Google & Responsible Marketing
Thoughts on retargeting ads in a cookieless world, Google’s interest-based advertising and the importance of first-party data
“So what is this WhatsApp security update all about?” and “Will we able to use WhatsApp if we don’t accept the privacy laws,” asked an educated family man while Rumi, Desmond and myself were coming back from our evening walk.
Desmond is a 4-year-old adopted labrador by Rumi and I am his godparent, sort of.
Half knowledge is killer. And Indian’s shouldn’t talk about security. We will trade all our details for free offers and discounts.
But the privileged Indian is asking a question on security which is not bad. Since the poor are wondering how will they survive the never-ending waves. Not to forget our country is yet to implement Data Privacy Law and we are managing with age-old IT Laws.
Anyway, the gentleman in full excitement shared how Google has been reading his emails. And how the ads are tracking him everywhere.
I finally popped his excitement and said it is the cost you pay for free internet. I also did my best to explain the concept of “Retargetting Ads” and how he can clear his cookies or make use of the Incognito mode.
“Are you a marketing guy,” asked the pleasing gentleman. “No. I am not.”
And here I want to be a nice human being like my father. Ain’t going to happen in this lifetime.
But what do you think the future will hold for retargeting ads in a cookieless future. Okay, let’s chuck the future let’s discuss the present state of retargeting ads and the role of Google.
2021 Outlook on Retargetting
Retargeting provides an opportunity to connect with customers, generate more revenue, and play a more relevant role in their digital experiences.
But how can marketers use retargeting holistically, to amplify their entire marketing strategy?
To help you answer this question, SharpSpring Ads in partnership with Ascend2 fielded the 2021 Outlook on Retargeting Survey.
There are no surprises - Facebook and Google remain the retargeting giants. Email is the preferred choice after Facebook and Google, followed by Twitter and LinkedIn.
The report represents the opinions of 176 marketing professionals during the month of February 2021 from a variety of industries working with retargeting budgets that exceed $2,000 monthly.
The report highlights that Social and Search form a powerful pact for retargeting ads. “Just 2% of website visitors convert on the first visit. Retargeting allows you to continue to build awareness, consideration, and conversion as part of your search and social channels. People who view retargeting ads are 70% more likely to covert!”
However, only 27% of marketers are extremely satisfied with their ability to determine the ROI of their retargeting program.
According to the report: “Across all segments, ROI is listed as the most effective KPI for measuring the performance of a retargeting program. Followed by Return on Advertisement Spend and Cost Per Acquisition.”
Additionally, the deprecation of third party cookies has been a potential impact. “71% marketers say that the deprecation of third party cookies have an impact on their retargeting program.”
The top of mind concerns for marketers is having a single view of attribution and ad frauds. “(77%)over threequarters of those surveyed are concerned about ad fraud.”
A cookieless future
Google is getting rid of third party cookies in Chrome(the browser that with 2/3 market share) and Apple does away with access to device identifiers on iOS. Firefox and Safari have already phased out the third-party cookie. Facebook is yet to say anything on the same.
Forbes says that the cookieless future is both bright and grin. “When advertisers buy ads from real publishers with real human audiences, they will get better outcomes than hyper-targeted ads shown on millions of long-tail sites to bots, pretending to be various audiences. This will also reduce the need for privacy-invasive data collection and the extra costs of targeting parameters, audience segments, fraud detection, brand safety detection, etc.”
“The “cookieless future” is indeed bright — for advertisers, good publishers, and consumers. But it will be grim indeed for ad tech vendors that had been profiting off of privacy-invasive data collection from users, diverting ad revenue away from good publishers to themselves, and selling snake oil to advertisers.”
Google’s Interest-based advertising
In order to build a safe and secure Internet-Google now is pitching for Interest-based advertising. Facebook must be laughing.
Google says: “Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) proposes a new way for businesses to reach people with relevant content and ads by clustering large groups of people with similar interests. This approach effectively hides individuals “in the crowd” and uses on-device processing to keep a person’s web history private on the browser.”
Our tests of FLoC to reach in-market and affinity Google Audiences show that advertisers can expect to see at least 95% of the conversions per dollar spent when compared to cookie-based advertising.
Google is also investing in measurement. One of the way it is doing so by using consented first-party data to preserve accurate measurement, even when fewer cookies are available.
“First-party data can also help you connect with more of the right people for your business. We're now expanding the availability of Customer Match to nearly all advertisers to reach and re-engage customers across ad types. As we look to the future, you can expect to see more innovations like these to help with your transition to a privacy-first world.”
