific segments. But filters with hundreds or even thousands of possible values to choose from were previously difficult to use, requiring scrolling through very long lists of filter items. We recently added a search feature within the filter component, letting users quickly find and select or deselect specific items.
[フレーム]

Filter controls: single-select
There are also scenarios when it only makes sense to filter a report on a single value, as filtering on multiple values would return confusing or nonsensical data. Report creators now have the ability to configure filters to allow for single-selection only.
[フレーム]

Combo charts
New Combo charts allow users to create a line chart with a non-time-based dimension on the X-axis (previously only time-based dimensions were supported). The new component can plot a single dimension with up to 5 metrics, or 2 dimensions with a single metric. Learn more about Combo charts here.
[フレーム]

Links in tabular data
Tables in Data Studio reports can now display clickable links! This feature introduces a new type of interactivity, as viewers can now be redirected to to relevant content outside the report. To use this feature, report owners must use a data source containing a column of URLs. Data Studio will detect this column and assign it to the URL field type (if automatic detection does not work data source owners can also set the field type to URL manually). Learn more about this here.
[フレーム]

Submitting and voting for new features
The Data Studio team will continue to introduce new features and product enhancements. Have a feature request? You can view requests submitted by other users, upvote your favorites, or create new ones. Learn more here.

Posted by Alon Gotesman, Product Manager, Google Data Studio

Today we’ve made it dramatically easier to view your Google Analytics data in Data Studio using the new Data control. When a report is created using the Data Control, all viewers can see their own data in the report, without creating anything.

Check out these quick video to see this feature in action [フレーム]
Try it out now!
We added the Data control to these templates so you test it out with your data:  

Overview Report

Ecommerce Template

This feature is great if you:
Are an agency or large organization with access to many Google Analytics views and do not want to create a Data Studio report for each view. For example, if you have a set of charts and data you monitor every day, you can now build a report in Data Studio with those charts and data, add the Data Control, and quickly go between any of the views you have access to, allowing you to monitor your entire business very fast.

Are a large organization with many websites across: different brands, different regions, or different business units, and want to unify reporting and KPIs across your entire organization. Now you can build a template report in Data Studio, add the Data Control, and share the report across your organization. Every user will be able to see their data, in your curated report.

The data control is public for all users.

Read the Help Center for more details on how to use it.

If you build an exciting report, please submit to our gallery, so we can showcase it.

Posted By Nick Mihailovski, Product Manager, Data Studio

Last month we announced we removed the five report limit in Data Studio, allowing you to create and share as many reports as needed — all for free. Today we are opening up access to 180+ countries, enabling even more businesses to easily connect to data and create beautiful, informative reports that are easy to read, easy to share, and fully customizable.


In addition to making Data Studio accessible in more countries, we’re also adding more powerful features to help you better analyze and report on your data, including:

Filters

You can now filter your data in more ways, and it's easier to reuse filters on multiple charts. This new functionality includes:

1. Reuse – Create a filter once and then use it on as many different components on the report as you want. No more recreating identical filters!
2. Compound filtering – Combine multiple AND and OR filter conditions together into one reusable filter.
3. Metric filters – Filter metric values that are too large, too small, or within a specified range.

Learn more in the Filter Help Center article.

Google Analytics segments

You can now apply Google Analytics segments to your charts!

A Google Analytics segment represents a subset of your data, for example, Returning Users. You can now see all your Google Analytics segments in Data Studio and apply them to any chart. And, if you update the definition of your segments in Google Analytics, those changes will apply to the segments in Data Studio.

Learn more in the Segments Help Center article.


More powerful data connectors

We’ve improved several of our most popular data connectors, YouTube, DoubleClick Campaign Manager, and AdWords, by adding many new dimensions and metrics. Some highlights include adding YouTube video title, DoubleClick Campaign Manager revenue and cross-environment conversions broken out by app, AdWords campaign ID, and keyword quality score. For a full list of all the new fields, please see the Data Studio release notes.

Google Cloud Platform integrations
We’re also announcing tighter integration with the Google Cloud Platform to enable faster data reporting at scale and more powerful functionality.

