Tag Archives: Analytics

Use these tools to boost Web Stories performance

Once you’ve created content in the form of Web Stories, you’re probably wondering who your Web Stories are reaching and whether they’re resonating with your audience. Google Analytics and Data Studio are easy-to-use tools that help you understand how your Web Stories are performing on your website — or anywhere else on the web.

Viewing Web Stories performance in Google Analytics

The first step to measuring your Web Stories performance with Google Analytics is to set up tracking. Most Web Story editors, including Web Stories for WordPress, MakeStories, Newsroom AI and others, provide a simple way to add tracking in Google Analytics for each story created. You’ll need to provide the UA Tracking ID associated with the Google Analytics property you’re using for Web Stories.

Once your Stories are being tracked, key performance metrics will become available via the Events report in Google Analytics. This report is accessible by navigating to Behavior > Events > Overview in the navigation bar. The metrics available include:

  • Story Starts: A measure of how many users started reading your Story. These are reported as pageviews in Google Analytics.
  • Time Spent: A measure of how long users spend reading your Story, on average. This metric is helpful when determining how engaging your story is. This is reported as Avg. Time on Page in Google Analytics.
  • Story Pages Viewed: A measure of how many users read each page in your Story. This can be a helpful indicator to determine how far users get into your Story and where they might lose interest. These are reported as story_pages_viewed events in Google Analytics, and can be found in the Events Report.
  • Story Completions: A measure of how many users completed your Story by reaching the last page. These are reported as story_completion events in Google Analytics.
A detailed screenshot of a Google Analytics report focused on Event Action metrics.

The Events Overview report in Google Analytics will report the story title under Event Category. You can click into each of your Stories listed to view data for each of the metrics above by selecting Event Action as the primary dimension.

Even simpler access to Web Story performance insights with Data Studio

A screenshot of the Web Stories Insights dashboard displays a blue and yellow line graph charting Story Starts and Story Completions, charts showing audience demographic and other metrics.

The Web Stories Insights dashboard template in Data Studio provides an overview of your Web Stories’ performance by pulling data from Google Analytics into a simple and visually engaging report. The dashboard displays several essential metrics to consider when evaluating performance, including:

  • Key Metrics: Story Starts, Page Views, Time Spent and Completion Rate
  • Audience Metrics: Age, Gender and Device breakdown across all stories published
  • Top Stories: Your top 10 stories during the selected time period, sorted by Story Starts
  • Traffic Channels: An overview of where users are finding and reading your Web Stories
  • Story Level Performance: Key metrics and a breakdown of pageviews for a specific story are available on the ‘Story Level’ page.

Anyone can access the dashboard by visiting goo.gle/web-stories-insights and selecting your Google Analytics account via the Click to Select your Data dropdown. Note you'll only have access to analytics that your Google account is linked to, so be sure to verify which account you’re using. You can also create a copy of the template and adjust it according to your specific analytics needs.

We hope that Google Analytics and Data Studio will help you improve your Web Stories for your audience.

It’s time for a new EU-US data transfer framework

If you rely on an open, global internet, you’ll want the European Union and the U.S. government to agree soon on a new data framework to keep the services you use up and running. People increasingly rely on data flows for everything from online shopping, travel, and shipping, to office collaboration, customer management, and security operations. The ability to share information underpins global economies and powers a range of services like high-value manufacturing, media, and information services. And over the next decade, these services will contribute hundreds of billion euros to Europe’s economy alone.

But those data flows, that convenience, and those economic benefits are more and more at risk. Last week, Austria’s data protection authority ruled that a local web publisher’s implementation of Google Analytics did not provide an adequate level of protection, on the grounds that U.S. national security agencies have a theoretical ability to access user data. But Google has offered Analytics-related services to global businesses for more than 15 years and in all that time has never once received the type of demand the DPA speculated about. And we don't expect to receive one because such a demand would be unlikely to fall within the narrow scope of the relevant law.

The European Court of Justice’s July 2020 ruling did not impose an inflexible standard under which the mere possibility of exposure of data to another government required stopping the global movement of data. We are convinced that the extensive supplementary measures we offer to our customers ensure the practical and effective protection of data to any reasonable standard.

