I wish I had someone give me summaries like I’m giving you all, but hey that’s what I’m here for, right? Someone’s gotta’ do it and lucky for you, I love this stuff! So, I have compiled all my research, keynotes, and announcements from Google over the last year, and am summarizing the most important takeaways below. Enjoy!
We all have our pet peeves, and this is one of mine. So, just as a friendly reminder, it’s no longer called “Google AdWords” as Google shortened it to “Google Ads” some time ago. Moving on!
Google Marketing Livestream Keynote
Here’s Google’s summary for their Google Marketing Livestream 2021, and my notes from this session are below:
Prepare for a future without cookies
Google is transitioning to 1st party cookies rather than 3rd party as our digital advertising world gets more and more strict on privacy and data tracking.
Quick explanation of the difference between 1st and 3rd party cookies: 1st Party Cookies are created by the domain and 3rd Party Cookies are non-domain created. These cookies do the same thing, but differ in how they do it.
- 1st Party Cookie Example: I’m shopping on an eCommerce website and look at products that interest me. I add a couple of those products to my cart. I leave the website. I return to the website next week and the items are still in my cart as well as the site is recommending to me certain products that are related to the initial products I viewed. ie) Similar products, recently viewed products, and so forth.
- 3rd Party Cookie Example: I’m shopping on that same eCommerce website. I leave the website and go to various other websites and can see ads for the eCommerce site I was browsing earlier. The site seems to be “following” me around! This is also known as retargeting, but is a prime example of a 3rd party cookie.
Google says that a “privacy-safe, ad funded internet is possible” and they bulleted the ways how we can transition to a world without cookies:
- Have a great relationship with customers
- Properly use consented first-party data
- build deep engagement with customers
- Be forward-looking and predictive
- Commit to new technologies that preserve privacy
- Chrome’s privacy sandbox (open source)
Google’s solution to this transition is going to be their privacy sandbox. However, this greatly benefits Google because it essentially drives people to use more Google products, like Google Chrome.
NEW in Google Ads
Here’s a quick view at the new features coming to Google Ads and some that are already in beta:
- Booking with local services ads, backed by Google Guarantee
- Performance Max campaigns (beta)
- brings together all of Google’s ad inventory
- drives the best performance against your goals
- delivers “rich insights” into automation
- Complement text ads with rich visuals
- image extensions
- Shop top best sellers alongside your ad (product feed in ads)
- Use responsive search ads in campaigns that also use broad match and smart bidding.
- these see an average of 20% more conversions at a similar cost per action
- Performance Max reporting (beta) – understand how automation is driving results
- Product feeds in ads
- Augmented reality in products
- AR lipstick, for example
- Expanded generic search campaigns
- broad match + smart bidding
- responsive search ads
- data-driven attribution
- dynamic search ads to capture new queries
How To Best Advertise Using 1st Party Cookies
If you’d like to dive deeper into Google’s transition from 3rd Party Cookies to 1st Party Cookies, here are my takeaways on Google’s explanation on both set-up and use:
Set Up
- Build your measurement strategy on first-party data
- 1st party data is defined as data that your company has collected directly from your audience—made up of customers, site visitors, and social media followers. “First party” refers to the party that collected the data firsthand to use for re-targeting.
- Enable users to make choices about their data
- Fill in gaps with modeled data
Use
- Sitewide tagging
- Use info from email addresses
- Customer match
- ConsentMode
- adjust how tags operate based on user choice
- before and after cookie decision (accept/opt out)
- adjust how tags operate based on user choice
- Consent experience in Google Tag Manager
- Modeled behavior reporting in Google Analytics (data for when cookies are not enabled)
- New touchpoints will soon be included in all attribution models
- YouTube and Display in data-driven attribution
Google Ads Updates for 2022
Expanded Text Ads are going away. I repeat, EXPANDED TEXT ADS are going away in June of 2022!
If you don’t already have Responsive Search Ads going (tisk tisk) then start building them…now!
I hope that wasn’t too subtle.
Alright, team! That’s my breakdown for the year. I hope you got some good info, but if you have any questions or want to add to my summary, please feel free to reach out. We’re reachable all over: contact form, call, social, you name it…