File upload

Not all your data resides within SQL or Google databases. Data Studio now has the ability to upload up to 2GB of CSV data for free enabling you to bring in data from anywhere. Have more data? Upload directly into BigQuery using your BigQuery account to take advantage of the scalable processing power of Google's infrastructure.

Tighter BigQuery integration

Not only can you upload data directly into BigQuery, Data Studio now supports Standard SQL in BigQuery for custom queries and partitioned tables.

Learn more about these new features
Not sure where to start? You can browse our gallery of Data Studio templates. Need more information on these new features? Visit the Help Center articles for more details:

• Filters
• Segments
• File Upload

As always, your feedback and questions are welcome in the Data Studio community forum.

Happy reporting!

An AdWords manager account (MCC) is a powerful tool for handling multiple AdWords accounts. Manager accounts allow users to link several accounts so they can be viewed in a single location, and are frequently used by third-party advertisers such as agencies and marketing professionals.

Today the Data Studio team is releasing an enhanced AdWords connector, giving users the ability to select MCC sub-accounts and set up reports for accounts containing multiple sub-account currencies.

New capabilities

There are two major enhancements to the AdWords connector:

1. Selecting sub-accounts: prior to this release it was only possible to connect to an entire MCC account as the data source for a Data Studio report. This enhancement allows users to define a data source by selecting up to 75 individual sub-accounts within an MCC account.

2. Filtering on currencies: one common challenge with MCC accounts occurs when sub-accounts are set to different currencies. While metrics such as impressions and clicks can be aggregated correctly across these sub-accounts, currency fields like Cost and Average CPC cannot. The enhanced AdWords connector allows MCC account holders to filter sub-accounts by currency to avoid this problem, and removes currency fields from the connector if multiple currencies are present.

Connecting to AdWords MCC accounts
To connect to MCC accounts, create a new Data Studio data source and select the AdWords connector. If you have access to an MCC account, a “MANAGER ACCOUNTS” option will appear. The account holder can then select sub-accounts they are interested in, or use the pull-down menu in the upper-right corner to filter for sub-account currencies.

Note that existing Data Studio connections to MCC accounts must be edited and reconnected or recreated from scratch to take advantage of the new enhancements.

Your feedback and questions is welcomed in the Data Studio community forums.

Happy Reporting!

Posted by Alon Gotesman, Google Data Studio team

Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps webmasters monitor and maintain their site's presence in Google Search results. Search Console helps users understand how Google views their site and allows them to optimize their performance in search results.

Search Console’s Search Analytics feature shows webmasters how often their site appears in Google search results for various keywords. This data is extremely powerful but currently lives in Search Console’s Search Analytics Report and is hard to combine with other data sources.

Today we are announcing a new Data Studio connector for Search Console. With this launch users can pull their data into Data Studio to build reports that include impressions, clicks, and average position broken out by keyword, date, country, and device.

Search Console users can now build Data Studio reports to understand how their search traffic changes over time, where traffic is coming from, and what search queries are most likely to drive traffic to their sites. Users can also filter reports for mobile traffic to improve mobile targeting, and to analyze clickthrough rates for various organic search terms.

As always, Data Studio report creators can add components from other data sources into a single report. With this new connector, users can use the Search Console and AdWords connectors to compare performance across paid and organic search, or add Google Analytics data to analyze site-side performance.

Note that Search Console metrics can be aggregated by either site or by page (URL). This is configured in the Data Source creation flow, where users can select either “Site Impression” or “URL Impression”. To learn more about the distinction between these two methods please see the Search Analytics Report Help Center article.

Want to learn more? Looking for a new connector in Data Studio?

To learn more about the new Search Console connector, please visit our Help Center or post your questions in the Data Studio community forums.

Is there a specific data service you wish to be able to access and visualize through Data Studio? We welcome your feedback via the connector feedback form — we read all responses and use them to prioritize new connectors.

Happy reporting!

Posted by The Data Studio team

Today, Google's mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful is even more relevant and broad reaching. And last year’s launch of both free and enterprise versions of Data Studio, a new dashboarding and reporting tool, is a testament to our commitment to this vision. Over the past 9 months we’ve received positive feedback and seen tremendous demand for the product. And we’ve continued to enhance the product making it even easier to use via templates and adding many new data connectors.

