Google is ramping up its pitch for a measurement tool that claims to break down walled gardens but agencies worry that it could make the tech giant more powerful

• Google is pumping up its privacy-friendly measurement product called Ads Data Hub that measures the performance of Google and non-Google ads.
• Google is adding new features and says the tool encompasses data from 10,000 advertisers, up from 4,000 advertisers last year.
• Facebook and Amazon also have similar tools, and agencies say it can be difficult to manage multiple products. They also struggle with getting access to granular data to measure metrics like attribution, reach and frequency.
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Google is pitching more advertisers on Ads Data Hub, its 2-year old measurement product that claims to help advertisers compare ad performance on and off its platform.

Ads Data Hub is a so-called data clean room that promises advertisers a way to get around the limitations of Google's walled garden by matching the platform's data with people's first-party information like email and sales data. Google, Facebook and Amazon all have such tools and say they're privacy-friendly because advertisers can't see personal information like people's names or browsing activity.

The catch is is that advertisers have to use these clean rooms individually to understand all of their campaigns. Ads Data Hub also doesn't address advertisers' desire to independently measure their ads on Google. As a result, advertisers said it can be hard to see how their ads performed.

Drew Ford, senior director of data science at iProspect, said that Google's measurement tool makes the tech giant more of a walled garden.

"It allows us to do a lot, but it's just within Google's ecosystem," he said. "Google probably has the biggest digital marketing ecosystem, but it is closing the walls a little bit."

Google said the tool has gained adoption over the past two years

Ads Data Hub combines data from Google's display and video ads with first-party data, data from publishers and non-Google platforms into BigQuery, a data warehouse company. Advertisers pay to run queries on the data to measure ad performance.

Ads Data Hub has gained adoption. Google said data from 10,000 advertisers are in Ads Data Hub, up from 4,000 advertisers last year. The major holdings companies and independent agencies use the tool, and Google says that the amount of data being queried has grown by six times over the past year.

Google said it's also cut the time it takes to measure data, to six hours after they are served, down from as much as 48 hours six months ago.

"It's become a fundamental part of advertisers' performance marketing strategy," said Dan Taylor, managing director of global display ads at Google.

Some agencies say Google is giving out more data

Some agencies said Ads Data Hub allows them to get more data from Google.

"It doesn't overcome the understanding across the entire media mix and plan, but it's better than what it was two or five years ago, and I think that's what people lose sight of," said Doug Rozen, chief media officer at 360i.

He also said it addresses privacy and antitrust criticism facing Google.

"The biggest challenge that platforms face in the world of privacy is that every action they take to protect consumers' privacy will have an implication against trade and antitrust," he said. "The hope of Ads Data Hub is to help them navigate through that."

WPP-owned agency Essence uses Google's tool to compare brand lift and direct response conversions across ad formats, publishers, and audience segments, said Ryan Dwyer, the agency's director of product analytics. He said that the agency has access to twice as much ID data - like YouTube and audience data - using Ads Data Hub than it did previously.

For a London telecom client it wouldn't name, Essence used Ads Data Hub to find people most likely to order from ads. The agency found that Google's tool was 50% more efficient than bidding for ads through machines.

Dwyer said he'd like Google to provide more attribution data, though.

Others are nervous that Google is getting more power

The flip side of Google providing more data is that it strengthens Google's walled garden by incentivizing advertisers to use its tech stack, Ford said. It also makes campaigns cost more because Google charges advertisers to query the data.

"We're now being forced into using Google's tech," Ford said.