A Recognized Honor in the Digital Advertising World
Kimberly Hogate, founder of Faceted Media, recently received an invitation to join the Google Ads Research Panel — a program that is not advertised, not applied for, and not easy to come by. Google extends these invitations to a carefully selected group of digital marketing professionals whose work, account management, and platform expertise meet a bar that most advertisers never reach. For Kimberly and the clients she serves, this is a meaningful milestone.
What Is the Google Ads Research Panel?
Most advertisers interact with Google Ads as it exists today — the dashboards, the bidding systems, the targeting options that are already live and available to everyone. Panel members get a different experience. They are brought in before any of that goes public.
The Google Ads Research Panel is an invite-only group of advertising professionals selected to work directly with Google on the development of its platform.
That means testing tools that have not launched yet, giving structured feedback on features that are still being built, and weighing in on the kinds of problems that advertisers actually run into — the ones that do not always show up in internal testing but surface immediately when real campaigns are involved.
Google uses this input to decide what gets refined, what gets cut, and what gets prioritized. It is not a ceremonial role. The feedback shapes real decisions about where the platform goes next.
Who Gets Invited — and Why It Is Rare
There is no application process for a panel like this. Google identifies candidates based on the track record they have already built — account health, consistency of campaign management, level of platform engagement, and the overall quality of the advertising work being done over time. Professionals who maintain strong relationships with their Google Ads representatives and stay actively engaged with the platform tend to be the ones who surface on these lists.
It is the kind of recognition that comes from doing the work well, over a long period of time, without cutting corners.
An account in poor standing or a campaign approach that leans on shortcuts does not produce this kind of outcome. Kimberly’s invitation is a direct reflection of the standards Faceted Media holds itself to.
What It Means in Practice for Faceted Media Clients
The practical value of panel membership is not abstract. When Kimberly has visibility into where Google Ads is heading — new features, shifting priorities, changes to how campaigns are structured or measured — that knowledge gets applied to client work before the broader market has any awareness of it.
Strategy that is built around where a platform is going, rather than where it has been, is inherently more durable. Clients benefit from campaign decisions that are informed by a deeper understanding of the platform than most agencies will ever have access to. And because Faceted Media is a boutique operation, that insight does not get diluted through layers of account managers — it flows directly into the work.
Beyond strategy, there is something to be said for working with someone whose expertise has been vetted not just by client results, but by the platform itself. Google is not in the habit of inviting people into rooms like this without reason.
The Broader Context
Research panels exist at most of the major platforms — Google, Amazon, and others — because building good advertising products requires honest input from the people who depend on them. Internal teams can only simulate so much. The real gaps and opportunities tend to show up in the hands of practitioners managing live campaigns under real business pressure.
When Google selects professionals for this kind of program, they are looking for people who can articulate what is actually happening at the campaign level — not in theory, but in practice.
Years of working across industries, managing budgets, troubleshooting performance issues, and developing strategies that hold up over time is what produces that kind of perspective. That is the experience Kimberly brings to the panel, and it is the same experience she brings to every client engagement at Faceted Media.