To enable more businesses to get full value from Data Studio we are making an important change — we are removing the 5 report limit in Data Studio. You now create and share as many reports as you need — all for free.

This change combined with a very exciting roadmap for 2017 are designed to accelerate our goal to help you fully leverage all your data across your organization and to ultimately make better decisions.

Thank you for using Google Data Studio and as always, please share your thoughts and feedback as to how we can improve the product. We’re excited by what the future holds!

Happy Analyzing.

Posted By Nick Mihailovski, Product Manager, Google Data Studio

It’s often said that marketing is both an art and a science. The science side is increasingly in the spotlight as companies use data to optimize the customer experience at every touchpoint. But, ensuring that insights surfaced from that data lead to action requires the arts of communication and collaboration.

Highly data-driven organizations are three times more likely than others to report significant improvement in decision-making.¹ Yet, 62% of executives still rely more on experience than data to make their decisions.² When the stakes are high, decision-makers need information they can trust, easily consume, and understand.

Below are three ways marketing organizations can take action on their data to better support decisions:

1. Organize
Whether you have trouble connecting teams or data sources, silos can prevent your marketing organization from reaching current and potential customers. Data silos prevent you from gaining a holistic view of the customer journey. Organizational silos slow down the flow of information and ideas. What’s more, organizational silos are the number one barrier to improving customer experience.³

Outline a data strategy to organize and integrate information sources so you have the complete picture to your customers’ journeys. Collaboration and communication between departments is also key. Better yet, make sure marketers and analysts all have access to the same data sets and technology.

2. Visualize
Good data storytelling means making data easy to process. By taking the time to visualize your data, you’ll be able to tell a compelling story at a glance.

The goal of a revenue chart, heat map, or bar graph should be to simplify a complicated idea or communicate a body of information in seconds. Tools can help make data quickly actionable by taking multiple data sources and turning them into interactive reports and dashboards. Focus on reducing misinterpretations of your data and making it easy for decision makers to act.

3. Share
If the data can’t be understood, its insights cannot be acted on. But just as important, if the data and ideas are not shared with the right people at the right time, decision makers can’t fully leverage the power of marketing data.

“Real-time data is critically important. Otherwise, business leaders may be making decisions off data that is no longer relevant. The business landscape changes so quickly, and stale data may inadvertently lead to the wrong decision,” says Suzanne Mumford, head of marketing for the Google Analytics 360 Suite.

Look for solutions that offer data visualization and built-in collaboration capabilities so you can start practicing all three steps right away:

• Organize workflow and integrate data from multiple sources
• Visualize information by creating easy-to-digest, interactive reports
• Share insights by setting up dashboards with real-time collaboration

The companies that shine at optimizing the customer experience go beyond analytics and measurement. The whole organization collaborates in order to connect the data dots and communicate the meaning and impact of insights surfaced. Leading marketing organizations build a culture of growth — one that uses data, testing, and optimization to improve the customer experience every day — and share insights in ways that everyone across the organization can understand and act on.


Download “Measuring Marketing Insights,” a collection of Harvard Business Review articles, to learn more about how to turn data into action.

A version of this article first appeared as sponsor content on HBR.org in August 2016.

¹ PwC's Global Data and Analytics Survey, Big Decisions™, Base: 1,135 senior executives, Global, May 2016
² PwC's Global Data and Analytics Survey, Big Decisions™, Base: 2,106 senior executives, Global, May 2016
³ Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, "Marketing in the Driver's Seat: Using Analytics to Create Customer Value," 2015.


Posted by Karen Budell, Content Marketing Manager, Google Analytics 360 Suite

Google Data Studio (beta) allows users to connect, transform, visualize, and share data no matter where it lives. Today we are happy to announce that DoubleClick Campaign Manager (DCM) customers can pull their data into Data Studio dashboards instantly!


With this new connector, DCM customers no longer need to import data into spreadsheets. Users can now quickly create dashboards with over 50 DCM metrics and dimensions. These dashboards are an effective way to track and optimize campaign performance and share reports with client and agency stakeholders.

Creating a new report with DCM data
Ready to get started? The first step is to connect to your DCM network or advertiser through the Data Sources page.



Next you can create a new report from scratch or use our DCM template. With just a few clicks, the dashboard is populated with your data.

