Benefits of GA360 Integration with DoubleClick www.e-nor.com | 1

Benefits of GA360Integration with DoubleClick

By Patrick SochDigital Analytics Consultant

www.e-nor.com

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Running a Google Analytics 360 implementation in conjunction with DoubleClick Campaign Manager (DCM) and DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM) can be a powerful combination. As the new year gets off to a start, marketers are more keen than ever to deliver highly personalized ad messaging, integrated data and advanced customer segmentation. Leveraging analytics tools and marketing platforms with native integration allows marketing teams to do this more efficiently and effectively.

• efficiency of GA360/DoubleClick integration, because the ability to tie your impression, click, and floodlight conversion data into your analytics data is built-in GA360 functionality

• effectiveness of GA360/DoubleClick integration, because you can create remarketing audiences from any of your segments and custom funnel reports to instantly make those audiences available in DoubleClick Bid Manager and Google Adwords for remarketing efforts

Shared Google Backbone Preserves DataThe benefits of a Web analytics platform, such as GA360 with native integration to your ad serving and programmatic buying platforms in DoubleClick means you have better data integrity across your platforms as well as built-in capabilities to apply analytics segments and reporting data to your display advertising campaign executions in DoubleClick. With the shared Google technology backbone, these integrated toolsets do not suffer from the same level of data loss between ad server and analytics that we see in Adobe analytics for instance, where DoubleClick data loss can be as high as 20%.

Table of ContentsThis post is broken up into sections that go from start to finish: setting up your integration, viewing DCM & DBM data within GA360, and leveraging your analytics data to create more effective targeting in your display campaigns. If you already have your GA360 and DoubleClick accounts linked, skip ahead to how you can put this integration to use.

Setting Up Your Integration (If your accounts are already linked, skip to next section.)

Viewing DoubleClick Data in GA360

Full Circle: Using GA360 Remarketing Audiences in DoubleClick

Setting Up Your IntegrationDoubleClick Campaign Manager (DCM)GA360 & DoubleClick integration is a built-in feature for GA360. However, you will need a little help to get started. Your Google Analytics support team will help you enable the connection between your DoubleClick advertiser account and your Google Analytics 360 property. Here is what you will need to provide, so it can be helpful to round this all up before contacting your Google Analytics support team:

• Advertiser ID(s) or Floodlight Configuration ID for each DoubleClick account you would like to link to your GA360 property

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• Google Analytics Property ID you want to link with DoubleClick data.

• Email address for your GA360 account admin with full admin rights (either internal of your Google Analytics partner).

• Email address for your DoubleClick DCM account owner.

Once you receive notice that the accounts are connected, you can select which Google Analytics Views you want to see your DoubleClick DCM data reported in for that property.

Once your Google Analytics support team advises you that your accounts are linked, you can select specific Google Analytics views in which to populate the DoubleClick reports.

DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM)You can link your DoubleClick Bid Manager account directly in the GA360 interface via self-service functionality if you have the appropriate admin permission for both the GA360 property and the DBM account you want to link together.

GA Permissions Needed: Edit permissions at the Account or Property level

DBM Permissions Needed: Read & Write permissions for the Partner Account that contains the

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advertiser ID you want to link.

To link DBM with DoubleClick, take the following steps:

1. In the Google Analytics admin screen, navigate to Property Settings > Tracking Info > Data Collection and Ensure Remarketing and Advertiser Reporting Features are on in your Data Collection Settings:

2. Navigate to Property Settings > DoubleClick Digital Marketing > DoubleClick Bid Manager Linking

3. Click New DBM Link:

a. Provide Link Title (of your choosing), Advertiser ID, and Partner ID

b. Select the Google Analytics views to populate with DoubleClick Bid Manager data.

Before linking DBM and GA, ensure that Remarketing and Advertising Report Features are enabled in Google Analytics property admin.

You can access DoubleClick Bid Manager Linking in the Google Analytics property admin.

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When creating a new DBM link, you must specify a Link Title, your DoubleClick Advertiser ID and Partner ID, and one or more Google Analytics views in the property.

If you do not have the DoubleClick admin credentials, your Google Analytics 360 support team can assist you with getting GA360 and Bid Manager connected at the same time they link DCM for you.

Deploying DoubleClick Floodlight Tags through Google Tag ManagerGoogle Tag Manager integrates with your GA360 implementation seamlessly, allowing you to deply and customize your analytics implementation in very effective ways and simplifying complex tracking requirements such as cross-domain. But did you know that GTM can simplify your DoubleClick Floodlight tag deployment as well?

