Building for beyond with the Insights Engine Project

At Google, we’ve always believed that our mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible” is closely aligned with that of the media industry. Without you, there’s no information. This partnership is what fuels our commitment to helping you build thriving and sustainable businesses.

Our commitment is particularly evident in how we’re evolving Google Ad Manager. There’s no doubt that the dual explosions of programmatic advertising and mobile devices have ushered in a new era fueled by digital information. Today, you can be better news publishers, entertainment programmers, or app developers — and make smarter content and business decisions — with the immense amount of information available to you.

We believe there is an emerging opportunity to turn raw information into powerful insights. So, we are announcing the Insights Engine Project, an ongoing initiative to bring Google’s cloud computing and machine learning expertise to Google Ad Manager’s reporting and forecasting systems. We want to make it easier for you to optimize your business needs working with both consumers and advertisers. Our teams have been hard at work, and today we are announcing seven features in development, many of which are already in testing with select partners.

All the information in the world is not of much use if you can’t analyze it and see the results. To make this easier, we are connecting Google Ad Manager to two powerful tools — BigQuery and Data Studio. BigQuery is Google’s fully managed, petabyte-scale, low-cost enterprise data warehouse for analytics. Data Studio turns your raw information into customizable, informative dashboards and reports that are easy to read and share. Both connectors are in beta now, with broad availability in early 2018.

Late last year, we started using Google machine learning to offer opportunities and experiments in Google Ad Manager. So far, our partners have implemented more than 6,700 recommendations worth millions of dollars in new revenue.¹ Often, the most valuable insights are not only into what has happened in your business, but also into what your peers are doing, and especially into what comes next.

In the months to come, a new set of insight cards in Google Ad Manager will give you information about how you are performing relative to your peers on key success metrics like ad viewability, site latency, and more. We will also be launching a new forecasting experience that includes automatic growth detection, seasonal adjustments, and easy viewing of past information side by side with future predictions.

The Insights Engine Project does not stop with business insights. We also believe that learning more about your audience can help you deliver more relevant and higher quality experiences. In the coming months, we will be conducting two limited tests of sharing demographic and interest insights with our partners, including using those insights to deliver more relevant ads in programmatic deals with Display & Video 360 advertisers. These tests will help us explore the best way to make ads and content more relevant for users, while ensuring their privacy and preferences are respected.

Finally, subscriptions are continually an important part of the business of our partners in the news industry. So, we are also testing the application of machine learning and audience insights to the subscription business — helping you find the best moment to reach users, and when they have a higher likelihood of paying.

In a world where AI is first priority and digital information is king, we’re excited to partner with you in new ways to drive sustainable growth beyond the next phase and into the further future. We are confident that when you have the right pieces of information in the right places, the possibilities are endless. The Insights Engine Project starts with the initiatives I have described here, but will continue into 2018 and beyond, so stay tuned to learn more about how these new capabilities might be right for you.

By Jonathan Bellack, Director of Product Management, Google