Cookie Deprecation for Travel Marketers Webinar Recap

Cookie Deprecation for Travel Marketers Webinar Recap

Watch the video then download our Data Privacy & Cookie Deprecation Whitepaper for Travel Marketers.

Cookie Deprecation for Travel Marketers Webinar Transcript

Prefer to read? See the transcript for our Cookie Deprecation for Travel Marketers webinar below.

Selina Gough

Hello, everyone. Thank you for coming. We’re just having people rock up to the session, so we’ll give it another minute and try to get everyone in before we kick off. Alrighty. Well, let’s kick off. So first of all, thank you very much for making the time today to join us.

Obviously the conversation around third party cookie deprecation is very hot at the moment, so I’m not surprised that we got quite a lot of good engagement on this one. Just a bit of housekeeping before we kick start. So in zoom you’ll see there is a QA option. If you do have any questions during the actual presentation, please just pop it in there, and we’ll answer those at the end.

And then that’s pretty much it. We’re good to go. So what we’re looking at in terms of today’s presentation is really around the objective of kind of obviously informing you guys around kind of the regulation changes within the markets. Obviously, we’re speaking more specifically about Australia. But there is obviously some global impacts as well. We’re looking at kind of what that means for us from a marketing lens perspective. And how that’s really gonna impact us.

And then, really, how the industry, or just marketing in general, really has to pivot when it comes to digital marketing approaches and what we do moving forwards.

So firstly, I am your host. My name is Selena Gough, as you can see on the screen. I am the Digital Director at In Marketing We Trust. I am based in Brisbane, and I don’t know if it’s a brag, but only 18 overseas trips. Hopefully, I can bump that number up and my overall experience: I’ve been working in digital marketing for the last 13 years or so. My background is predominantly within performance marketing. But pivoting more to strategy. And that’s kind of the remit I sit in now also across SEO and analytics, and the type of kind of travel more specific clients I have worked with is a range of different ones over the last 13 years, but most notably down the bottom you can see of work.

I currently work with Globus. I did quite a lot of work for United Airlines and then also partnering with Big 4 as well.

Now to introduce over to Benoit.

Benoit Weber

Hello, everyone. So I’m Ben. I’m Head of Analytics. My travel brag is the fact that I’ve been in more than 30 countries, but the one that I’m very proud of is actually working different countries. So I’ve been working in Spain, Portland, Switzerland, Vietnam, and France. I’m actually based in Vietnam.

But I’ve been working for In Marketing We Trust for about 9 years now. I’m responsible for anything that touches analytics. So from governance to dashboarding, reporting analytics, data, collection, privacy. That’s how I house all of that. A few brands I have been working on in the travel industry are Alitalia, Journey Beyond, there is Globus also I’m working on. Yes, I’m very happy to present to you today this webinar.

Selina Gough

Alrighty. So just a little bit about us, I guess. Obviously this is a more specific kind of tailored content towards travel. As we can see in this slide. Here. It is a core product offering that we have and a key vertical that we often work in. So we do make up a team of 54 within the agency, and that is really kind of helped us unlock quite a lot of capabilities in different markets. As you can see, the team comprises of 18 different languages which really helps in kind of adapting to different markets and requirements and things like that we’ve worked with a ton of different travel brands over the last 11 years. Since the agency has started, we’ve worked with really large sites and OTAs, as you can see, most notably down the bottom, the likes of Expedia and Skyscanner, and things like that.

And we ourselves, we do live and breathe really kind of travel as part of our culture. So once you get our team or fly somewhere typically within Asia, so we’re up to 7 countries so far that we’ve been doing this for it’s very much about. Obviously, we know travel, we travel ourselves. And that’s really kind of a core offering of ours.

Cookie Deprecation for Travel Marketers

So first of all, it’s kind of certainly setting the scene of what you can expect today. So we’ll go over kind of why this is happening in terms of the deprecation. What we want to look at from there is the impact. And how we have kind of set up all these different sections kind of the most common questions that we’re actually getting from our clients. So we thought that would be a good starting point to kind of give you some insight into what everyone’s talking about.

Then we’ll go into kind of how we need to adapt there are quite a lot of misconceptions and a lot of questions that are popping up with our clients. So we just want to address a couple of those we’ll summarise very quickly, kind of the key highlights from our discussion, and then basically go to questions and answers from there.

So this is a bit of a disclaimer the legal team has requested. We put this in. I won’t read it verbatim. You guys obviously can have a look at this. This is recorded so you can view it later. But it’s very much about. This is general guidance. Obviously. We do recommend that you do seek legal advice if you want to go further down this path

Right? Setting the scene over to you, Ben.

The first question from our client, I guess, is a pretty simple one. Is just what is it.

Benoit Weber

So what we call the deprecation of third party cookies is basically all those browsers and platforms stopping using third party cookies.

Can you go just on the next slide? So not all cookies are equal. So there are a lot of different types of cookies that exist.