While this decision directly affects only one particular publisher and its specific circumstances, it may portend broader challenges. If a theoretical risk of data access were enough to block data flows, that would pose a risk for many publishers and small businesses who use the web, andhighlight the lack of legal stability for international data flows facing the entire European and American business ecosystem.

In 15 years of offering Analytics services, Google has never received the type of demand...speculated about Kent Walker

Businesses in both Europe and the U.S. are looking to the European Commission and the U.S. Department of Commerce to quickly finalize a successor agreement to the Privacy Shield that will resolve these issues. Both companies and civil society have been supporting reforms based on an evidence-based approach. The stakes are too high — and international trade between Europe and the U.S. too important to the livelihoods of millions of people — to fail at finding a prompt solution to this imminent problem.

A durable framework — one that provides stability for companies offering valuable services in Europe — will help everyone, at a critical moment for our economies. A new framework will bolster the transatlantic relationship, ensure the stability of transatlantic commerce, help businesses of all sizes to participate in the global digital economy, and avoid potentially serious disruptions of supply chains and transatlantic trade. And it will assure continued protection of people’s right to privacy on both sides of the Atlantic.

We strongly support an accord, and have for many years supported reasonable rules governing government access to user data. We have long advocated for government transparency, lawful processes, and surveillance reform. We were the first major company to create a Transparency Report on government requests for user data, were founding members of the Global Network Initiative and the Reform Government Surveillance coalition, and support the OECD’s workstream on government access to data. At this juncture, we urge both governments to take a flexible and aligned approach to resolving this important issue.

As the governments finalize an agreement, we remain committed to upholding the highest standards of data protection in all our products, and are focused on meeting the needs of our customers as we wait for a revised agreement. But we urge quick action to restore a practical framework that both protects privacy and promotes prosperity.

Introducing the new Analytics 360

Earlier this week, we announced that the new Google Analytics is ready to help you meet the challenges of an evolving measurement landscape and get better ROI from your marketing for the long term — with privacy-safe solutions and machine learning at its core. Today, we’re introducing the new Analytics 360, which builds on the foundation of Google Analytics 4 properties to address the measurement needs of large advertisers and agencies with more customizations, increased scale, and enterprise-level support.

Flexible tools to fit your organization’s needs

As a large company, you may have multiple teams that need access to different insights, depending on their job function, products and markets. Let’s say your teams in the United States, Canada and Mexico need to view the data about your four product lines to understand what’s driving sales in their markets. With the new Analytics 360, you can create four product line sub-properties for each country team and customize their settings. For example, you can link each of them with your Google Ads and Google Marketing Platform accounts that are used for the campaigns running in these countries.

You may also have analyst teams in each of those countries that need to access the data across all product lines for their markets to understand what’s driving sales for your brand locally. You can easily do that by creating dedicated roll-up properties for the United States, Canada and Mexico across all four product lines. That way, they’ll be able to better understand the audiences that are interested in your products and share insights with other local teams. Roll-up and sub-properties will only be available in Analytics 360 and will launch in the coming months.

You’ll also be able to create your own user roles in Analytics 360 to control feature access for certain groups of users. For instance, you could create a role for an agency partner so they can understand which campaigns are driving conversions on your website, but can’t access data about your revenue or organic traffic. Custom user roles can also be assigned to selected reporting collections, which are groups of reports based on topics like customer acquisition. This way your teams and partners can access the data they need in compliance with your policies. Custom user roles and user assigned reporting collections will launch in the coming months to all Analytics 360 accounts.

Scalable solutions for growing enterprises

The new Analytics 360 can scale as you grow your business and your needs become more demanding. It has higher limits for up to 125 custom dimensions, 400 audiences and 50 conversion types. If you want to run your own analysis, Analytics 360 allows you to export billions of daily events to BigQuery. You can also get more granular insights by accessing unsampled results directly in Analytics 360’s explore module.

In addition to higher limits, you’ll get continuous intraday data via Analytics 360’s interface and the API. Data usually appears within an hour after collection, so you can make faster, near-real time decisions during crucial periods for your business, like Black Friday.

Enterprise-level performance and support

Analytics 360 comes with service legal agreements (SLAs) across many product functionalities such as data collection, reporting, processing and attribution. For the first time, we’ll introduce an SLA for BigQuery daily export to give you peace of mind even for your own analysis.

