About over two weeks ago, my colleague Simo and I attended the GMP Summit (Google Marketing Platform Summit) 2018. It’s an invitation-only, two-day conference, held annually in San Francisco. As there are now 600 Partners spread across 63 countries, there was about 800/1000 person over there.
600 Partners in 63 Counties. Forward as one. #GMPSummit @Search_Star pic.twitter.com/DmOnuS80ju
— Jon Boon (@boomboonpow) 1 novembre 2018
The Summit this year (as last year) started with a Women’s Leadership Reception, which took place in Google’s Spear street offices. There were food and drinks, but don’t ask me how tasty it was because I was having a very good discussion and time with a former colleague of mine (big thanks Suzanne!).
Even though I do think that the #MeToo movement was important and needed, I’m still struggling with the fact that those events are “only” for women. I also think that if we need to fix an issue then we have to include everyone in the discussion. Putting half of the people away just based on their gender seems always weird to me, one way or another.
This year’s Summit was held across the 31st of October and 1st of November. It was the first conference since the Google Analytics Partnership rebranded as the Google Marketing Platform (GMP), encompassing both Google Analytics and DoubleClick.
On top of that, attendees receive an opportunity to discuss with product managers and engineers about anything (questions, explanation, demos, suggestions, etc…). It’s a perfect opportunity to understand how each product team works under the GMP suite.
All content and sessions are under NDA (and we always have a similar confidentiality notice, with color variant):
Measurement in today’s privacy landscape… #GMPSummit @Search_Star pic.twitter.com/IEtjByeTuK
— Jon Boon (@boomboonpow) 1 novembre 2018
From the initial keynote, Justin Cutroni enlighted the audience that the most successful of users of GMP suite products were the ones that integrated analytics with ad platforms. Google Marketing Platform (as a consolidation of Google Analytics, DoubleClick Search, DoubleClick Bid Manager, etc.) now integrate measurement and advertising across its 7 products (Google Analytics, Tag Manager, Data Studio, Optimize, Search Ads 360, Surveys and Display & Video 360). This integration has already started to be felt with the creation of the new look GMP platform and Global Site Tag (Gtag), which streamlines website code for Google products.
Brands like Major League Baseball, Sprint, EA Sports, and Adidas were featured for using Google Marketing Platform (GMP) across their media buying, data science, and digital marketing teams. Google’s hope is that by bringing all GMP products together, it will allow advertisers to have more control, share insights better across teams, make faster decisions, and potentially consolidate their advertising and marketing activities to the Google stack.
After two intensives days, we got lucky and participate in the Immersion days, where we can go deeper with product teams, see theirs road-maps and share ideas. This event also took place in Google’s Spear street offices and its amazing view/weather.
And for those who were interested especially by Tag Manager, Simo Ahava himself made a presentation:
My “Top 30 GTM tips” slides presented at the Google Marketing Platform Summit.https://t.co/40pNttAvII#measure #gtmtips @googleanalytics
— Simo Ahava (@SimoAhava) 2 novembre 2018
All and all, it was an interesting time spent at GMP Summit. Hope to see you in 2019.