Considering an Ad Server? Here's Why You Need to Look at Campaign Manager 360.

Two questions always come up when speaking with clients about Campaign Manager 360 (CM360) and whether they really need an ad server: do you care about your data, and is making more informed decisions important to your business? This is not meant to be snarky but rather to understand what the goal is for our clients. 

There are so many digital platform options out there for a marketer to choose from it often is difficult to understand which is the right one. Lots of platforms have great features and niche audiences mean a company may need to work with several platforms or providers to achieve their overall goals, and that’s okay! It would be unrealistic to expect a company to utilize just one platform or provider. The beauty of CM360 is that it allows for the freedom to run digital campaigns via direct buys, social media, paid search and programmatically through DSPs. Ultimately, it provides the ability to de-silo that marketing stack and gain a better understanding of the end user’s holistic interactions with those ads. 

SO WHAT DOES CM360 DO ANYWAY? 

CM360 has several functions but basically, it should be the central source of truth on media buys for marketers. It is the premier ad server in the world, and it is the central hub of the Google Marketing Platform. It not only centralizes data management, but it also integrates with other Google platforms for data and audience sharing. CM360 will host and serve all creative assets while simultaneously tracking performance data related to impressions, clicks and viewability. Finally, it tracks and de-dupes conversion data and creates first-party audience segments. 

WHY YOU SHOULD CONSIDER CM360

Let’s get back to those questions about caring about your data and making more informed decisions. CM360 provides a robust reporting stack that includes the following options and report types:

• Summary reports give you an overview of campaign performance and let you drill down to see the details for specific advertisers or campaigns. This option is great for troubleshooting or quickly accessing high-level data.
• Report Builder enables you to run highly customized reports you download as spreadsheets. These reports let you choose exactly the items you want to report on, the precise date range and the metrics you need to understand your campaigns’ performance.
• Attribution reporting enables you to view Multi-Channel Funnel reports to understand the role that specific channels played in your conversions. These reports feature basic conversion tracking of up to 200 interactions via view-through, click-through and unattributed conversions, as well as assisted conversions. In addition, you can gain insight into top conversion paths, time lag, path length and the customizable attribution modeling tool, which mirrors the options available in Google Analytics. 
• Brand Controls protects your ads from serving against unsafe content. You have the ability to set brand safety controls allowing you to flag unsafe content and block ads from serving. Additionally, you will find reports to help you analyze tagging issues and see the impact brand safety controls have on your campaigns.

With all of this data at their fingertips, companies can make more informed decisions on those marketing campaigns. Understanding where campaign overlap is across multiple platforms, which creatives are driving the best performance and where users are falling off in their funnel helps to not only increase sales but also eliminate wasted spending. 

CM360 BRINGS IT ALL TOGETHER

Within the digital advertising world, solving a need is often the main reason companies choose to move forward with a platform. Everything moves and changes so quickly that we need to be nimble. Implementing CM360 into your marketing stack will solve short-term needs like de-siloing your marketing stack and simplifying day-to-day campaign management with features like creative rotation and optimization settings. However, it also solves long-term needs, such as being that trusted source of truth, providing the advanced reporting insights you need to make more informed decisions on future campaigns, and the ability to track or integrate with any media platform you choose to use in the future. 

If you have questions about CM360 or our services, please Contact Us for more information.