When multiple teams work together with Analytics 360, you’d like to closely monitor the changes made to your account settings. The new Analytics 360 has a more robust Change History so you can review when settings are edited, like when a new Google Ads account is linked to an Analytics 360 property or a new type of conversion is created. In the future, we’re planning to add more advanced audit functionalities for a better view of who has access to your data and the changes made to your property.

The new Analytics 360 is now in open beta for all existing clients. Follow these instructions to upgrade your Google Analytics 4 Properties to the Analytics 360 beta.

Meet your marketing objectives with the new Google Analytics

A year ago, weintroduced the new Google Analytics to help you meet the challenges of an evolving measurement landscape and get better ROI from your marketing for the long term. Google Analytics 4 properties offer privacy-safe solutions to measure the customer journey, machine learning to predict outcomes and automate the discovery of insights, and easy activation of those insights in Google’s advertising platforms to enhance your marketing performance.

Since then, we’ve introduced features like improved advertising reporting and support for user consent choices that help you achieve your marketing objectives without compromising user privacy.

Now, we're launching additional capabilities, including an improved Search integration and smarter attribution to give you the insights you need to optimize performance across all of your marketing channels. We're also introducing new modeling features that will close gaps in your data and help you future-proof your measurement.

With these additional capabilities, we encourage you to use the new Google Analytics as your primary web and app analytics solution going forward.

Easily access Search insights

Search Console provides detailed information about your website’s organic Search performance, including the site’s rank in Search results, queries that led to clicks, and post-click data like engaged sessions and conversions. With the new Search Console integration, you'll be able to understand the role that organic Search plays in driving traffic to and engagement on your site relative to other marketing channels like Search ads, email, or social.

Get more value with data-driven attribution

Building on the two attribution reports, Conversion paths and Model comparison, we announced earlier this year, we are introducing data-driven attribution – without minimum threshold requirements – to Google Analytics 4 properties.

Google’s data-driven attribution models give you a better understanding of how all of your marketing activities collectively influence your conversions, so you don’t over or undervalue a single channel. Unlike last-click attribution, where 100% of the credit goes to the final interaction, data-driven attribution distributes credit to each marketing touchpoint based on how much impact the touchpoint had on driving a conversion.

A screenshot of three bar graphs in different shades of blue showing a grouping of credit to each marketing touchpoint.

Conversions by channel grouping using data-driven attribution

Data-driven attribution improves marketing ROI by helping you make smarter decisions about where and how much to invest, and as a result, drive more conversions for less cost. With its use of machine learning, data-driven attribution is a more durable approach that will deliver results even when it’s difficult to observe conversions. Notino, an ecommerce beauty platform, says data-driven attribution in Google Analytics 4 is essential to its measurement strategy.

We have seen benefits with using a data-driven attribution model compared to last click and have rolled it out as a standard for 23 of our markets. We are now excited to use the next generation of attribution reporting in Google Analytics 4. Matěj Slavík
Head of Performance Marketing, Notino

Data-driven attribution will be available in attribution reports in the coming weeks. It will be available at the property level soon after, at which time you’ll be able to see attributed revenue and conversions in the Conversions report and in Explorations.

Address measurement gaps with Google’s machine learning

Using Google’s advanced modeling technology, the new Google Analytics allows you to fill gaps in your understanding of customer behavior when cookies and other identifiers aren’t available. It analyzes vast amounts of historical data, identifies correlations and trends between key data points, and uses those insights to make predictions about the customer journey.

We’re bringing a few new modeling capabilities to Google Analytics 4. First, conversion modeling is now used in attribution reports, the Conversions report, and Explorations to identify where conversions have come from and allocate them to the right Google and non-Google channels, such as Search ads, email, or paid social.

Second, behavioral modeling will soon be supported in reporting. Behavioral modeling uses rigorously tested and validated machine learning to fill gaps in behavioral data, like daily active users or average revenue per user. This allows you to conduct uninterrupted measurement across devices and platforms, and answer questions like, “How many new users did I acquire from my last campaign?” or “Which steps in my funnel have the highest user drop-off rates?”