Want to learn more? Looking for a new connector in Data Studio?

To learn more about the new DCM connector, please visit our Help Center or post your questions in the Data Studio community forums.

Is there a specific data service you wish to be able to access and visualize through Data Studio? We welcome your feedback via the connector feedback form — we read all responses and use them to prioritize new connectors.

Happy reporting!

The Data Studio team

Posted by Alon Gotesman, Google Data Studio team

The Year of the Supershopper
We all have that friend — the one who somehow knows the latest brands, the season’s must-have products, and where to find the best deals at the snap of a finger. In years past, this friend was an enigma, making us wonder how does he or she do it?

Today, we can all be that friend. With the ability to instantly discover, research, and purchase, shoppers around the world are more informed and more efficient than ever before - they’ve transformed into supershoppers seemingly overnight.

But what defines supershoppers? And what does this mean for retailers trying to win them over this holiday season? Let’s find out.


They Keep Their Options Open
Last year, more than 50% of holiday shoppers said they were open to purchasing from new retailers¹. This is especially true online. More than three-quarters of smartphone shoppers who usually go to the same physical stores when they shop for products are very open to new retailers and brands online². Why? Mobile makes it easy to explore all of your options no matter when or where you’re shopping. In fact, after searching on Google, 76% of mobile shoppers have changed their mind about which retailer or brand to purchase³.
Mobile is Their Muse
It used to be that shoppers would thumb through catalogues or stare longingly at the holiday window displays, but mobile is now the super shopper’s go-to source for inspiration. Sixty-four percent of smartphone shoppers turn to mobile search for ideas about what to buy before heading into a store⁴. And 1 in 4 mobile video viewers in the U.S. have visited YouTube for help with a purchase decision while they were at a store or visiting a store's website⁵.

But shoppers aren’t only making purchase decisions, they’re discovering new brands and products along the way: more than half of smartphone users have discovered a new company or product when conducting a search on their phones⁶.

They Want the Best - Not the Cheapest
In July we learned that shoppers are on the quest for the best — and this still rings true more than ever today. Last holiday, mobile searches related to “best gift” grew 70% year over year while mobile searches related to cheap or inexpensive gifts grew about 35%⁷. They’re also willing to do the research to the make the best decision: on YouTube, mobile watch time for product review videos has grown 60% year over year⁸.

But supershoppers don’t only want the best - they want personalized, unique, cool gifts. Mobile searches related to “unique gifts” grew more than 65% while mobile searches related to “cool gifts” grew a whopping 80%⁹.

Mobile is Their Door to the Store
Although more and more people are willing to buy on mobile, we know that mobile is still used predominantly as a door to the store. In fact, 76% of people who search for something nearby on their smartphone visit a related business within a day, and 28% of those searches result in a purchase¹⁰.

Once they’re inside your store, they expect the experience to be a seamless one: more than 40% of smartphone shoppers want retailers to automatically surface relevant information such as the location of the item in the store, a special deal or related products¹¹.

They Shop ‘Til they Drop
Supershoppers live up to their name as the holiday season progresses. From November through mid-December we see online conversion rates increase across devices. Last year, on mobile alone, they jumped 30% on Black Friday and 50% on Cyber Monday when compared to November 1¹².



Tips to Using Analytics to Reach Today’s Shopper
Analytics is a critical marketing tool all year long. But that importance is amplified during the holiday season. Here are five ideas on how you can use analytics to get the most out of the holiday shopping season.

1. Understand which days drive the most sales — be there. In order to develop a successful holiday retail strategy, it’s important to first understand the days that drive the most sales for your business. Once you understand this, you can craft strategy — across mobile, desktop, and tablet — that optimizes your media and promotion not only for these days, but for the entire holiday season.
For example, adjust bids for auction-based media and use the lift in transaction rates over the average transaction rate as your bid multiplier. Use Smart Bidding in AdWords or DoubleClick Search to maximize your performance.

2. Get personal when engaging with window shoppers. The great thing about the holidays is that you can start shopping at any time — and then wait for discounts. Many consumers may already be browsing your site looking for gift ideas. This is an audience that may convert at a higher rate. Use Google Analytics to create remarketing lists including these shoppers, and then customize your marketing campaigns to better suit their needs.