Some are session permanent. Some are persistent, some are first parties, some are third party, and also it depends on the purpose. Today we’re gonna talk. And the initial point is talking about the third party cookie. But ultimately, cookies is gonna be the main like, we’re gonna shift towards cookie discussion and privacy in general. But the third party is the one we are talking about today because of deprecation in Chrome.

Can you go on the next slides? Just a bit of history of all the things that happen in the last few years. Starting by 2011, when GDPR.

Included in GDPR the right for users to refuse the use of cookies. And that’s basically the starting point. From there we could see that some of the browsers like Safari or Mozilla already started deprecating third party cookies back in 2013, where you went from persistent cookies to less than a week until they went through a full block of third party cookies. Google is just joining the party a bit late. So in 2020 they made the announcements that third party will be deprecated.

We are in 2024, and it will be done by the end of the year. So, compared to the other browsers, they are quite late, but we can see also in that timeline. That’s platforms. Also advertising platforms. The one that we are using marketers also has to change because of all those regulations. So one of the first that started was Facebook. So Facebook in 2018 changed from third party cookies to first party cookies. And we could also see that change happening in Google ads in 2021.

And that’s also the same year where Google analytics announced that they gonna sunset Universe Analytics. And the main reason why we went from Universal to GA4 is because of privacy issues that we were facing. So all those privacy, and third party is the hot topic at the moment, but all of that is because of regulations that are being applied in the world.

And GDPR was the first one. But then we had CCPA, for instance, in California we had more recently the Virginia one that is in place, and Australia has its own, which is called the Australian Privacy Act, and the announcement that they made this year is that they gonna reform the Privacy Act, and it’s gonna be very similar to what we have in Europe with GDPR.

So we are expecting some of the requirements from those privacy, privacy, regulation to be applied also in Australia very soon, in addition to the deprecation of that body.

Can you go on the next slide? If we look at just what’s happening in chrome they started early this week with the one person. So they are running some tests across the world. So 1% of the users have already third party cookies that are deprecated in their browsers, and what they announced is that by the end of the year that will be of a complete phase out.

Now what it means and why it’s such a big topic. Can you go on this next slides, please, is the fact that chrome is still one of the most used browsers in the planets. So on the right you have the whole world, and on the left you have Australia. So in Australia, it’s a bit more than half of the users that have that are using chrome where worldwide it’s about 65% of users.

But you can see all the other browsers, basically firefox, safari already have deprecated third party cookies. So it’s already a reality for those user platforms.

Our perspective, since half of them are using chrome. That’s where we’re going to see a real impact. It’s by the end of the year.

Selina Gough

Oh, sorry, Ben, so the next question is really kind of what are the key shifts that’s caused this movement from chrome. But obviously the other browsers as well.

Benoit Weber

So lots changed and we have all those new challenges when it comes to measurements. So one is the first party cookie. One of the other changes is the shorter conversion windows. So, for instance, all the browsers now automatically delete cookies after one, which means that you won’t be able to recognise the user.

You have also lots of limitations in regards to app tracking. So, for instance, Itp for ios users or even when you download an app. Now they’re asking you, do you want to be tracked? You can say I don’t want, which means that no tracking can be triggered.

You have all those new regulations. So, for instance, Australia Privacy Act is gonna be changing this year, which means that we’ll have to change the way we measure and collect data.

And you also have all those ad blockers. So, for instance, as a user, I’m a nightmare for any marketer I’m using brave, which is basically blocking anything which is Javascript or ads, which means you can’t track me. You can’t see anything, and you can’t serve me ads.

But all of that started once again with the regulations. So this is just a map of what’s happening in the world, and you can see the different colour scheme. So red is gonna be very strict regulations. But to the lowest regulations that are like in green. But you can see the different regions.

So Australia, Europe and North America have very strict regulations when it comes to data collection and Australia is gonna be very close to what GDPR, so what Europe is using at the moment.

So one of the things I’m recommending you to do is actually go on the website of GDPR, and just have a read through. Just get familiar with some of the concepts and the screenshot you can see here is a questionnaire. I think they have like 16 questions or something, but it’s gonna give you an idea of what it is, what regulation and privacy is, and where you stand.

Privacy act in Australia is different, but it’s copy. And using some of the concept of the GDPR, so usually, what we say is that if you are respecting GDPR, you will respect almost any regulations in the world. So it’s a good starting point.

Can you go on next slide but when it comes to cookies it’s actually one line in the whole GDPR, so there are 88 pages and cookies are mentioned once.

So when we say third party cookies are deprecating, it’s a big thing. Well, it’s just like really the top of the iceberg. What’s changing is the privacy and how we collect data, what we do with data, where we store data and what we do. So we’re gonna tackle obviously the cookies. But the whole big thing is privacy, right?

