Data is essential for business success, but it’s important to choose privacy-conscious collection methods and ensure the quality and quantity of your data. By linking Google Analytics 4 (GA4) with Google Ads, you can expand your business while taking privacy into consideration.

In today’s world, privacy concerns are paramount, and the amount of data that can be used for marketing is decreasing. This can make it difficult to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. However, GA4 is designed to help you overcome these challenges.

GA4 has machine learning capabilities that provide insights into your customer behavior, even without the use of personally identifiable information (PII). This allows you to create more targeted and effective ad campaigns without sacrificing privacy.

The impact of privacy regulations on conversion measurement

In the past, we could use third-party cookies and device identifiers to measure a lot of conversion data. However, users are becoming increasingly concerned about privacy, and the following changes have occurred.

Changes in privacy regulations

Restrictions on handling of personal data and stricter requirements regarding user consent.

Changes in technology

Tighter restrictions on data collection (e.g. restrictions on the use of third-party cookies in browsers and device identifiers in mobile OS)
Regulations will reduce and eventually eliminate the scope of data collection and usage.

As a result of the above, the amount of data that could be collected using cookies will decrease in the future. In other words, the amount of data that can be measured as conversions is decreasing, and the accuracy is also decreasing. Conversion measurement is at a major turning point, with a shift to measurement using anonymized data.

3 Steps to Expanding Your Business While Respecting User’s Privacy

Marketers need to adapt their strategies to accommodate the growing trend towards privacy-first marketing. Here are three concrete steps you can take to expand your business while respecting privacy.

Step 1: Build a foundation for data collection and utilization of first party data

First-party data is information that you collect directly from your customers with their consent, such as email addresses, phone numbers, and website browsing behavior. In a privacy-first world, first-party data is more valuable than ever before. By using your own data, you can supplement conversion data that is no longer measurable due to privacy regulations.

One of the first steps to using first-party data effectively is to ensure that you are implementing the site-wide tags recommended by Google. You can use Google Tags or Google Tag Manager to set up site-wide tags to collect data using first-party cookies.

Step 2: Measure ad performance in a privacy-first world

Increase measurable data and improve conversion tracking with GA4.

In a privacy-first world, it is more important than ever to increase the amount of measurable data you have. You can do this by implementing extended conversions and utilizing GA4.

Extended conversions allow you to match your own data with that of logged-in users to improve the accuracy of your conversion measurements. This can be especially helpful for tracking conversions from offline channels or mobile apps.

GA4 is Google’s new analytics platform that is designed to work in a privacy-first world. GA4 uses machine learning to provide insights into your customer behavior, even without the use of personally identifiable information (PII).

You can also link your GA4 and Google Ads accounts and import your goals and audiences into Google Ads. This will allow you to use GA4 data to measure the effectiveness of your Google Ads campaigns and improve your conversion tracking.

Here are some of the benefits of using GA4 to improve your conversion tracking:

Increase engaging view conversions on YouTube and conversions on apps. GA4 can help you track these conversions more accurately, even if users are not logged in or using their Google accounts.
Improve the accuracy of conversion data with data-driven attribution models. GA4 uses machine learning to attribute conversions to the right marketing channels, even when users interact with multiple channels before making a purchase.
Improve the accuracy of conversion data using Google signals and User-ID. GA4 can use Google signals, such as device and browser history, to help you measure conversions across multiple devices and channels. User-ID allows you to match your own data with Google’s data to improve the accuracy of your conversion measurements.

Step 3: Utilize automated optimization features

Reach more customers and improve ad performance with broad match, smart bidding, and responsive search ads.

Broad match, smart bidding, and responsive search ads are powerful tools that can help you expand your reach and improve your ad performance.

Broad match allows your ads to show for a wider range of search queries, including those that are similar to your keywords. This can help you reach more potential customers who are likely to be interested in your products or services.

Smart bidding uses machine learning to set bids for each auction, helping you to maximize conversions and ROI.

Responsive search ads allow you to create ads that can adapt to different search queries, increasing the chances of your ads showing up in relevant search results.

In addition to these tools, you can also use predicted audiences imported from GA4 for targeting. This allows you to reach users who are most likely to be interested in your products or services, even if they haven’t searched for your keywords recently.

By using these tools, you can expand your reach to more relevant and valuable customers, increase the number of acquisitions, and improve the accuracy of your conversion measurements and modeling. This can lead to better ad delivery performance and a higher ROI for your marketing campaigns.

Summary

Data-driven marketing in a privacy-first world

Data is essential for business success, but privacy is more important than ever before. In today’s world, the amount of data that can be used for marketing is decreasing, and the reliability of that data is also declining.

That’s why it’s important to choose data collection methods that take privacy into consideration and improve the quality and quantity of your conversion data.

Here are a few tips:

Implement Google’s recommended site-wide tags. This will help you to make the most of the data that your users provide.
Increase measurable data by implementing enhanced conversions and linking your GA4 and Google Ads accounts. This will give you a more complete picture of how your marketing campaigns are performing.
Take advantage of broad match and predictive audiences to expand your reach to high-value users. Broad match allows your ads to show for a wider range of search queries, while predictive audiences allow you to target users who are most likely to be interested in your products or services.

By following these tips, you can improve your measurement accuracy and modeling accuracy, which can lead to better ad delivery performance and contribute to business expansion.

3 Steps to Grow Your Business with Google Ads and GA4 in a Privacy-First World