But don’t stop there: Remember, supershoppers crave personalization. Test different variations of your website with this same audience to offer more customized experiences. Try Google Optimize, our free site testing and personalization tool, to get started.

3. Act fast: Create a culture of optimization. Your holiday marketing plans are set long before the holiday season starts. It’s very important to monitor your activities to ensure they’re driving business growth. And if they’re not you need to take action by immediately identifying areas of opportunity and improvement.

Google Analytics offers a number of ways to help simplify reporting, sift through data, and spotlight insights for you. Custom reports, dashboards and shortcuts all let you customize reporting so you spend less time looking for data and more time analyzing important information. Or better yet, try Google Data Studio and create a holiday shopping dashboard for different teams in your organization.

4. Analyze your performance against your competitors. Benchmarking your business against your competitors helps you see the big picture. If you’re a Google Analytics user, you can tailor this analysis and approach, using your own data and the data available in our benchmarking reports. The benefit of using those reports is that they will provide you a comparison between your data and your competitors, using characteristics such as website traffic, country and detailed vertical information.

5. Start developing your New Year marketing strategy. With so many new shoppers entering your stores, sites, and apps, data and analytics are critical to helping you convert first-time shoppers into long-term, loyal customers. Use your website data to create lists of first-time customers during the holidays, and deliver personalized communication across channels to build relationships. With Google Analytics you can create remarketing lists and easily connect with this audience.

Happy analyzing!

Posted by Julie Krueger, Retail Managing Director, Google and Casey Carey, Director of Analytics Marketing, Google

1. Google/ Ipsos, Post Holiday Shopping Intentions Study - Total Shoppers Report, Jan 2016, Base: US Holiday Shoppers, n=1,500
2. Google/Euromonitor International, Micro-Moments Survey, US, July 2016, Smartphone shoppers = 1000, Same store shoppers = 801
3. Google/Euromonitor International, Micro-Moments Survey, US, July 2016, Smartphone shoppers = 1000
4. Google/Euromonitor International, Micro-Moments Survey, US, July 2016, Smartphone shoppers = 1000
5. Google-commissioned Ipsos Brand Building on Mobile Survey, U.S., December 2015 n=1000, 18-54 year olds
6. Google/Ipsos, "Consumers in the Micro-Moment," Wave 3, U.S., n=1291 online smartphone users 18+, August 2015
7. Source: Google Search Data, Apparel, Home & garden, Beauty & personal care, Computers & electronics, Gifts, Toys & games, Photo & video, Nov-Dec 2014 vs Nov-Dec 2015, United States
8. YouTube data, U.S., Classification as a “Product Review" video was based on public data such as headlines and tags, and may not account for every such video available on YouTube, Nov - Dec 2014 and Nov - Dec 2015
9. Google Search Data, Apparel, Home & garden, Beauty & personal care, Computers & electronics, Gifts, Toys & games, Photo & video, Nov-Dec 2014 vs Nov-Dec 2015, United States
10. Google/Purchased Digital Diary: How Consumers Solve Their Needs in the Moment, May 2016, Representative sample of US Smartphone users = 1000. Local searchers = 634, Purchases = 1,140
11. Google/Euromonitor International, Micro-Moments Survey, US, July 2016, Smartphone shoppers = 1000
12. Google Analytics Shopping category data, Nov 1, 2015–December 14, 2015, United States

We launched Google Data Studio (beta) in the U.S. earlier this year, and last week, we expanded availability to 21 additional countries.* We’re excited to offer Data Studio to companies across the globe so they can easily create and share reports and dashboards, and ultimately use insights and collaboration to make better business decisions.

Organizations today collect an increasingly large amount of data. In a world of web analytics, CRM systems, and third-party sources, data-driven decisions should be easier than ever before. However, all of this data has presented a significant challenge: making it easily accessible and useful.

Having multiple data sources that live in silos within your organization compromises your ability to spot critical business opportunities and issues when they matter most. This is a widespread challenge, with 84% of marketers saying they don’t believe their data sources are well-integrated, according to a 2016 Forrester study.

Data Studio solves this problem by allowing you to easily connect your data and create beautiful, informative reports that are easy to read, easy to share, and fully customizable. Create up to five custom reports with unlimited editing and sharing. All for free.

