26 April 2023

Ads Creative Studio vs. Google Studio

In summary

• Ads Creative Studio (ACS) is a centralised digital creative platform that fosters collaboration by allowing teams to manage creative assets, build audio, display and video ads and then activate them across the GMP network
• While Google continues to add features into ACS, there are elements that are still only available in Google Studio such as retargeting and certain dynamic and data-driven strategies
• Regular users of Ad Canvas, Google Web Designer and Google Studio should begin testing ACS as these platforms are likely to merge in the future

What is Ads Creative Studio?

ACS is a digital creative platform that enables you to easily build ads, manage and share creative assets and then activate them across a range of Google advertising platforms.

ACS integrates the features of their existing Google platforms, Display & Video 360 (DV360) Ad Canvas, Google Web Designer and Google Studio. After a year in beta, it is establishing its place as an important player within the Google advertising ecosystem.

Using ACS almost feels like a user interface (UI) and functionality integration between DV360’s Ad Canvas and Studio. The UI is intuitive for beginners, making it easier to use. Scaling across channels is more streamlined and complex executions are simpler to manage as everything is in one place. The ability to collaborate across teams will be a big bonus for most, as it makes the end to end advertising process more efficient.

Key features of ACS

Many features have been included to help make the creative process seamless with the main focus around three specific areas of the creative build process:

• Assets and Templates: More streamlined asset library and additional template library
• Construction: Consistent and intuitive UI and direct access to Google audiences
• Sharing and Collaboration: QA and preview functionality along with export to Google Ads, Campaign Manager 360 (CM360) and DV360

Improved workflows

ACS has enhanced many aspects of the creative build workflow including:

• Video customisation allows for creative swaps, videos stitching and audio customisation
• Display customisation across a robust range of ready-made templates, easy customisation, targeting rule assignment and preview options

End to end efficiency

There are dynamic and data driven capabilities in the platform through UI or bulk variant import, ensuring a smooth end to end process:

• Display: Rules can be based on affinity and in-market audiences, geo, data scheduling and contextual topics. There is also a 250 variant limit per project.

• Video: Rules can be based on affinity audiences, demo (age, gender, parental status), geo, user language and contextual topics.

Unlike Studio where creative can only be pushed directly CM360, ACS creatives can be pushed to Google Ads and DV360 as well.

ACS is currently being trialled and tested by many advertisers. One Google client case study discusses how useful the tool is for collaboration and removing workflow barriers, which helps boost the performance of the overall creative production process.

Why continue using Studio? Retargeting

ACS does not currently have retargeting capabilities, so Studio is still the designated tool for any retargeting strategies along with more complex data-driven campaigns. Due to this, there are additional features and greater functionality in these areas. Studio also offers, a larger variety of targeting signals and rules that enable more robust dynamic and data-driven campaigns.

Studio allows for further creative strategies and specific messaging across:

• Audience: Leverage audiences from CM360, DV360, Google Ads
• Context: CM360 site/placement, DV360 page/app category or DV360 keyword
• Dayparting: Date or time of day scheduling
• Location: Country, City, Postcode or proximity to certain location
• Offline events: Weather, events etc.
• Remarketing: Target users who have completed certain actions or visited particular pages onsite
• Technology: Device, browser, OS, Carrier or Environment
• Additional feed row limits: 700,000 rows (variants) are permitted across each Studio advertiser with 700,000 rows per feed

Some minor features are still only available in Studio. So, if any of these are important to an advertiser’s strategy or process, it is recommended to continue using Studio at this time:

• Direct options for uploading media assets into a project and access to rich media creative, GWD and developer tools from the home page
• Variety of preview options that display how ads appear across different devices types
• More detailed information on creative properties, size and events tracking
• Duplicate/copy options between existing profile and easy renaming capabilities after creation

Louder’s recommendation

Louder suggests that designers and developers who regularly work within GWD and Studio start using ACS to familiarise themselves with the new tool.

We anticipate that ACS will eventually integrate with Studio and become a crucial component of the GMP ecosystem, streamlining the creative agency and marketer workflow.

To stay up to date with ACS features, visit Ads Creative Studio help.

Get in touch

For more information on how ACS can integrate with your advertising or how to best utilise Studio, get in touch with Louder today.