Meet your marketing objectives

Customers are seeing success using the new Google Analytics to help achieve key marketing objectives like generating leads, acquiring new users, and driving online and offline sales. Líder, a grocery retailer owned by Walmart Chile, is driving in-app purchases using predictive metrics and audiences. By marketing to a new “Likely 7-day Purchasers” audience generated by Analytics based on predicted purchase behavior, Líder increased its conversion rate to 5.4% from 0.3% for other audiences, and saw an 85% decrease in overall app campaign CPA.

We’ve seen firsthand the value that the new Analytics has brought to our business and plan on using more new capabilities as they become available in Google Analytics 4 properties. Esteban Bascur Heredia
Manager of Marketing Technology, Walmart Chile

Global beauty brand, L’Oreal, is also using the new Google Analytics to help adapt its measurement foundation for the future, and simplify how the entire organization generates business insights.

Google Analytics 4 democratizes the use of advanced data and analysis, making insights more accessible. The migration has been an opportunity for us to unify media and analytics with a single infrastructure that simplifies decision making. Selim Decoufled
Global Analytics Manager, CDMO, L'Oréal

Now is the time to build the measurement foundation your business needs for the future. We encourage you to make full use of your Google Analytics 4 property and put it at the center of your measurement in place of Universal Analytics.

Bring performance and privacy together with Server-Side Tagging

It’s important for businesses to have the insights they need to drive more conversions on their websites. But rising expectations and regulations around user privacy can make it hard to meet both performance and privacy needs. We’re continuing to invest in solutions to help you find that balance.

Server-Side Tagging in Google Tag Manager allows you to move measurement and advertising tags off your website and into a secure server container. This helps protect your customers by restricting access to their information, and helps increase conversion rates on your site by reducing page load times.

To ensure all businesses can use this feature, Server-Side Tagging now works with any cloud or server provider that supports Docker — an open source platform for developing and running applications. We’ve also integrated Server-Side Tagging into more Google products and services to help you move more tags off your website and achieve better site performance. With these improvements, we're moving Server-Side Tagging out of beta and making it generally available to all customers in Tag Manager and Tag Manager 360.

Support for more Google advertising products

Server-Side Tagging now supports Google Ads and Google Marketing Platform products, including Campaign Manager 360, Display & Video 360 and Search Ads 360. Previously, you had to continue using a client-side tag for each marketing product you use, and keep them all running directly on your site.

Now, when customers interact with your site, a single client-side tag can activate multiple tags for these products directly in your server container. This means you’ll have fewer tags on your site, which can help improve your site's page load time.

  • A slide that reads “What's the difference between client-side tagging and server-side tagging?” with a blue price tag within a circle.

    Learn the difference between client-side tagging and server-side tagging. 

  • A slide that explains client-side tagging using images of a consumer shopping site and tags on the site sending data directly to respective platforms.

    Client-side tagging implementation when consumer is shopping online. 

  • A slide that explains server-side tagging using images of a consumer shopping site using one tag to send data to a server container then the secure server sending the data to respective platforms.

    Server-side tagging implementation when consumer is shopping online. 

Integration with other privacy solutions

Marketers often ask us how to use Server-Side Tagging with other privacy solutions like Consent Mode and enhanced conversions. Consent Mode helps you customize how Google tags behave before and after users make their consent decisions; and enhanced conversions help you use consented, first-party, user-provided data to better understand how users convert after engaging with your ads.

We're now making it simpler to use these products together. Advertisers with Google Analytics 4 on their sites will soon be able to use enhanced conversions in Google Ads without needing to add additional tags to their site. And once you’ve set up Consent Mode, any Google tags implemented in your server container will automatically respect consent choices that users have made on your website.

We're also making it easier for you to ensure that user data is handled according to your security preferences. Server-Side Tagging automatically anonymizes your users’ IP addresses before the information is shared with Google’s reporting tools. And in cases where you need more control, you have the option to eliminate users’ IP addresses from your data completely before they’re shared.

Success with Server-Side Tagging

Since launching Server-Side Tagging last year, we’ve seen businesses around the world use this feature to uphold higher expectations around user privacy and drive better marketing performance.