So when it comes to the cookie, one of the first thing we need to do, and it’s part of the explanation that is in GDPR and also in the Privacy Act, is asking the user. So you know, like all the banners we see on the website do you agree on using those cookies? That’s usually the first thing we need to do is asking for consent, providing information. So what data are we going to collect? What do we do with it? Where do we store it? We need to document what was the user’s choice. So if they refuse, or if they accept it.

We need also to provide the access to our services independently of their choice. So that’s a big thing in both. Privacy regulation is the you shouldn’t limit the access to your content or services based on the user choice in regards to data collection. And then you also need to give them the capability of withdrawing that consent. So if I say yes yesterday, I can say no today, and you will have to adapt everything.

Now when we ask the user, and when you look at the user, every like 88, 84%, so it’s almost every Australian wants to have control over what we collect the information they are sharing with the platforms.

And on the other end you have only 32% that feel that they are actually in control. So there is work here. There is a real need, but in terms of what we are proposing and what we are doing. We’re not there yet.

Yet there is still this sort of paradox, because at the same time they want to be in control and are aware of their privacy. They also wants to have personalisation. It’s when they are searching on the Internet. They want to see things they are interested in. So they are like, we don’t want you to collect data. We want to be in control of the data. But yet we want to have very personalised experience over the Internet, where we only see as data of my interest.

Selina Gough

Thank you, Ben. Alrighty. So now we’ve kind of set the scene now we’re gonna touch on the main questions we’re getting from clients around what this actually means and how it’s gonna impact them. So just as a quick overview, there’s a lot of consequences. And we’re not gonna touch on all of them today, unless you wanted this webinar to be for 3 hours but I guess the main thing to think about is essentially losing these cookies means that we’re looking at incomplete data sets.

And there’s a roll on effect, if we have less data that really affects our ability to target people. So when we’re thinking about audience segmentation, how we classify those people when we think about kind of personalisation because we don’t have a full picture of who these people are anymore, or what their interests are. That’s really challenging. All of those things kind of wrapped up together naturally have an impact from a marketing performance perspective in terms of your campaign effectively.

Because how are you making decisions and how the systems and machine learning and all that kind of stuff are doing what it needs to do when it has less data. Essentially.

We’ve got all these other elements where you have a lot of businesses, and we will touch on that a little bit later, where there’s an increased dependency when it comes to first party data, and just overall a lot of people are looking for alternative methods. So we’ll touch on that at the end.

So the first question we’re gonna touch on is kind of how will this impact advertising? For the travel related products and services? This isn’t isolated just to travel but obviously affects everyone. So I thought I’d start with just like a very quick recap and kind of what’s happening. So if a user on their browser being chrome goes to a website. They’re viewing different. Let’s say in this example is just looking at different flights.

What happens is it sends back cookies with information about you. So kind of who you are. What’s your interest? All that kind of stuff to really kind of help you people target you based on those classifications, so that that user leaves that site. They go to, maybe an editorial site, whatever it is, and they see the banner, and they can see that it is personalised to them, based on what they have seen.

And then they go back and they go back to the original side. So it’s a classic loop of retargeting in a very simplistic way. Now, what is happening if you are relying on third party cookies to provide this process of personalisation and retargeting is. This kind of happens where no information is getting sent back to the browser. Essentially, you go to the other side and you’re seeing less relevant ads which really kind of contradicts what Ben has touched on in terms of that personalisation paradox

So it makes it more challenging. Again, if you are heavily relying on third party cookies specifically to target. We’re going to lose that.

The other impacts that will have is really kind of reducing that targeting precision which you’ve just seen. Kind of an example of that. So the cookies allowed us to kind of build these profiles about who you are, what you’re interested in. I do. What are your market classifications, versus affinities and those kind of things? And basically that will leave. And it’s gone. So now, how do we kind of combat that while still trying to provide personalisation to some degree?

Then, on the other side, you got limited cross site tracking because the pixel would. What watch you or the cookie sorry, would watch you across different sites. What you’re looking at to really kind of amplify that profile of who you are. And again, with that it kind of really does limit that. And then the other complexity that we have with this is much like we’ve seen with safari. And those kind of things is the timeframe in which you’ll set as an audience has minimised so about 24 h with safari at the moment is 400 days maximum. But what we have essentially is smaller audiences, and we only have them for small time frames. Essentially so, if you do have long buying cycles, or whatever that might be, you will be impacted by this.

Alrighty. So how will third party cookie deprecation impact performance measurement? This is a really big one. And conversion tracking.

So attribution is a problem. And there is kind of incomplete data with this. So really, we had third party cookies that really kind of when we think about like cross site tracking, trying to understand the consumer journey and all those kind of things. It did unlock that ability for us to really understand from point A to point B kind of how you’ve got there? Unfortunately losing that.

We will be facing challenges when it comes to: How do we accurately attribute a user to an action? And this is really, gonna obviously have roll on effects to how do you do your medium mixed modelling? How are you going to decide what medium works best? What campaign all those kind of things, because we just have less visibility on what people are doing.