GTM has built-in templates for both counter and sales floodlights, so with a minimum amount of information and effort you can quickly configure new floodlights for conversion tracking, sales tracking, and DoubleClick audience pixels through your GTM container. Then create the triggers you need to control when those floodlights fire. You can use simple page/url based rules as well as sophisticated event-based rules to fire those pixels from within your GTM container.

With Advertiser ID, Group Tag String & Activity Tag String, you can quickly deploy a Floodlight tag through Google Tag Manager.

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Reading Floodlight Conversion and Transaction Data from the GTM Data LayerLast but not least of the powerful features in GTM for your Floodlight tags, you can use the datalayer features to capture conversion and transaction data as data layer variables and then push them automatically into the custom floodlight variables you have configured for DoubleClick. This helps to ensure, for example, that whenever you are capturing key information, such as Order IDs, confirmation numbers, product IDs, and order revenue, you can use the same datalayer variables to push this information directly into GA360 Enhanced Ecommerce transactions as well as to custom variables in your floodlight tags. Why do the same work twice when you leverage data you are already exposing in your dataLayer?

You can read from the GTM data layer into your Floodlight Custom Variables, in many cases reusing the variables populated into the data layer for Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce tracking.

Viewing DoubleClick Data in GA360Now that you have the tools connected, you may be wondering what additional insights you can see in GA360 and what advantages the integration gives you to execute more effective campaigns. There are several places to view DoubleClick data within GA360 reporting, and each incorporates the data in slightly different ways. Understanding the different ways to use this data helps to avoid some of the pitfalls pertaining to data discrepancies due to different counting methods and tracking technologies. Additionally, just as auto-tagged Google Adwords campaigns leverage the gclid parameter to provide rich campaign data in Google Analytics, DCM and DBM leverage auto-tagging via dclid parameter to help automatically capture source and medium data for your campaigns.

Acquisitions > All Traffic ReportsOne of the keys to making effective use of a GA360/DoubleClick DCM integration is understanding clearly how DoubleClick campaign data gets reported in the various reporting sections of GA360. Let’s take a detailed look at how DCM data works in the Acquisition > All Traffic reporting.

Auto-tagging impact on Source/Medium & Campaign ReportingFirst, when you integrate with DoubleClick, auto-tagging will be enabled for your display campaigns. By default, GA360 uses the dclid parameter to identify your DoubleClick traffic, both

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DCM & DBM. In the All Traffic report, DoubleClick traffic has the source/medium pair dfa/cpm for DoubleClick Campaign Manager and dbm/cpm for DoubleClick Bid Manager. Your DBM traffic will have its own reporting in the All Traffic section, and due to the auto-tagging will automatically be deduped from the general DoubleClick DCM reporting item.

Auto-tagged DCM & DBM line items in Source/Medium report:

Post-integration, the campaign names that appear in the Google Analytics All Campaigns report will match the campaign name from DoubleClick DCM (unless you add manual utm tags to your destination urls and allow them to overwrite your auto-tag parameters, which is not recommended without a very good reason).

GA Last Non-Direct Click Attribution vs. DoubleClick ReportingAnother crucial point to keep in mind under the All Traffic reports is that even your DoubleClick data is using the GA attribution model. The only session data you will see associated with DoubleClick here are GA sessions where DoubleClick is the last non-direct click. This assuredly will not match up directly with your DoubleClick reporting. Don’t expect it to, and simply understand the source of the difference.

Acquisitions > DoubleClick DCM & DBM ReportsThe DoubleClick reporting sections in GA use the DoubleClick attribution model, as opposed to the Last Non-Direct Click attribution model that governs most of the other Google Analytics reports.

Lookback WindowIn the DoubleClick reports, all sessions are attributed to clicks and impressions falling within the DoubleClick lookback window. This is 30 days by default, but make sure you know how your DoubleClick admins have customized these settings so you have a clear picture of your data. The lookback window could be significantly different for clicks compared to impressions, and they may have adjusted the timeframe significantly longer or shorter depending on your customer purchase behaviors.

The reports in this section will have the most complete picture of your DoubleClick campaign metrics, including cost, impressions, and clicks. If you have a robust GA360 implementation, this is where the power of integration starts to shine. You can report your DoubleClick campaign data sliced and segmented by your custom dimensions as well as various user attributes automatically

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captured by GA360 (browser, location, device type, for example).

DoubleClick DCM Campaign View-through and Clickthrough Data in GA360

DoubleClick Floodlight Conversion & Revenue Data in GA360

DoubleClick-Specific Dimensions in the GA360

As an additional benefit of your DoubleClick/GA integration, you can take advantage of the following DoubleClick-specific dimensions when configuring custom reports, creating custom segments, or just applying secondary dimension.