Nemlig, Denmark’s leading online grocer, saw a large rise in visitors to its site as people turned to online shopping and home delivery for their daily essentials last year. This resulted in longer page load times, which negatively impacted conversion rates on Nemlig’s site. After adopting Server-Side Tagging, the company was able to move tags from the browser into its secure server container, improving its page load time by 7%. Read the full story here.

Square has also found success with Server-Side Tagging. The San Francisco-based company helps businesses of all sizes reach buyers online and in person, manage their business and access financing. Since implementing Server-Side Tagging, Square has seen a 46% increase in reported conversions.

Server-Side Tagging is our preferred method for sending measurement data to our marketing partners. It allows us to collect data from the website in a secure manner while improving data collection and enabling event enrichment. Doug Logue
Sr Product Manager of Marketing Technology, Square

With Server-Side Tagging, you can improve both user trust and website performance. As we continue to work on new features and updates, our goal is to help you achieve your privacy and performance goals across all of your measurement needs.

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Get privacy-safe customer insights with Google Analytics

At this year’s Google Marketing Livestream, we shared the latest updates coming to the new Google Analytics, the next generation of Analytics designed for the future of measurement.

Get privacy-safe customer insights using machine learning

With new privacy-safe solutions, Google is helping advertisers preserve marketing measurement while respecting user consent choices. This includes using machine learning to model conversions in Google Ads, so you can continue to optimize performance in a privacy-safe way when observed conversion data is not available.

Later this year, we’ll extend our modeling capabilities to certain reports in Google Analytics 4 properties to enhance your understanding of the customer journey when observed behavioral data is not available. If users don’t consent to analytics cookies, you’ll still be able to generate important customer insights while respecting your users’ privacy preferences.

For example, if there is incomplete data in your User Acquisition report, modeled data (in addition to observed data) will offer a more complete picture of the number of new users your campaigns have acquired.

Easily discover relevant insights

We want to make the new Analytics experience as intuitive to navigate as possible, so you can discover key insights with unprecedented speed and ease.  In a new modular left navigation, we’ve organized important use cases into workspaces that will guide you to the reports, analyses, or data — like advertising conversions — you’re looking for.

Static image of new workspaces in left navigation

New workspaces in left navigation

The new Advertising Workspace is designed to quickly address everyday advertiser needs and unlock deeper insights into your campaign performance. In the snapshot, you can see relevant campaign and performance insights at a glance. You’ll get automated insights notifying you of things like performance spikes in your campaigns, where the majority of your customers are converting from, or what channel is performing the best that week.

With an intuitive and easily accessible home for these insights, you’ll be able to quickly improve campaign performance when you want to make real-time optimizations.

Static of advertising snapshot in the advertising workspace

Advertising Workspace snapshot

Beyond easier navigation, it’s also important to be able to tailor Analytics to the specific needs of your business, and even your role. To allow flexibility, we’re launching an entirely new set of customization options to reporting.

For the first time, within the Reports Workspace, users with admin access will be able to curate the Analytics interface and reports to suit the specific needs of their teams. Admins can make simple edits to existing reports or even create entirely new custom reports. They can also customize the left navigation to group reports into collections, and create custom overviews to highlight information. You can showcase these overviews in the Reports snapshot, the new homepage for the Reports Workspace.

Animated UX of custom reporting options

Custom reporting options

Once admins set up customized reporting preferences for your organization, you can reduce time spent on reporting and surface the most relevant insights faster than ever before.

Better understand the value of your marketing

We know how valuable it is to have attribution reporting for your campaigns directly within Analytics, so we’re bringing new cross-platform attribution capabilities into the Advertising Workspace.

Data-driven attribution models will soon be available in all Google Analytics 4 properties, so you can use Google’s machine learning to understand the contribution of each touchpoint in your marketing funnel, alongside your other customer journey insights. We’ve also introduced two new attribution reports: the Conversion Paths report and Model Comparison report.

Similar to Multi-Channel Funnels in Universal Analytics properties, the Conversion Paths report allows you to view the customer journey by channel, assigning credit to touchpoints from when your customers first arrive to your site or app through conversion, based on a selected attribution model. It also includes a new conversion credit visualization that helps you understand your ROI by channel.

Static UX image of Conversion Paths report in the Advertising Workspace

Conversion Paths report in the Advertising Workspace

The Model Comparison report allows you to assess campaign performance using various attribution models, and compare how each affects the value of your marketing channels so you can determine which model best suits the needs of your business.

