Clearing 2026: why UK universities need recruitment intelligence
UK universities face a deficit crisis. Student Recruitment Intelligence can transform Clearing from chaos to precision.

Last week, Google announced they were unifying their analytics and advertising platforms under a single new name: Google Marketing Platform.
The Google Analytics 360 Suite and DoubleClick brands are being replaced with this single name.
What does this mean for DoubleClick?
If anything this is a change that has needed to happen for years. DoubleClick always sat rather clumsily alongside other tools from Google and this shift heralds the beginning of a more unified approach.
Search Ads 360 will be a new product to replace DoubleClick Search (DCS), whereas Display & Video 360 takes some aspects of tools such as DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM) and DoubleClick Campaign Manager (DCM).
What does this mean for the Google Analytics Suite?
The name "Suite" will go but the products within in remain (i.e. Analytics, Data Studio, Optimize, Tag Manager and Surveys).
How will the platform be charged for?
Quite how the products will be charged for remains to be seen. I personally am hoping to see a model tied more closely to what we see with Firebase - with a "pay for what you use" model, underpinned by Google Cloud Platform, rather than the current opaque "enterprise only" pricing we have gotten used to.
What does this mean for digital marketing?
There's no place to hide. Accurate measurement is central to everything!
UK universities face a deficit crisis. Student Recruitment Intelligence can transform Clearing from chaos to precision.
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