The emergence of first-party data
Ad buyers expect a 6% overall increase in 2021 budgets compared to estimated actual spend in 2020, but have concerns about the end of third-party cookies, the loss of identifiers and the need for first-party data and cross-platform measurement, per the IAB's 2021 Marketplace Outlook Survey that was shared with Marketing Dive.
However, 41% of buyers don't know if their stakeholders understand the ramifications of third-party cookies' demise and the changes to identifiers, while more than a third believe they need more first-party data.
Similarly, 41% of marketers say digital media activation will be the area most impacted due to the rise of privacy-related data restrictions, per Merkle's 2021 Customer Engagement Report that was emailed to Marketing Dive.
In addition, web analytics (39%), digital media measurement (35%) and direct marketing activation (35%), among other areas, are expected to be impacted.
The emergence of first-party data has been thanks to the cookie-less future. Speaking to Business Insider India, Gautam Mehra, Chief Data & Product Officer- dentsu Asia Pacific (APAC) & CEO - dentsu Programmatic - South Asia emphasised the same.
This was an expected announcement. Google had earlier indicated its intention to move away from individual tracking to FLoCs, a kind of cohort-based tracking that would be privacy safe and yet allow for advertisers to track the effectiveness of their campaigns and also be able to retain attributes that matter to advertisers such as the interests/profile of their consumers albeit at a "crowd" level.
However, this coupled with the expected deprecation of third-party cookie support in 2022, will be challenging for the ad-tech industry in general. Large publishers will begin to force users to sign in to consume their content. Advertisers will have to invest largely in managing their first-party data efficiently and extracting maximum value from it, rather than relying on external signals. All in all, it is early times and we expect to see a lot more announcements in this space by various other platforms such as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, TradeDesk, Adobe and MediaMath.
Google says that the first-party data that a company collects with customers’ consent and therefore owns. It comes from multiple online and offline sources (e.g. web interactions, customer relationship management (CRM) databases, in-store purchases) and can include information such as demographics and customer purchase history.
In other words, marketers have to work more and data consent is finally a thing.
The first step to earning your customers’ trust is clearly stating what data you’re handling and what the customers will get in return, which means making it simple for users to understand what data is being collected and how they can opt-out.
Brands and first-party data
In 2021 brands have realised the importance of first-party data.BCG uncovered a consistent theme in the APAC first-party data study: digitally mature brands are increasingly using first-party data to drive meaningful, privacy-safe interactions with their consumers.
While 87% of brands view first-party data as very important to digital marketing, only a few brands are actually effective at consolidating and de-siloing their data. In fact, 56% of the APAC brands believe they are below average or average at using their first-party data.
The top barriers to achieving significant business impact with first-party data are tech-related, with up to 62% of brands citing the inability to link technology tools as the top barrier, followed by the lack of understanding of data and its use cases.
Google says that the best use of first-party data involves a two-way value exchange between consumers and brands.
People who trust brands with their data enjoy a more personalized shopping journey. And in return, brands get the opportunity to lift business metrics and reach new users who are likely to be interested in their products.
Transparency and Value are the two best practices to kick of the first-party data relationship with consumers.
BCG’s responsible marketing with first-party data says most companies now collect first-party data from the following sources:
However, activation and integration with digital marketing efforts is the key. Unfortunately, most companies are struggling here and hence is Google’s interest.
To know more about first-party data Google also has a playbook.
And did we say Email is dead in 2021, again :) not just your first-party, even second-party data is showing its face.
As we look to 2021, everything old is new again: A brand’s own customers are key to digital success, and the tried-and-true email address may regain its prominence. After such a disruptive year as 2020, it’s good to know the future knows how to cherry-pick the best of the past.
So tracking is dead?
Let me break your heart - cookie-based tracking is dead only to give birth to browser tracking :)
So what do Google’s Page Experience update, FLoC, and Apple’s privacy update have in common? They’re all tracked in the browser and cohort-based.
Google and Apple – players on the smart device operating system market – replace 3rd-party tracking with in-house solutions that group users by behavior and provide cohort-based data to advertisers. Instead of websites tracking users with cookies, Google and Apple record and aggregate user behavior with the help of machine learning. This shift fits into the privacy-conscious zeitgeist but is also an indicator for the technology that seems to be ripe for broad tracking and clustering.
Consequently, big advertising platforms gain more control and power; advertisers become more dependent on G and A.
Big tech should be regulated? Responsible Marketing??
LOL.
I guess even if sites ask you to log in Google does OK as so many are using their Google profile and ID to do that. And they have the browser data at a minimum. Maybe Amazon and Facebook will try to take on Chrome.