And then you got the conversion measurement element as well. So we did well. It historically, heavily relied on third party cookies to collect all that information which ties directly into attribution. And now we have less of it, less data, which means we have less insights, and essentially, that will then have a flow on effect of how do we optimise correctly when we’re working with missing information and holds everything essentially. And then that obviously keeps going into decreasing return on investment. Because if you can’t make the right decisions or you make the wrong decisions based on what you’ve got. It has. There’s some serious risks for us when we are planning media and buying.

And when we’re looking at. And this is kind of, you know, between users, choice and devices and that kind of stuff, there’s gonna be quite a big impact on on essentially a lot of metrics, whether it’s performance specific, or business related. And I’ve just highlighted the key commercial ones. But we are looking at quite a dice, and I don’t want to think there is absolutely no solution at all. Obviously we will touch on that at the end. But I think it’s going to be quite a big shake up for the right, for the right reasons. Obviously privacy being key. But we will see some some pretty big shifts.

Alrighty. So touching on personalization. And how will this impact our ability to do that? So going back to the paradox as Ben has already touched on. You’ve got this kind of contradiction between users of wanting privacy, but not wanting kind of irrelevant ads. And how do we kind of combat that. And that’s kind of you know this. Yes, with third party cookie targeting, we could do that, and it was relatively easy.

And what is happening essentially is, you know, before it was so simple to kind of bucket people based on kind of what content they have viewed, how they engage with a brand? Do they look at a particular product, or whatever it might be, and serve as across multiple different platforms to get them there. Unfortunately, again, if you are relying on third party cookies, it kind of looks like this. Now it’s gonna be a lot harder for us to be able to kind of give that relevancy to our users, even though they want it because we can’t classify them into certain buckets anymore.

Next question is, how are the platforms adapting to the change? The third party cookies? It’s actually been happening for quite a while.

So at the top. We’ve got the Google privacy sandbox. So that is Google’s essentially their answer to kind of user privacy. How do we respect it? But still empower marketers essentially to still do what we need to do. So I won’t go into that into much detail. We got Stackadapt on the right, which is one of our partners where really they’ve had to come up with cookie solutions to still allow marketers to to target their audiences.

Down the bottom. It’s more around the platforms that we use day in and day out. It’s really about how they’ve had to change completely to kind of combat this. So you know, from Meta to analytics and Google. And if you look at them, or you can always see kind of answers the question to some degree around, how do we target people if we have less information about who they are? How do we actually measure performance? And those kind of things? These solutions are trying to answer that.

And I I think the interesting thing to know if I use conversion Api as an example for Meta is, I’m not gonna go into full detail because it actually is quite technical. But a lot of questions we’re getting lately about implementing conversion Api, is, it is assumed. It’s a very simple task and it’s actually incredibly complicated to set up. So it is server side tagging. You can see there like kind of the complexities of how you actually need to to set this up. We think we’re talking about is going to be post implementation requirements is going to be updating data delays all that kind of stuff. So from a resource perspective, it actually still has an impact on us because you need to make time budget, whatever it is to actually implement it.

On the other side is kind of it is server side, which is an alternative. But the problem with that is, it doesn’t necessarily solve the challenge of user consent. We’re still tracking people just in a slightly different way. But we’re still collecting that information. So yes, it does work, and it is a solution for third party cookies. But kind of as you know, Ben has touched on is, we gotta think about GDPR, as kind of it. That’s likely to be the future. And we need to make sure we’re still respecting user consent.

And I just wanted to note, too, that if you are gonna go down server side tagging, migrate all your tags essentially to be that way. So whether it’s Google ads, analytics, whatever it might be. It just makes a lot more sense. If you’re gonna invest time into kind of converting over there, do everything while you’re there.

Alrighty. So now we’re going to go into how we need to adapt. Yeah. So oh.

Benoit Weber

I’ll go. Yeah. I just wanted to put the church back into the centre of the village. Third party cookie deprecation is just the consequence of privacy. So I really wanted to shift the discussion now from what we need to collect and how we gonna collect it rather than just what happened with the third party cookie.

So one of the things that we apply actually In Marketing We Trust is this framework we call the privacy by design. And the idea with that is that you put in the centre of every system tool implementation that you do. You put privacy at the start at the beginning of the project. So you make sure that you respect the user privacy, that you collect the data that you want, that it still functions that your solution is gonna function, even if you are respecting the privacy and that sort of thing. So be very careful of everything that you are developing, always putting this privacy first.

Now we’ve been all gloom and doom until now. But there are actually a lot of solutions that exist in regards to the deprecation of a third party cookie, but also in terms of privacy. I’m just gonna touch on some of the new technologies that have been, and you’ve certainly heard about them. That have been developed in recent years. So one is the customer data platform, the other one is the reverse Etl, and then the data clean room.