DCM Dimensions

Account NameAdvertisersCampaignPlacementAdsCreativeSiteFloodlight

DBM DimensionsAdvertisersInsertion OrdersLine ItemsCreativesSitesExchanges

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Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnel & Attribution Reports: Impressions as a ChannelArguably one of the best features of GA360/DoubleClick integration is to include your display impression and click data along with your Analytics acquisition data in your multi-channel funnels and attribution reporting. Top Conversion Path, Multi-Channel Attribution, and Assisted Conversions reports can help provide great insights into your combined marketing efforts. Keep in mind that these reports will only tell a story about the channels and interactions you are consistently tracking. If you want the most complete picture possible, try to serve as many of your display and rich-media initiatives through DoubleClick so you can see how your banner and rich-media impressions - not just clickthroughs - are impacting users on their path to conversion.

In the Multi-Channel Funnels Reports post-integration, more report configuration options are available. Set up the report so you are analyzing only the conversion goals you want to look at, the lookback window you want to see between 1 and 90 days, and the interaction types you want included (not that impressions are an option with integration). You can limit interaction type to include only DFA interactions, but be careful so you do not artificially inflate the impact of one campaign or another by filtering out other conversion contributors:

Configure Your MCF Reports for a Single Conversion Type, Path Length, Interaction Types, and Lookback Window

You can now display impressions in your Top Conversion Paths report as well as any other multi-channel funnels. Your display impression interactions are marked with a small eyeball icon, and the click interactions have no icon.

Top Conversion Paths Report showing display click (without eye icon) and display impression (with eye icon) interactions

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Attribution Modeling with the Display Impressions ChannelBy no, you are surely using something better than last-click attribution for assessing campaign/channel performance. With DoubleClick data, now your impression interactions are part of the attribution mix as well. With the ability to customize your attribution models, you can not only give credit across the conversion path to the multiple touchpoints that led up to a conversion or transaction, you can also assign differential value to specific interaction types. Most of us assume that a click is more highly engaged than an impression, though both contribute to success. Your model can reflect that assumption, and you can fine tune those values over time as you test different marketing mix combinations and measure the results.

You can adjust the Credit for Impressions setting in the Attribution Model editing screen.

Pro-Tip: Structured Campaign Naming and Custom Channels

PRO TIP: consider structuring your MCF Definitions so you can define separate channels in Google Analytics for Awareness, Prospecting, and Remarketing/Retargeting. Once you do this, you can more effectively gauge the impact of distinct components of your overall display strategy without seeing blended or average performance for what is, in reality, three very different marketing tactics. This approach relies on a systematic and consistent naming convention process.

Whether you decide to use Campaign Name or Placement in your channel customization rules, choose naming conventions that are consistently applied across your organization. One reason for using Placement Name is that in some cases Placement will provide more granularity than Campaign Name. However, if you include details such as Tactic in your campaign naming convention, you can likely define channels appropriately using just Campaign Name. For example, you may choose a rich naming structure such as Site/Network-Tactic-Target Audience-Campaign Name-Offer to give you detailed campaign context such as:

Rocketful-Remarketing-Abandoned Shopping Cart-Holiday 2017-Free Shipping

Not only does a strong campaign naming convention give you more consistent data; you could now create separate DoubleClick Awareness, DoubleClick Prospecting, and DoubleClick Remarketing/Retargeting channels as in the example below.

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A DCM Remarketing custom channel - defined according to your structured campaign naming convention - will provide greater insight in the GA360 Acquisition, Multi-Channel Funnel, and Attribution reports.

Full Circle: Using GA360 Remarketing Audiences in DoubleClickTool integration is great, and having access to more data in your web analytics platform is almost always a good thing. It all comes to naught if you don’t actually use these tools for better marketing decisions.

Turn GA360 Segments into Remarketing Audiences Shared wth DBMYou can try any segment in Google Analytics into a remarketing audience that can be shared with your marketing platforms. Find those valuable groups of prospects and customers, and turn those segments into highly targeted lists that you share with DoubleClick Bid Manager. Activate those audiences, and use them to deliver those highly personalized, relevant messages and offers we know lead to better results and more satisfied people.

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Custom Funnel Reports: Remarketing Lists on the Fly Based on Drop-Off & Conversion PointsIn GA360, did you know that you can create audiences from your Custom Funnel reports as well? Identify key conversion steps on the fly with these custom funnel reports, and then create a remarketing audience of visitors who dropped off any specific point in your conversion path.

Just like that, you can share them out to DBM and Google Adwords for highly targeted marketing audiences.

If your Google Analytics reports indicate that California visitors aged 25-44 are your top converters, you can create a corresponding remarketing audience to use in DoubleClick and seek even more conversions

among this demographic.

You can define a remarketing audience from and drop-off point in a Google Analytics custom funnel.

This is turning integrated tools into effective marketing activation.