Get started today so you can:

• Put all your data to work. Easily access the data sources you need to understand your business and make better decisions.

• Transform your data. Quickly transform raw data into easy-to-follow reports and dashboards — no code or queries required.

• Build engaging reports and dashboards. Data Studio gives you the ability to create meaningful, shareable charts and graphs that bring your data to life.

• Leverage teamwork that works. Work together quickly, from anywhere, by sharing reports via Google Drive.

Not sure where to start? Good news: We’re releasing our first batch of templates today to remove that hurdle. Businesses can use a library of templates to get up and running in a matter of minutes.



Get started for free.

Happy reporting!
The Data Studio team


Posted by Kevin Fields, Product Marketing Manager, Data Studio

This past March, we launched the Google Analytics 360 Suite, a set of integrated data and marketing analytics products designed for the needs of enterprise-class marketers in today’s multi-screen world.

Today we have another exciting announcement. Next month we’ll start rolling out a new product: Google Optimize — a free version of our enterprise-class testing and personalization product, Google Optimize 360. Google Optimize will be globally available at that time. Additionally, we’re including enhancements to many of our existing free products. Read on for details.

Businesses of all sizes need tools to measure and succeed

First of all, why this free product now? Because companies big and small face the same challenge today: Consumer expectations are higher than ever in a mobile-first world. How can brands be more useful to people in their moments of need? With ever more data flooding in, marketers need access to the right data so they can uncover useful insights — and act on them quickly.

The companies that are already making this leap from data to action are transforming their businesses by becoming more useful to consumers throughout these micro-moments. How? Analytics and testing are the key. In fact, according to an Econsultancy survey of 4,000 marketers, the top two digital trends in 2020 are going to be a focus on customer experience (24%) and personalization (23%).

That’s what has led to today's announcement. We've made several advancements to the free versions of our analytics products to bring modern measurement to everyone, and help them create happier customers by providing more relevant experiences. Let’s take a closer look.

1. How can every business deliver personalized customer experiences?
   Google Optimize (beta). This free web and mobile-web testing and personalization tool helps businesses improve their customer experiences and business metrics. Because it’s built on top of Google Analytics, businesses can use their existing information to experiment and personalize site experiences with minimal setup requirements. Request an invite.

1. Scorecard strip: in order to highlight the overall metrics for traffic volume (Users, Sessions, Impressions) and outcomes (CTR, Revenue, Signups) we created a grey strip in the top of the chart. They show the last 28 days values, and right below them you will see a comparison to last period (green is good, red is bad).
   
2. Line charts: while the total metric value is very important, it is also critical to keep track of the trends. The two line charts in the report will help the viewer understand if there are any sudden spikes or declines that require additional attention. In this case we chose the main volume metric (Impressions) and the main outcome metric (Revenue).
   
3. Donut charts: who doesn’t love donuts?! Those charts are used to provide an overview of the most important Channels when it comes to the two conversion metrics: Publisher Revenue and Newsletter Signups. In summary, Organic brings a lot of Revenue and Display brings a lot of Signups.
   
4. Tables: there is no chart that can beat a table when it comes to presenting detailed data. The two tables in the bottom left corner of the report show, for each article and author (author name is sent to Google Analytics through a Custom Dimension), how many impressions, the CTR, and the total Revenue. Using bar charts and heatmaps in a table greatly improves its readability.
   
5. Bar charts: in the bottom right corner two bar charts were added to add more info about new and returning users and the devices used.
   

When the 2016 Olympics kicked off almost three weeks ago, many TV advertisers were crossing their fingers that their strategy would pay off. Reaching as many as an estimated 27.9 million total viewers in the U.S., they were hoping their ads delivered relevant and compelling creative to the right audiences. To answer the pay-off question, advertisers will predominately look at three specific areas of performance:

1. Which ads were noticed by the audience?
2. Which ads drove interest, shifted perception, and increased intent?
3. And, which ads drove actual consumer response?

To get some insights into these questions, Google evaluated the top 12 brands totaling over 3.5 billion impressions that aired ads during the NBC broadcasts of the event. The analysis is based on a combination of consumer surveys and second-screen (mobile, desktop, and tablet) response data. Presented in a live Google Data Studio dashboard, the result is a unique view into the full-funnel performance of the ads evaluated.

