Blog: From cookies to consent: privacy-friendly marketing

In our first blog post, we explored the impact of the Digital Markets Act and its implications for the future of third-party cookies. In today's digital marketing landscape, marketers face significant changes. You are now dealing with regulations like the ePrivacy Directive and GDPR, which impose strict requirements for obtaining consumer consent for data collection and usage. These developments create complex issues surrounding data and privacy. In this blog, we'll discuss the tools you can use to maintain sufficient insight into your marketing efforts.

Data Cleanrooms: What Are They and Why Are They Important?

Data cleanrooms are secure environments where different parties, such as advertisers and publishers, can bring together and analyze their data without compromising individual privacy or data security. You can upload, store, compare, and analyze your first-party data with data from other parties, while keeping the information anonymized. This process is managed by an independent entity, like EDM, which ensures that personal or identifiable information is removed before the data is analyzed.

For you as a marketer, this means you can gain valuable insights at an aggregated level without infringing on user privacy. This enables you to run targeted campaigns and better address the needs of your audience.

Google Privacy Sandbox: A Glimpse into the future

Google developed the Privacy Sandbox in response to the growing demand for privacy in the online advertising landscape. The goal of the Privacy Sandbox is to give users more control over their privacy while allowing you, as a marketer, to continue delivering relevant ads.

The Google Privacy Sandbox limits cross-site tracking and provides new web standards that you can use to optimize your digital strategy. However, a critical note is that the Privacy Sandbox operates as a ‘black box’. You don’t have complete control over the results Google returns, meaning you can’t measure or check things as you could before. This might impact the accuracy of your campaign data.

While the Privacy Sandbox still provides access to your audience and campaign results, you'll need to adjust your strategy to fit this tool. You won’t be able to perform detailed measurements at the individual customer level, but Google will provide an overview of the general end results.

Google Consent Mode V2: Flexibly Managing Privacy

Google's Consent Mode V2 offers a flexible approach to complying with new privacy regulations. This tool helps you obtain user consent for placing and using cookies, which is essential for GDPR compliance. Consent Mode V2 uses machine learning to 'model' missing data, allowing you to make your conversion data more accurate.

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If you don’t configure Consent Mode V2 correctly, you might face several issues. Your data collection could be limited, leading to less efficient campaigns and reduced visitor trust. Additionally, improper configuration could result in legal problems and potential loss of competitive advantage. It’s crucial to work with your legal department to ensure proper implementation.

Sever-Side Tagging: The Next Step in Data Management 

In addition to upgrading to Consent Mode V2, server-side tagging can give you even more control over your data management. Instead of collecting data through the user's browser (client-side), server-side tagging moves this task to the server. This offers numerous advantages in terms of privacy, security, and performance. You can more precisely determine what data is collected and how it’s used in your marketing campaigns.

Server-side tagging also helps you better comply with GDPR and other privacy regulations. It gives you independence from third-party cookies and ensures that your data collection is less vulnerable to disruptions from ad blockers or browser restrictions. This provides a more complete and accurate view of your customers’ behavior, helping you make better marketing decisions.

Enhanced Conversions: More Accurate Conversion Measurement

Starting March 2024, using Google Consent Mode V2 will be mandatory if you want to implement Enhanced Conversions in Google Ads. But what exactly are Enhanced Conversions? This feature improves the accuracy of your conversion measurements by sending hashed data from your website to Google. This is done in a privacy-friendly manner, such as converting email addresses into hashes before sending them to Google.

With Enhanced Conversions, you can track significant transaction moments, such as when a customer clicks on an ad and later makes a purchase via another device. This feature helps you get a more complete picture of the customer journey and measure the effectiveness of your campaigns more accurately.

Store Sales Measurement: Linking Online and Offline

Another valuable tool for marketers is Store Sales Measurement, which allows you to measure the impact of your online ads on offline conversions. This provides insight into how many offline sales occur as a result of your online campaigns. Store Sales Measurement helps you calculate your return on ad spend (ROAS) and supports your strategy with detailed data.

With this tool, you can see which campaigns perform best per store or product category. By hashing customer data and securely uploading it to your ad account, you can measure both online and offline conversions. This allows you to further optimize and personalize your campaigns based on detailed insights.

Conclusion

In a rapidly changing digital landscape, staying informed about the latest developments in data and privacy is crucial. Data cleanrooms, Google Privacy Sandbox, Consent Mode V2, server-side tagging, and Enhanced Conversions provide you with the tools to work effectively and privacy-consciously. By embracing these technologies and methods, you can optimize your marketing strategies and ensure your business remains successful in a world where privacy is becoming increasingly important. Want to discuss this topic further? Mark Wilmont, our Product Lead Digital, would be happy to visit you. Email Mark at mwilmont@edm.nl.