Static UX image: Model Comparison report in the Advertising Workspace

Model Comparison report in the Advertising Workspace

Prepare your measurement foundation for the future

The new Google Analytics will help ensure your measurement foundation is reliable and ready to meet the demands of an evolving ecosystem.

Get started with Google Analytics 4 properties today, and stay tuned for more enhancements coming soon.

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Respect user consent choices with Google Tag Manager

Integrate directly with Consent Mode in Tag Manager and Tag Manager 360 to incorporate and manage user consent

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Respect user consent choices with Google Tag Manager

More people than ever before are purchasing goods and services online, bringing new opportunities for businesses to reach a growing base of customers. At the same time, restrictions around cookies and identifiers are changing the ways businesses understand the customer journey.  We’ve heard from businesses that they need new, easy-to-use solutions to keep pace with these industry changes, especially solutions that will continue to provide critical insights on campaign performance, while maintaining user privacy.

At Google Marketing Livestream, we shared our belief that it’s possible to improve privacy while still delivering business results and highlighted a few solutions that help. For example, Consent Mode lets advertisers customize how Google tags behave before and after users make their consent decisions. Consent Mode also informs conversion modeling to help bridge any measurement gaps that may occur due to cookie consent choices.

Our customers have shared with us that they would like simpler ways to ensure that all tags on their websites respect cookie consent choices. To make this process easier, we’re unveiling a new consent experience in Tag Manager. Starting today, users of Tag Manager and Tag Manager 360 will be able to directly integrate with Consent Mode and easily incorporate user consent into the behavior of all tags on their website.

Integrate your consent management solution

If your business operates in a region that requires you to collect user consent for certain operations, like the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you may need a consent management solution. And if you’re using Tag Manager to manage all the tags on your site, you’ll need to integrate Tag Manager with the consent management solution you’ve selected. But integrating these two can be complicated and require changes to website code.

We’re making it possible to remove that integration step altogether. Starting today, consent management solutions can build tag templates directly into the Community Template Gallery using a new set of sandboxed JavaScript APIs that will work with Consent Mode. We’re also introducing a new trigger type, Consent Initialization, which enables tags that require user consent choice to fire before all other tags.

Let’s say you’re a clothing retailer operating in the United Kingdom. You’ve decided to work with a consent management solution to display a consent banner to your customers and want to integrate it with your Tag Manager account. If your consent management solution has a tag template available in the Community Template Gallery, you can now add it to your container. With the Consent Initialization trigger, this tag will deploy your consent banner as soon as someone lands on your website. This enables you to collect a user’s consent choice before other tags in your container load.

Benefit from consent support on all your tags

Last year we announced that tags for Google advertising and analytics products will respect consent choices for ads cookies and analytics cookies when Consent Mode is in use. But to control how other third-party tags behave for these and other types of user consent, many businesses have turned to a custom tag setup in Tag Manager, which can be difficult to implement and manage.

Now in Tag Manager, you’ll be able to see and customize each tag’s consent settings. You can see which types of consent each tag requires. For example, a specific tag may already be adjusting its behavior based on user consent for ads cookies. And you can specify whether any additional types of consent are necessary for the tag to fire, like requiring consent for analytics cookies. We’re introducing new consent types into Tag Manager as well. These consent types correspond to options you might include in your consent management solution. If a user does not give consent to the specific consent types you’ve selected for the tag, the tag will not run.

Image of “Consent Settings (beta)” section under “Advanced Settings” at the bottom of each tag configuration.

Add additional consent in order for your tag to fire

Many consent management platforms are already compatible with the ad storage and analytics storage settings. You can see a full list in our Help Center.

Gain a complete view of your tags’ consent settings

For a complete view of the consent settings across all the tags in your container, you can now enable a new Consent Overview from your container settings. Once enabled, this overview will be available from the Tags screen. From here you can also manage consent settings in bulk, like adding a personalization storage consent type to multiple tags at once.

GIF of opening the Consent Overview screen and bulk editing tags’ consent requirements.