So with the Cdp, it’s basically a software where you’re gonna gather and organise all your customer data from different sources and then you will be able to tailor your marketing efforts and improve the consumer experience where Etl so Etl stands for extract transform loads. The idea here is, you have your data, and you’re gonna share it to other platforms. But you’re gonna only share what matters.

So it makes it. You respect the privacy by limiting on how much data you are sharing outside of your platform. So like when you are sharing data with Facebook or Google, you’re just gonna give them only data points that matter. And then you are still unconscious of your data.

And then the last one is the data clean room. So data, clean room is sort of a environment like so secure environments where you gonna approach your first party data limited to what you are willing to share, but that you can combine with other sources like partner, pretty sure or ad work data sources, and you will gain more visibility on who are your consumers? Who are your users and then adapt your marketing. So Cdp is gonna be an alternative tool where you can activate your own data.

Reverse Etl is going to be the way you can share in a privacy matter your data to other platform, to unlock new audiences and things and the data clean room. It’s also sharing the data in safe environments. But that helps you understand who your consumer is on the top, in addition to the activation.

But before you go into those more advanced or more advanced tool, I think it’s always great to start with the easy stuff. So going back to the changes into the different platform, if you can just go on the next slide.

So I’m gonna focus on the Google platform, basically Google analytics 4 and Google ads, and just show you on how you can unlock consent modes and the impact it’s gonna have on the behaviour modelling and on the conversion modelling.

So up to the next section where I’m gonna show you how, what are the different steps that you should take to answer the pro to ensure the compliance with the regulations while facing the cookie deprecation, and while unlocking those new features that are available by Google.

So in this section, I’m just gonna go through the consent mode. So consent mode is a Google feature that enables you to unlock models that’s gonna help you calculate the missing traffic or conversions you got into your Websites.

So to do that the first thing you will have to do is to select what we call a consent management platform. So there are a lot. But like, when I say a lot like, it’s a lot lots, so I really recommend you to do some research before you pick one a good way of finding which one to use is the created this new program at Google, which is called the Cmp Partner program, which are platforms that are partnering with Google. And that’s gonna help you implementing not only the consent, the Cookie consent management platform, but also consent modes in a very easy way.

So Cookie Bot, for instance, is the one we use on our own website. One trust is some of the I know a lot of clients in Europe are using that. I have clients that use die domain. It’s really up to you to select the one you want, but make sure that it’s a partner we’ve done. It’s gonna make the whole implementation easier.

So what it means when you have implemented that sort of Cmp is, you know, the the boring banner that we see every time we go on the website. That ask what cookie you want to use. So that’s basically it. That’s where we ask the user how much data they’re willing to share.

So that’s what’s concerning third party. But also first party cookies. And the idea here is the letting the user in control of how much data they are willing to give you, and based on what they are selecting, you will be able to collect data for GA4 for Google ads or not.

And sometimes when they’re gonna say, no, you will have to not track or get any data which was the point of Selina conversion Api with Facebook even if it’s on the server side. If you don’t have the consent of the user that say, I don’t want advertising to collect data about me. The fact you do on the server side is not solving the problem, even if it’s not a cookie itself.

That’s the end. Reason right? So there are 7. There are 7 steps when you start implementing that sort of platform. The first one is scan the site. It gives you the list of all the pixels, all the tags on the Javascripts. That’s they found crawling your websites, and then you will be able to create your own template. So I was just showing you the different bidders right with the different type of cookies you can select, so you can customise that the way you want, then you will have to categorise the cookie.

So going back to the type of cookie, the duration, the provenance, and the usage of it, you will have to figure out, okay, what’s this cookie is for which platform is using it? What data is collecting? And then categorising into. It’s advertising. It’s analytics, it’s statistics. It’s personalization. So then, when the user is selecting or refusing one of the other categories, you will not be able to use those platforms.

Now for travel companies that are working like worldwide, you have the capacity capability of having different banners, different types of banners based on where the users are. So, for instance, if you are in Australia versus if you are in in Europe or in U.S.A, you will have 3 different regulations, which means that the information that the banner is gonna provide is gonna depend on where the user is.

You will have to define the list of all the vendors that you are using and what’s the purpose? So the user, that’s the part of the information you need to give to users. So they know what you do with their data.

And then, once you’ve done all of that, that’s where you implement the cookie consent banner through tag manager. And because it’s a partner, it’s going to be easy for you to do it.

And then, based on the user consent, you will or not collect the data and therefore create the cookie cause. When we should say, we create a third party cookie, we create a third party because we sent information to Google ads or to Facebook or thing. It’s just the trace of what we’ve done. But ultimately, cookie means we collected data and we send it to the platform and we are just saving that particular id in the browser, so we can recognize them.

