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Why Google Is Prioritizing Investments in Privacy, Measurement and Automation

I’ve been building products at Google for 16 years, yet the last 18 months have been more disruptive and challenging for all of us than I ever could have imagined. I’ve met with many of you over the past year to understand how the pandemic is affecting your business and what you need.

Your stories of resilience, determination and ingenuity have been inspiring. And what I’ve heard and seen for myself are two massive shifts in how people are interacting with businesses. First, buying behaviors have changed dramatically, with people going online to explore, research and plan more of their purchases. And second, there’s been a boom in video streaming. These shifts have upended some of your plans and fast-tracked others.

At Google, we’ve been focused on how to help your business respond. For example, when we saw an increase in people shopping online last year, we realized that people weren’t just looking for things to buy; they were also looking for new, safer ways to shop in their local communities. In response, we accelerated our product roadmap for local inventory ads and launched curbside pickup, providing value to both shoppers and businesses.

There’s no playbook for navigating a pandemic that upends daily life and causes immense tragedy, economic upheaval and widespread uncertainty about what comes next. But we want you to know that Google is here to help you grow and be ready for what comes next.

Building for the future

It’s my team’s job to find the places where Google can innovate in order to create value and drive growth for your business. As we look to the future, we’re prioritizing our product investments in three key areas: privacy, measurement and automation.

People’s expectations for privacy online are higher than ever and will only continue to rise as they use digital tools to manage more aspects of their lives. That’s why Google is collaborating with others across the advertising industry to build durable, privacy-safe advertising technologies that protect people’s privacy, while still delivering results and providing resilience in any market condition.

Data shows that automation remains the best way to unlock growth by analyzing millions of signals to help you show the right message, to the right people, in the moments that matter.

It’s also critical that we future proof your measurement. As cookies are phased out in the years ahead, the future of measurement will center on consented first-party data that you collect directly, modeling techniques that allow you to fill gaps in the customer journey and implement privacy-safe techniques like aggregation. This is a monumental shift for our industry and one that I’ve heard many of you find daunting. As we think about a world with more privacy and less data, this will put a greater premium on being smarter with the data that is available—such as the data you collect from the direct interactions you have with your customers—and looking for opportunities to do more with it.

That’s why Google is doubling down on our investment in automation. Our data shows that automation remains the best way to unlock growth by analyzing millions of signals to help you show the right message, to the right people, in the moments that matter. In fact, with more people online than ever before, we think automation has never been more important. And we’re committed to building more helpful products like Smart Bidding and responsive search ads that make it easy for you to find untapped demand and drive growth for your business.

We’ve been focused on building a number of new solutions that we’re excited to share with you. Join us at Google Marketing Livestream on May 27 for a virtual keynote where we’ll be discussing the latest trends and insights, as well as our product plans.

This perspective originally appeared on Think With Google.