See

Commercials during large, live sporting events like the Olympics are often uniquely created to leverage both the scale of the audience and the context of the event. Whether it is telling the personal story of an athlete or playing to our passions like patriotism, they are intended to strike an emotional connection, entertain us, or make us stand up and take notice.

Nike's "Unlimited" ads were the big winner with almost 35% of respondents having remembered seeing the ads when prompted. Including an ad with the first quadruple amputee to summit Mount Kilimanjaro, Nike's powerful ads outpaced typical recall rates in the 20%-25% range. Coca Cola was a close second with their "That's gold" ads which mixed Olympic competition with everyday moments. Tide, McDonald's, and Samsung rounded out the top five with respectable recall rates. On overage, ad recall rates for the top five improved 3% percentage points from the initial analysis following the opening ceremonies.
Additionally, of those respondents recalling the ad, only 37% could recall the specific product or service featured in the ad. The net is that only about 13% of viewers can recall both the brand and product in a specific advertisement. Tide's"Small can be powerful" ad with Simone Biles had the highest product recall rate at just over 50%.

Think

Advertisers also want the ad to shift perceptions and create interest in the product or service featured. By surveying both viewers who did not see the ad (unexposed) and those who did see the ad (exposed), we are able to get insights into the impact of each ad’s messaging and creative. Overall, the results were impressive. On average, respondents who saw the ads were 27% more positive about the associated brands than those who did not. Likewise, respondents who saw the ads were 32% more likely to find out more and/or purchase the product being advertised.

Compared to the lift measured during the opening ceremonies, both favorability and intent increased significantly over the span of the Olympics increasing ten and twelve percentage points respectively.
Interestingly, the baseline favorability and purchase intent for both non-sponsors and Olympic sponsors are relatively equal. However, non-sponsors saw a greater lift than sponsors with three more percentage points for favorability and seven more percentage points for intent.

Do

These commercials don’t just make us laugh or make us feel better about the brand — they also make us search and visit websites. Second-screen searching—whether it’s to re-engage with the ad or to learn more about the product — is a powerful indication of desire. By measuring incremental search queries on Google during the broadcast that are specific and modeled to be attributable to ads shown, we are now able to include responses in our analysis. During the broadcasts, TV ad driven searches were almost exclusively on mobile — 83% compared to an average of 55% for those brands when the ads were not airing. For brands, that means a presence on the TV screen isn’t complete without a strategy for small screens, as well.

"83% of searches on Google as a result of seeing the ads occurred on phones and another 10% occurred on tablets making a second screen strategy key to TV advertising."

BMW featured multiple products including a "Performance wheelchair" and garnered the top spot on the podium with a response strength index of 3.21. McDonald’s and Samsung fought it out for the silver and bronze with 2.01 and 1.57 respectively. The answer to the question “Do emotional ads work as well as product ads?” is, in this instance, “Yes.” Both emotional and product ad creatives drove 50% more searches on average. Also interestingly, ads by non-sponsors drove 17% more searches than their sponsor counterparts.
Finally, Coca Cola was the overall winner with strong full-funnel performance placing in the top three across all three funnel stages.

Whether people are tuning into the Olympics or their favorite TV show, they use their smartphones to search for information triggered by what they’re seeing. In these micro-moments, advertisers need to be there, be useful, and be accountable. That means if you advertise on TV, you can now get a new view of performance across each stage of the funnel — using a combination of consumer surveys and digital response, all in a matter of days. Armed with these new insights, advertisers are now able to better understand and improve the performance of these investments in concert with their digital media.

Sourcing

Using Google Surveys 360 to provide consumer ad awareness and interest research, an online survey was conducted in the United States during the period 8/19 - 8/21/16 using a validated, representative sample with a minimum of 700 respondents. Response data is based on incremental TV ad-driven search queries (Google) during the course of the broadcast that are specific to the ad shown and are modeled by Google Attribution 360 to be attributable to the airings of the commercials. Response data is normalized for total ad impressions during the broadcast for each advertiser.

Happy Analyzing,

Posted by Casey Carey, Director of Marketing, Google Analytics