But Cookie is collecting data, but never forget that. And always like it’s not because you don’t use cookie like you are allowed to collect data full of getting on the next slide. So what is the Google consent mode is basically the user on your websites. They will see the banner. So they will say, I want, I want or not you to collect data and then, based on that, do, Google tags will adapt the way they collect data. So they will have. If they have the authorization, they will collect data as they would normally do, and if they don’t, they will have this alternative, which is anonymized pings that will be collected that will be used to feed in the different models that Google has created the behaviour and the conversion models that will help you figure out on how much traffic you actually get even for people that say, I don’t want to be tracked. Basically.

So another way of seeing that is just go on the next slide where we have. So at the bottom is, you have the normal implementation.

If you don’t do consent mode, basically, what’s gonna happen is the well, if the users say, yes. Well, you collect data as like you would always do if they say No, you have absolutely no visibility. You don’t know. You don’t know how many sessions you get for people that say no. But if you have the consent modes, what you unlock is the not identifying data that you’re gonna send to Google analytics and to Google ads onto footlights. That’s gonna enable the models to predict on how much data you missed.

So we keep the we, the user privacy is safe and it’s kept. Yet we are able to overestimate on how much traffic you lose now, not all tags are supporting consent mode. So like, I was saying, it’s a Google solution.

It’s Google consent mode. So it means that it works for glass, for floodlight for Google analytics. It can be deployed by tag manager once again going back to the partners. If you are using a partner is so when I say it’s easier, is like a thousand times easier. It’s not just a bit easier but it’s not working. And I’m expecting all those platforms. So I know that Microsoft ads, started doing some of that, too. But I’m expecting all the advertising platforms to also have some sort of a backup when users are saying we don’t want you to remarket us. You don’t want you to create the cookie. You don’t want us to collect data to still have a sort of a fallback behaviour. That’s gonna help us knowing on how many people actually click on the ad or convert it on our website.

Now, the next slide. It’s quite technical. And I put there on purpose to show you on how technical it is. So the implement. So basically we need to classify all the tools into different categories.

The main 2 categories that are gonna be interesting for us is ad storage and analytics storage. So basically analytics tool or advertising tool which will be depending on the user choice will enable us to trigger the tags or not, and therefore connect the data and create the cookie. But something. And I just added at the bottom, which was all the discussion around consent mode v. 2. And you may have heard of that.

Speaking of March, it’s actually currently, it’s actually in Europe, only in Europe. But it’s about a matter of weeks or months before it’s all over the world where before Google was sort of assuming that if you are sending the data to them meant you had the consent of the user.

Now, not only you need to ask for the consent. Then you trigger the tag. But when you send the data to the tone, you have to prove that you got the consents of the user. And if you don’t have that, you are not able to create audiences in Google ads.

So, for instance, in Europe for the last 2 months. It was crazy for all the analytics that people that were doing implementation as such, because people lost the capacity, the capacity of creating audiences in Google ads, just because they were not supporting consent mode.

So it’s very important. And anyone that is telling you it’s a matter of minute for me to do it.

The la now, just in terms of how it works. What I’ve done in the next slide is the metrics right? And we’re just gonna go from one to the other. So first case is ad and analytic storage are denied. So the first column, which means the users say, I don’t want advertising tools, and I don’t want an analytics tool to track any data, and I don’t want any cookie to be created.

Now, if we have consent modes, what’s gonna happen for Google analytics, Google ads and floodlights is, we’re gonna sense what we call the unconsented things that’s gonna fit in into the the models where for Facebook, Linkedin or Microsoft advertising, we don’t have the user consent. So we don’t collect any data. So those users and what they are doing on the websites will be invisible to you. Now, if in the case we have ad storage denied analytics storage. Mean, I’m okay with analytics tone. But I’m not okay with advertising.

Ga is gonna work normally. So you would be able to see the session. The conversions in Ga, now in Google ads is gonna be only unconsent in pings. And then for Facebook, Linkedin Microsoft. Still no authorization from the users. So still no data, no visibility in there. Now, if you have ad storage. Granted analytic storage denied so advertising, yes, analytics. No.

You will have just Google analytics and consented pings and all the other tools are gonna work normally. And then the last comment is when they say yes to everything one, you have the standard behaviour now from experience it from what we can see in Europe, and for all those websites where they are already the banner. It’s either column one or column 4 people tend to say yes to all or no to all. They are never like the We don’t column. So that’s why it’s very important to have the the, the consent mode, because it enable you to have still some sort of information about how much traffic, how much conversion, and what people have done using the volumes from Ga and Google ads and got this.

Selina Gough

So the question that we’re gonna answer now, is really around, how are we able to understand kind of user behaviour and performance when we are dealing with incomplete data.

Benoit Weber

Well, first one is the consent mode. Right? So I was explaining how you implement it. But what it’s gonna do is that if you don’t have consent mode, you will only see people that give you consent.

But if you have constant mode implemented, what can you see? It’s the last pie chart, the blue one Google is gonna be able to recalculate and give you more accurate data on how much traffic you actually got and how much conversion based on the bonus they created.

