Google’s Privacy Presentation (Americas) – Part 1 – January 2022

I ended up breaking this post into two, as the last videos in the series are much longer than the ones summarized in this post. You can view the second part here and the third part here.

Google suggested tuning in to their “Privacy at Google 2022” presentation in their “Welcome to 2022” presentation (you can read my recap of the Welcome presentation here, available until February 11, 2022).

I am watching and recapping the presentation for the Americas.

First section – Welcome

You can view the video here until February 11, 2022.

We are warming up by talking about how privacy is a larger concern for people. This stat was shared:

The presentation is going to cover the following:

Overall message? Things are going to be changing and Google Ads has tools to help you navigate these changes. The three items above represent how they plan to do that and more detail will be in the subsequent sections.

Next up – How to think about the changing privacy landscape

You can view this video here until February 11, 2022.

How should you deal with the changing privacy landscape? Particularly with regard to your first party data, here is what Google is recommending:

It is really interesting that Google is talking about how advertisers should behave with their own first party data. This is a huge area that has not really been explored or I don’t think even fully thought about. All of the talk we do, and platforms like Google Ads do, about first party data doesn’t really tackle if from the perspective of the person who’s data it actually is – the customer. I would love to see studies on people’s comfort level with companies they do business with uploading their customer information into ad platforms. I would guess that people would be even less comfortable with that prospect than having cookies track them around the web?

Google is recommending that you give customers full control over their data with you:

My suggestion? If you want to get ahead of potential issues, put a field in your purchase form where people can agree or not agree to have their data used in customer lists for advertising purposes. The risk is going to shift from the platforms where it is now with cookies to the advertisers themselves if what is needed or suggested is uploading your customer data. Check with your legal resources to figure out how to do this and protect your risk. It has been a gray area up until this point, but it is likely to get more of a spotlight. Be proactive about this.

Ok, now it is getting a little ridiculous:

What? Seriously?

I have so many questions here… how will this work, exactly? Is Google Ads planning to have documentation for every ad they show so a person could click on something to see exactly why they saw the ad? Even in search? How will this impact similar or lookalike audiences? Or audiences in general that are generated within Google Ads? That data is specifically not ever seen directly by advertisers and only by Google Ads? This feels like a really big shift of responsibility that advertisers are not going to be ready to deal with (at least advertisers that are not large brands with big legal departments that figure all of this stuff out).

The final recommendations from this segment:

Up next – How to think about building a marketing measurement plan

You can view this video here (until February 11, 2022)

Opened talking about privacy and moving away from third party cookies.

5 Pillars Approach

• 1st Party data
• Cross platform tools
• Transparency about data usage
• Fill the measurement gaps with modeled data
• Predict customer behavior with a secure cloud based system

Next section – The Future of Measurement in a Changing Ecosystem

You can view this video here (until February 11, 2022).

More pillars… as Google is working to build a more privacy centric measurement system:

1. Preserve your existing measurement infrastructure
2. Inform and augment data through additional data sources to enable comprehensive modeling
3. Secure your data

How to preserve your existing measurement infrastructure:

 

Google is going to need advertisers to provide more data to Google for modeling.

Google is recommending using the Global Site Tag via Google Tag Manager. And of course, things will continue to evolve with tagging and user data consent.

Next Up – Introducing Enhanced Conversions

You can watch the video here (until February 11, 2022).

Nor surprisingly, if you used Enhanced Conversions, you will see more conversions reported (on average):

There are 3 ways you can implement Enhanced Conversions in your account:

Three goals for Google when it comes to Enhanced Conversions in their roadmap for it in 2022:

1. Streamlined setup
2. Expanding availability on channels and surfaces
3. Focus on robust integrations

They are working to have more and better integrations with third party tools for Enhanced Conversions.

That’s it for this first post. The videos are only available for about another week at the time of this post. Not sure why they are expiring so quickly? But if you want to watch for yourself, plan to do so by February 11, 2022.