If you work with Google Ads or Display and Video 360 (DV360) you’ve probably heard of Campaign Manager 360 (CM360). You may understand that’s where some creatives are hosted and where you can track conversions but you are left wondering: hey I can do both those things inside DV360/Google Ads, then why should I use CM360?
Let’s roll back a little: what is CM360?
CM360 is Google’s Marketing Platform ad server, the central engine used to store, deliver, and measure ads across the web. Although every tool inside the GMP can be used individually, they are thought out to be used together to get the most out of them. While it is possible to measure conversions and/or host creatives in both DV360 and SA360 independently of Campaign Manager 360, you are missing out on key benefits.
What would these benefits be?
The most important benefit is the de-duplication of your conversions. Let’s imagine you have marketing activity live across Banners in DV360, Paid Search, and Meta. If you are counting each channel individually, it could happen that one user is impacted by all three of the different channels before making the conversion with each channel attributing the conversion to themselves. This would then give you 3 conversions instead of 1 conversion which is both inaccurate and unhelpful for the bid strategies machine learning which uses previous conversions as a signal for future opportunities.
In this example, if we were using CM360, you would see only one conversion. Not only that, you could also use the Path To Conversion report to see this and all of your other conversions’ whole pathway: what was the final step? Do the conversions usually come only from one channel or do they happen after impacting multiple channels? Which channels work as “assisters” and which channels work as “finishers”? That full pathway holds for DV360 and SA360, since CM360 pulls in post-view and post-click activity for both. Meta only reports post-click, so it can register as a finisher but never as a view-through assist. This information can, of course, then help you plan your budget appropriately based on these results.
Additionally, having CM360 allows you to report on all of these channels in only one place, saving you the time of having to do each report individually and allowing you to know the reach of each channel and the overlap between them
Measurement aside, why pay to host creatives in CM360 when DV360 is free?
It is possible to host your creatives in DV360 however hosting your creatives in CM360 has a couple of benefits compared to its media buying counterpart
One would be that using CM360 to host your creatives would save you time if you are using the same creatives to show your ads in different publishers or channels. Aside from DV360 you are using other Programmatic DSPs like The Trade Desk? No problem as you can export the same creative tag to these other channels and, in the case of The Trade Desk, there is native integration within the platform
If you have campaigns that need more sophisticated ad serving, CM360 can also be a very helpful tool, allowing you to do things that you could not in DV360. Some examples:
Do you have creatives for a limited-time offer? CM360 lets you set an end time so that ads stop showing at your desired time!
Do you have a campaign spanning regions with different languages? It is possible to add different ad variations into one Placement and use language targeting in each ad. This avoids complex campaign builds while ensuring the correct ads are shown!
Do you need to tell a story across your ads? You can use CM360’s Frequency Caps and Ad Priority tools to show ads in the order you want them shown!
What else is included in CM360 targeting?
One more benefit of hosting your creatives in CM360 is that it can work as a safeguard. In regulated industries like gambling, where laws can vary significantly between regions, you need to make sure ads are shown in the correct territory. With CM360, you can use Geography targeting as a safeguarding measure and, if the platform finds that the location doesn’t match the selected region, it will serve a Default Ad instead, helping you avoid potential legal issues.
That’s clear, what about Google Ads?
You can definitely connect Google Ads to CM360: If your Google Ads account is linked to SA360, search and conversion performance will be tracked there automatically. You’ll still need a direct Google Ads to CM360 link for YouTube though, since SA360 handles Search and PMax but hands off video tracking to CM360 to avoid double-counting.
If you’re not using SA360 at all, you can just link Google Ads and CM360 directly and that covers everything, YouTube included
Closing thoughts
Is it possible to host creatives and measure conversions in your ad buying platforms (DV360, Google Ads, etc)? Yes, but if you want to take your business to the next level and accurately measure your conversions and serve your creatives across different tools then Campaign Manager 360 would be the solution for you.
