Are Google Ads looking to cement itself as THE ads platform with new Search 360?

Ten years ago Search 360 was introduced as an all in one platform for agencies to manage campaigns across multiple platforms. Since then it has remained a dominant tool across digital agencies.

Now with the announcement of a revamped Search 360, it looks like Google is attempting to further that stake as the dominant third party software for search engine marketing.

How this varies from regular updates

Updates to Search 360 aren’t new, with Google announcing big updates like the new image search experience and the ‘people also search for’ function in 2018. However, this is not an update but a rebuild of many of the features in Search 360.

The announcement of Search 360’s revamp includes the promise of “new enterprises” to make Search 360 an all in one platform for advertisers and marketers. 

How it takes control away from other search engines

Whilst you can connect to Microsoft and other search engines, Google will still dictate your actions heavily.

The introduction of the new Search 360 touts more third party support. This is in Search 360’s favour as it is the dominant software.

Furthermore, Google has been able to leverage features only in beta from Yahoo. Features like ‘Dynamic Ads For Search’ and sitelink extension scheduling were only available to Yahoo! Japan prior to this announcement.

10 other Microsoft Ad features have been included in addition to this, many of them being the selling points of Microsoft Ads as a competitor to Google Ads.

Responsive search ads, call extensions and even the separate audience types from Microsoft will now all be available via Google.

This will likely make anyone using Microsoft Ads think twice about using the less refined Microsoft Ads interface and in return will likely result in more money going the way of Google. 

How it utilises the power of Google Ads

One of the first and biggest announcements is that Search 360 was rebuilt using the same technology as Google Ads.

This is probably Google’s biggest step into making Search 360 the ultimate all in one software for marketers, as it equates to all your content being available in one tab that you can manage closely.

New features from Google Ads will be integrated into Search 360, including Performance Max and Discovery campaigns.

This inclusion also means more data to process for the best ad results in a quicker time, thanks to the pre-established Google Ads. 

The introduction of Templates and their appeal

One of the new features also announced that will be native to this new phase in Search 360’s existence is ‘Templates’.

This ‘Templates’ feature will work as a merger of the inventory management and ad builder tools that will allow marketers and advertisers to activate business data across client accounts using their own data feed.

This should allow for easy building of new and current ad campaigns in a more efficient manner.

However, this feature has not been given a set date for release and has only been noted as being available later this year. 

Performance Center and it’s cost advantages 

Another feature that Google has touted for release later on in the year is the new ‘Performance Center’.

This is described by Google as Search 360’s improved version of budget management, that will be more intuitive than just managing one budget.

The planning capabilities of the new ‘Performance Center’ means that you can run hypothetical scenarios in a similar way to ‘Ad Experiments’.

This is thanks to its new enterprise planning capabilities which includes an improved forecasting feature with custom columns for different search engines.

This will allow users to control media budgets across all the search engines they have opted into and allows for tracking and planning concerning expenditure on each one.

Are you looking for a Google partner who will have access to all these exciting new features? Or are you looking for someone with the knowledge to turn your ads account into one that generates more money for you and your business?

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