Search Engine Journal recently posted an article that explores some of the changes Google Analytics is making in order to help marketers track user behavior–even without the use of cookies! With privacy-safe ways to track data, the move is a win-win for both marketers and consumers. We’ll take a closer look at this article and provide our own response to its information.
Here is an excerpt from the article:
Google Analytics Will Track Data without Cookies
By Matt Southern, posted by Search Engine Journal, May 13, 2021
“Google announces several updates that will help provide site owners and advertisers with relevant data when cookies aren’t available.
The new privacy-safe tracking methods, which don’t involve Google’s controversial FLoC technology, rely on consented first-party data and machine learning.
These new solutions are designed to help marketers succeed in a world with fewer third party cookies and identifiers, by introducing ways to measure conversions and unlock helpful insights while respecting user consent.
With these updates for site owners and advertisers, Google will:
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- Extend its advanced machine learning models to behavioral reporting in Google Analytics.
- Allow seamless access to Consent Mode, which adjusts how Google tags operate based on user cookie consent choices.
- Implement enhanced conversions that allow tags to use consented, first-party data to track how users convert after engaging with ads…
Google Analytics will soon utilize machine learning to enhance marketers’ understanding of the customer journey with or without cookies.
This is an extension of the machine learning capabilities added to Google Analytics last year that allow it to surface relevant marketing insights, such as the likelihood of customers making a purchase.
Google’s advanced machine learning models will be extended to behavioral reporting in Analytics. These models will fill gaps in data left by cookies not being available.”
Google Recovering Important Data for Marketers
Cookies are code that’s attached to the web browsers of online searchers. Searchers pick them up when visiting certain websites that feature them. The code provides marketers data about the websites that the searcher visits. Not surprisingly–many searchers don’t like them and view them as an invasion of privacy.
Now, Google has developed a plan to recover important data for marketers even when internet users refuse to consent to cookies. The data remains privacy safe but marketers still get up to 70% of the information they need to measure data and “unlock performance insights.”
Privacy-safe measuring marks a genuine milestone for tracking data that strikes a terrific balance between user privacy and marketers’ needs. Google made plans to stop supporting the use of cookies on Chrome by 2022. It has now delayed that decision to 2023, but it remains committed to pulling support for cookies as it solidifies its ability to address the data needs of advertisers and publishers on the web.
How are your business’s digital marketers tracking data and using Google Analytics to refine their marketing initiatives? At Blue Interactive Agency, we rely on Google Analytics along with other tools and resources that allow us to track and measure our clients’ digital marketing campaigns. Google’s plans to ‘delete cookies’ is something we’re paying close attention to. If your business is interested in how we measure and grow marketing success, visit us online to learn more or call to discuss your marketing needs.