Now, it’s not available to everyone. You have certain thresholds to be able like that are required for you to unlock those models.

So for GA4 and the behaviour modelling. So you will have to have at least 1,000 events per day for people that refused analytics tools, and you will have at least 1,000 users per day that’s granted access to analytics tools.

So, for instance, on the In Marketing We Trust website, we don’t have that. So I know that we will never have model data available. Now, even if the models are not available, it’s still important, because then I still want to retarget them in Google ads. So Google consent mode is not about just the recalculation of the actual sessions and conversion. It’s also enabling you to use those users in your remarketing and things.

Now in Google ads. It’s a bit different. The threshold is gonna be based on how much you are spending, basically which is 700 at clicks over 7 days per region. Per country. So it’s about 100 clicks per day. Basically.

Now, another way of estimating on how much traffic or conversions you are not seeing is looking at what your content management platform is providing you. So this is a chart from One Trust where you can see at the top. It’s the number of people that opted in. So that say yes to advertising and analytics tools. And at the bottom is the opt out. And like I was telling you, you can see, we, we can’t see the blue line because it’s behind the red one. So basically, what’s happening is that everyone?

It’s either you opt in for everything, or you opt out for everything. It’s reject all or accept all. There is like not a lot of people that granularly select what they want. And I wanted to give you this action like real numbers from one of my clients. They’re operating in all Europe, and just to show you on how different it is based on the culture of the people. So, for instance, in Austria, we had 15% of the people refusing everything which means in Ga and Google, as we could see, only 85% of the traffic clicks, conversions. And in Germany, where people are much more aware in terms of privacy we had up to 40.

So it’s quite a lot of of we were seeing only 60% of the traffic. And that’s just to report on the performance of the company was a very important insight to have. So we could say, Germany, based on what we see in Google ads, is underperforming. But we actually seeing only 60% of what’s happening because people are refusing us to track them.

So you have always like it helps you to add this pinch of salts into what you are seeing and getting that extra information.

Now in platform in Google analytics. For there is a easy way for you to change the data you are seeing in GA4, so you have what we call the identity reporting. So you can shift from what you collected. So what they call the observed data. It’s like for people that’s gave you the consent to another, which is the blended. That’s add what you observe, plus the model data so shifting from one to the other in the interface, you will be able to see on how much the model data is adding in top of your traffic and conversions.

Now in Google ads. At the months. There is no much in there, but they are. They announced late last year that they gonna add in the platform this report, when you gonna be able to split the conversions between actual conversions, the one you were able to measure versus the one that were added by the model.

Now, another thing that you can do is there are lots of analytics platforms. And I just took those 3, because while we are very familiar with button, also, it’s a solution that is also well used in Australia. Further analytics is also very known. It’s analytic solutions that are anonymised and cookieless, or that proposed cookie less and anonymised way of collecting data, which means that they will fall under what we call the statistic tools. So even if the user is saying, I don’t want you to use any cookie, we would still be able to collect data which would be very important anonymised and cookie less. But that will give you that top level numbers as in how much sessions I got, and how many conversions, or from submission or purchases I got on my websites. So then you can compare that to what you see in GA4, and you would be able to see “Oh, I missed that much”, because that many people refuse the usage of cookie.

Selina Gough

Alrighty and so now, moving over to how businesses essentially need to to change the strategies in light of the deprecation. So I will be taking this one.

It is a new world. And if you guys attended the first one, this was covered as well. But it’s really a mind shift. Change is what we’re looking for. Now. I’ve highlighted 3 in particular, shifting to contextual targeting. First party data and attribution. There’s quite a lot that we need to do. And obviously, you know, we’ve already touched on kind of privacy is really important.

The alternative methods of tracking we’ve touched on but it really is about how we need to adapt what we need to do in terms of our strategies, to to still drive business outcomes.

So very quickly. Contextual targeting. It’s actually always been there. But it’s a greater focus. Now, if we thought we are thinking, we don’t have audiences. Necessarily, we have less audiences. We want to prospect whatever that might be. It’s really about focusing on contextual targeting, which is essentially based on the content site or a page has, it’s basically classification for targeting. So in the example on the right, if you look, car, has you probably interested in car hire. And that’s your context. So I suppose the way to think about contextual targeting is it’s realtime. Someone is actually actively viewing that topic in that moment. So it is not a bad alternative at all. It’s just more around kind of very much in the moment versus kind of retargeting when we were using third party cookies where it was kind of no matter what they’re looking at at that moment. So it’s a very different kind of way to do it, but very effective audiences.

Next one is first party data. I’m sure everyone’s doing it. There’s a whole array of different types of first party data. And this is more important than ever. Essentially, because obviously, this is more relevant. Data is uses, provided your you’re respecting their privacy. It’s going to be more effective for you. And I think I put this slide in here, really get about how you need to design a strategy for first party data.