Access the Consent Overview and manage consent settings in bulk

All of these capabilities are available in beta in all Tag Manager and Tag Manager 360 accounts today. These updates will help you preserve online measurement while respecting user consent choices. Stay tuned for more information on other privacy-safe measurement solutions that we announced today.

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Future-proof your measurement with privacy-safe solutions

Getting the most out of your marketing investments requires a clear understanding of what actions people take after interacting with your ads. In today’s evolving privacy landscape, growing your business calls for new approaches to measurement that preserve advertising performance and also put the user first. 

Now’s the time to adopt new privacy-safe techniques to ensure your measurement remains accurate and actionable. And while this can seem daunting, we’re here to help you succeed in a world with fewer cookies and other identifiers with new ways to respect user consent, measure conversions and unlock granular insights from your sites and apps. 

Here's a preview of some of the product launches we'll be sharing at Google Marketing Livestream on May 27th.

Easier options for working with consented data

Getting started with privacy-safe measurement requires building a foundation of first-party data. Investing in a strong tagging infrastructure helps you make the most of the data your consumers share with you and lets you accurately measure your campaign performance.

As consumers seek increased control over how their data is used, your methods for respecting their consent choices will also need to evolve. For advertisers operating in the European Economic Area and the U.K., Consent Mode helps you achieve this by adjusting how Google tags operate based on user consent choices for ads cookies or analytics cookies. When users don't consent to cookies, Consent Mode will use conversion modeling to recover, on average, more than 70% of ad-click-to-conversion journeys, ensuring that you continue to measure the complete performance of your media in a privacy-safe way.

To make it easier for your website to integrate with Consent Mode, we'll soon enable implementation directly from your Google Tag Manager account, where you’ll be able to modify and customize tag behavior in response to users' consent preferences. Accurate measurement that accounts for people's consent choices doesn’t have to be complicated, and our new solutions make sure that it isn’t.

More first-party conversion data means better measurement

A strong sitewide tagging and first-party data foundation enables measurement solutions to work together to collectively provide you with the most comprehensive reporting and optimization. Building on this foundation, we've developed an additional privacy-safe way to help you preserve accurate measurement when fewer cookies are available.

Enhanced conversions allow tags to use consented, first-party data to give you a more accurate view of how users convert after engaging with your ads. You'll also be able to get the data you need to unlock performance insights, like conversion lift, and improve measurement in cases when your ad is shown on one device and the user converts on another. Your first-party data is hashed to protect user privacy and ensure security, and you’ll receive aggregated and anonymized conversion reporting. 

Advertisers currently testing enhanced conversions are already seeing positive results. U.K.-based retailer ASOS set up enhanced conversions across Search and YouTube to help them close measurement gaps due to browser restrictions and cross-device behavior. This enabled them to measure conversions that would otherwise not have been captured and improved return on ad spend (ROAS) with a recorded sales uplift of 8.6% in Search and 31% in YouTube.

Enhanced conversions helped establish a strong measurement foundation, off of which we can better measure the impact of our YouTube buys. Carolina Vicente
Media Investment Director, ASOS

Machine learning unlocks new insights in Google Analytics

In addition to using modeling for more complete conversion measurement and optimization, modeling can also help you get deeper customer insights from your behavioral analytics data. Last year we announced the new Google Analytics, which uses machine learning to surface relevant marketing insights, such as a significant change in your campaign performance or the likelihood of your customers making a purchase. 

Soon, we'll extend Google’s advanced machine learning models to behavioral reporting in Analytics. For example, if there is incomplete data in your User Acquisition report due to cookies not being available, we’ll now use modeling to help fill gaps for a more complete view of the number of new users your campaigns have acquired. With or without cookies, you’ll be able to enhance your understanding of the customer journey across your app and website and use those insights to improve your marketing. 

Coming next

We’re continuing to invest in next-generation privacy solutions to help advertisers navigate ongoing industry changes and preserve accurate conversion measurement. 

You can find out the latest information about these new privacy-safe measurement solutions at Google Marketing Livestream 2021 on Thursday, May 27 at 8:00 a.m. PT / 11:00 a.m. ET. 

