Six tools inside Google Marketing Platform, explained

Google Marketing Platform (formerly the Google 360 Suite) is Google's integrated set of advertising and analytics products for businesses that want to plan, execute and measure digital campaigns from one place. The platform brings together tools covering display buying, audience analytics, tag management, site testing and more, unified under a single login and data layer.

Key takeaways

• Google Marketing Platform replaced the Google 360 Suite branding in 2018, consolidating DoubleClick and the Analytics 360 Suite into one umbrella.

• The platform includes six core tools: Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360, Campaign Manager 360, Analytics 360, Optimise 360 and Data Studio (now Looker Studio).

• Each tool is designed to share audience data with the others, which is where the real commercial advantage sits over using standalone products.

• Small businesses can access several of these tools for free or at a lower tier; the 360 (enterprise) versions carry significant cost and are aimed at larger advertisers.

• The platform integrates natively with Google Ads and Google Analytics 4, so work you do in one product directly informs decisions in the others.

What actually is Google Marketing Platform, and how did it come to exist?

Google Marketing Platform is Google's unified suite of tools for digital advertising and measurement. It launched under that name in 2018, replacing two separate brands: DoubleClick (Google's ad technology stack, acquired in 2007) and the Google Analytics 360 Suite. Bringing them together was a structural decision, not just a rebrand. It meant that audience segments built in Analytics could flow directly into display buying in Display & Video 360 without an export or a manual step.

For a small business owner, the clearest way to understand it is this: if Google Ads is a single tool for buying search and display inventory, Google Marketing Platform is the control room for businesses running campaigns at scale across multiple channels, teams and markets.

The six tools, and what each one actually does

Display & Video 360

Display & Video 360 (DV360) is the demand-side platform (DSP) within Google Marketing Platform. It lets advertisers buy programmatic display, video, audio and connected TV inventory from across the open web, not just Google's own properties. A buyer on DV360 can access inventory from thousands of publishers through real-time bidding.

The practical advantage over standard Google Display Network campaigns is control. DV360 allows much more precise audience targeting, deal negotiation with premium publishers and richer reporting at the impression level. It is the tool used by media agencies planning substantial display budgets.

Search Ads 360

Search Ads 360 (SA360) is a search management platform that sits above Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising (Bing). Rather than replacing those platforms, it connects them, allowing a single team to manage bids, budgets and reporting across both from one interface.

Its strongest feature for multi-channel advertisers is unified bidding: SA360 can apply a single automated bid strategy across Google and Microsoft simultaneously, optimising towards a shared conversion goal rather than treating each platform as a separate silo.

Campaign Manager 360

Campaign Manager 360 (CM360) is an ad server. It traffics, tracks and reports on display and video creative across every channel in a campaign. Where DV360 handles buying, CM360 handles delivery verification: was the ad shown? Was it viewable? Did it serve correctly on mobile?

It also acts as the de-duplication engine across channels. If a user saw a display ad on DV360 and then converted after a paid search click managed via SA360, CM360 provides the single source of truth on which touchpoint deserves credit.

Analytics 360

Analytics 360 is the enterprise tier of Google Analytics 4. It carries the same measurement framework as the standard free version but removes sampling from reports, which matters when you are analysing tens of millions of sessions. It also provides higher data freshness, longer data retention and unsampled exports directly to BigQuery.

For a growing business already using Google Analytics 4 through a digital marketing agency, the difference between the standard and 360 tiers is mainly relevant once traffic volumes make sampled data misleading.

Optimise 360

Optimise 360 was Google's enterprise A/B testing and personalisation tool, integrated with Analytics 360 to target experiments at specific audience segments. It allowed teams to test variations of landing pages and serve personalised content based on user behaviour.

It is worth noting that Google sunset the Optimise and Optimise 360 products in September 2023. Businesses previously relying on it have moved to alternatives such as VWO, Optimizely or AB Tasty.

Looker Studio (formerly Data Studio)

Looker Studio is Google's reporting and data visualisation tool. It connects to Google Ads, Analytics 360, Campaign Manager 360, BigQuery, Google Sheets and dozens of third-party sources to produce dashboards that update in real time.

Looker Studio is free and available to businesses of any size. For a small business owner wanting to pull their Google Ads and Analytics data into a single, readable report without exporting spreadsheets, it is one of the most immediately useful tools in the platform.

When does Google Marketing Platform make sense, and when does it not?

Tool	Free tier available?	Best suited to	Practical limitation
Display & Video 360	No (managed access)	Media agencies, large advertisers	Minimum spend thresholds apply
Search Ads 360	No	Businesses running Google and Bing simultaneously	Adds cost and complexity smaller budgets don't justify
Campaign Manager 360	No	Multi-channel display campaigns	Requires ad ops expertise to traffic correctly
Analytics 360	Free tier (GA4) available	High-traffic sites needing unsampled data	360 tier pricing suits enterprise, not SMEs
Optimise 360	Discontinued Sept 2023	Was: landing page testing at scale	No longer available
Looker Studio	Yes	Any business wanting cleaner reporting	Limited without a skilled analyst building the dashboards

The honest answer on fit: if you are a small UK business spending under £10,000 a month on digital advertising, Google Ads, Google Analytics 4 and Looker Studio give you everything you need without the overhead of the full platform. The enterprise tools earn their cost when you are managing multi-channel campaigns across large budgets, multiple markets or complex attribution requirements.

An SEO and AEO agency working across several client accounts might use Looker Studio daily while never needing Campaign Manager 360 at all. The right set of tools depends entirely on the complexity of what you are measuring and buying.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the Google 360 Suite? The Google 360 Suite was the name Google gave to its enterprise analytics and marketing products before 2018. It included Analytics 360, Tag Manager 360, Optimise 360, Surveys 360, Data Studio and Attribution 360. In 2018, Google folded these products together with the DoubleClick advertising tools under the single brand Google Marketing Platform.

Is Google Analytics 360 worth it for a small business? Almost certainly not at the current pricing level. The standard free tier of Google Analytics 4 is fully functional for most small and mid-sized businesses. Analytics 360 removes data sampling and adds BigQuery integration, which becomes meaningful only when you are processing millions of sessions per month and need unsampled data for commercial decisions.

What replaced Google Optimise 360 after it was discontinued? Google discontinued Optimise and Optimise 360 in September 2023. The most commonly adopted alternatives are VWO, Optimizely and AB Tasty. Google has pointed users towards its own Ads Data Hub and third-party experimentation partners, though none are a direct one-for-one replacement inside the Google Marketing Platform ecosystem.

Does Google Marketing Platform connect to non-Google channels? Yes, to a degree. Campaign Manager 360 can track ads served outside Google's own network, and Looker Studio connects to a wide range of third-party data sources including Meta Ads, LinkedIn and Shopify. The integration is deepest within Google's own products, so cross-platform attribution still requires careful configuration.

Can a small business use any part of Google Marketing Platform for free? Looker Studio is free with no usage limits. Google Analytics 4 is free up to its standard tier thresholds. The remaining tools (DV360, SA360, CM360 and the discontinued Optimise 360) require either managed access through a Google partner or direct licensing, and are not priced for small business budgets.

Written by the Revolve team, a digital marketing agency working with UK SMEs across paid advertising, SEO, AEO and content marketing.

Last updated: 19 September 2026