So I won’t go through all of them. But the main thing I want to kind of highlight is it’s not as simple as going “Let’s I don’t know. Provide a Pdf download. So we can collect people’s emails.” And that’s pretty much it. It’s much bigger than that. It’s really around an organisational shift to go. Okay, well, how do we provide value to our users? So they actually want to give us their data. And that’s the key thing we need to think about as a brands is.

it’s always about value we need. It’s an exchange of goods. Essentially what we’re looking for. So it’s not just collect information. It’s actually a much bigger change from a branding and product perspective.

And last, one is really around attribution models. So thinking about more multitouch because we’re losing that kind of connection from A to B, so it’s really about factoring in things like media mix modelling where you have the capability to not just pump in information about how much you’re spending, what type of marketing you’re doing, but also looking at kind of what your competitors are doing, even market conditions down to unemployment rates of that is for some reason impact. So they’re raising, rising increases in the rates at the moment, really pumping that into an analytics engine of sorts to kind of figure out if I spend more, do I get more? Or where from a statistical kind of trending perspective. Where should you be spending a lot more of your time?

Once you have that kind of attribution in place, and you can figure out kind of those levers that you have to deploy. It’s really around kind of optimising from there, figuring out where you put your money, what type of activities you’re doing, how you’re allocating your budget. And then it kind of drives through to your business outcomes. So this is an ongoing process that you know. I’m sure all of you guys are hearing it more and more.

This is a very hot topic at the moment, specifically attribution, media mix modelling. And it’s largely driven by this response of, we have to respect to users privacy. We have less information about who they are now, unless they willingly give it. How do we still do our jobs? And this is kind of how a lot of marketers are shifting their mindsets.

Alrighty so very quickly. Just the common misconceptions that have been popping up quite often for us.

So first one is tracking to replace third party cookies, it is a solution to still allow us to track user information and collect that data. But like, I highlighted a little bit earlier, it’s still potentially invasion of user privacy, because you are still essentially doing that. So? Yes, it absolutely does work. Is it the long term solution? It’s questionable. Again, if you’re looking at GDPR, it’s potentially not long term.

The next one is really around losing the ability track uses across devices. Third party cookers. I’ve actually never really done that. They’ve been challenged to really bridge that gap. And it’s really around kind of the on a device level itself. So that’s not going to be lost. Obviously, the cross site stuff is limited but not cross device. So there’s no stress on that one.

And last one is add personalisation. As you’ve seen the examples earlier, it is going to be a bit more challenging, but doesn’t mean it’s impossible, you know, when we do factoring and kind of consent when we do factor in kind of first party data, 0 party data, all that kind of stuff. We still have audiences. They’re still giving us information again, provide the values there. We can still provide personalised experiences. It’s just a lot more hyper focused than it used to be.

Excellent. So that was today’s content. We’ll go through some quick highlights. So, Ben, did you want to kick us off?

Benoit Weber

Yes.

Well, first is first party and third party deprecation is the consequence is not the actual problem. So we really need to put privacy in the center of everything. So I really recommend everyone to use privacy by design and thinking everything privacy first.

Second thing is, there is a new, welcoming new technology, new solutions. So really, up to everyone to look after a CDP after the Reverse Etl, or clean room and see how you can unlock those new technologies.

And then the last one is to start with. I always recommend starting with the installing content management platform having the banner in place and then unlock the consent mode that will help GA4 and Google and Google ads to have those unconsentings being sent and having those models unlock. That’s the starting points. And it’s going to help, you understand, and navigate this new privacy world.

Selina Gough

Thank you. And so for me, it’s really about rethinking kind of marketing strategies and how we’re actually gonna execute our campaigns. And it’s really that kind of first party data value mindset where we need to kind of provide more essentially than we did before, to have the right to have that information. So I think that’s quite a big shift that we will need to take.

The other main takeaway from me. Was. It’s actually a really positive sign to see that, you know, platforms like Google, they’re later than others better. And and those those things they’re listening to users, you know. Obviously, we’re users as well. They’re hearing our concerns, they want to obviously protect our privacy. And they’re just trying to find solutions to do that. So I actually think that’s quite a positive thing. That these platforms are unlocking for us.

Excellent.

So we’ll move over to QA. Let me see if there’s any questions. I don’t believe there is any questions. If you do have any, feel free to throw them in now. I’ll give it just a couple of seconds to see if anything pops through.

Nope. That looks like it. Alrighty. Well, that concludes today’s session. Thank you very much for joining. That was, that was quite a lot of information. But hopefully, you guys have taken something away from this. If you do have any further questions, obviously feel free to reach out to us directly. We’re more than happy to kind of elaborate on anything that we’ve discussed today. And thank you, Christian, for your comment. And then, yeah, these are recorded. So if you do want to view them, you can. We’ll send them out to you, and that’s pretty much it. Thank you for your time guys.