Conversion modeling through Consent Mode in Google Ads

Last year, we introduced Consent Mode, a beta feature to help advertisers operating in the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom take a privacy-first approach to digital marketing. When a user doesn’t consent to ads cookies or analytics cookies, Consent Mode automatically adjusts the relevant Google tags’ behavior to not read or write cookies for advertising or analytics purposes. This enables advertisers to respect user choice while helping them still capture some campaign insights.

Without cookies, advertisers experience a gap in their measurement and lose visibility into user paths on their site. They are no longer able to directly tie users' ad interactions to conversions, whether the users are repeat visitors or whether those users have arrived from paid or organic traffic sources. To help close this gap, we're introducing conversion modeling through Consent Mode. This will help marketers preserve online measurement capabilities, using a privacy-first approach.

Now, Consent Mode will enable conversion modeling to recover the attribution between ad-click events and conversions measured in Google Ads. Early results from Google Ads have shown that, on average, conversion modeling through Consent Mode recovers more than 70% of ad-click-to-conversion journeys lost due to user cookie consent choices. Results for each advertiser may vary widely, depending primarily on user cookie consent rates and the advertiser’s Consent Mode setup.

How modeling fills in measurement gaps

Conversion modeling can help fill in blanks in media measurement at times when it’s not possible to observe the path between ad interactions and conversions. Conversion modeling through Consent Mode specifically addresses gaps in observable data from regulations on cookie consent in various regions. Conversion modeling uses machine learning to analyze observable data and historical trends, in order to quantify the relationship between consented and unconsented users. Then, using observable user journeys where users have consented to cookie usage, our models will fill in missing attribution paths. This creates a more complete and accurate view of advertising spend and outcomes — all while respecting user consent choices. Conversion modeling also upholds privacy by not identifying individual users, unlike tactics like fingerprinting which Google has a strict policy against.

Using modeling to probabilistically recover linkages between ad interactions and conversions that would otherwise go unattributed means more conversion insights for optimizing campaign bidding and understanding what’s driving sales. It's important for any modeling approach to account for the fact that people who consent to cookies are likely to convert at a different rate than those who don't.

Holistic measurement for your Google Ads campaigns

It’s important for advertisers to have accurate reporting so they can make their marketing investments go further. Advertisers using Consent Mode will now see their reports in Google Ads updated: for Search, Shopping, Display, and Video campaigns, the “Conversions,” “All conversions” and “Conversion value” columns will now include modeled conversions for consent gaps. All other Google Ads campaign performance reports that use conversion data will also reflect the impact from adding in modeled conversions.

Modeled conversions through Consent Mode will be integrated directly in your Google Ads campaign reports with the same granularity as observed conversions. This data then makes its way into Google’s bidding tools so that you can be confident your campaigns will be optimized based on a full view of your results.

Blue pie chart stating: On average, Consent Mode recovers more than 70% of ad-click-to-conversion journeys lost due to user consent choices.

For advertisers who want to optimize their campaigns based on return on ad spend or cost-per-acquisition, they can use Target Return on Ad Spend (tROAS) orTarget Cost Per Acquisition (tCPA) Smart Bidding strategies with Consent Mode. If you had previously adjusted targets to account for cookie consent changes, you can now go back to setting targets in line with your ROI goals. Note that you’re likely to see gradual improvements in reported performance as we recover lost conversions through modeling.

For advertisers who want to maintain their campaign spend, conversion modeling through Consent Mode also works with the Maximize conversions or Maximize conversion value Smart Bidding strategies in Google Ads. We recommend you make sure that the budget you’ve decided on is well-aligned with your spend goals.

Get started

If you’re an advertiser operating in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, have implemented Consent Mode and are using Google Ads conversion tracking, conversion modeling from Consent Mode is available for you today.

And if you aren’t using Consent Mode yet, you have two options to get started. You can implement it yourself on your website by following our instructions. Or if you need some extra help, we’ve partnered closely with several Consent Management Platforms, a few of which already take care of critical implementation steps on behalf of advertisers.

logos of Consent Management Platforms ready to take care of critical implementation steps

We are continuously adding new privacy-forward techniques to help our machine learning solutions better understand the aggregate behavior of non-consenting users, and offer actionable insights in reporting for deeper clarity on your marketing spend. We’ll be bringing conversion modeling through Consent Mode to other Google advertising products, like Campaign Manager 360, Display & Video 360 and Search Ads 360 later this year.

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