March 8, 2022
Talk of the third party cookie extinction is on everyone's lips in the industry right now, but the biggest players in tech are doing everything they can to combat our struggles. Our Associate Director, Sarah Williams gives us the low down on Google's Enhanced Conversions technology...
Why has this solution been introduced?
With the increasing amounts of privacy policies in recent years and the upcoming extinction of third party cookies, Google has created a solution to counteract the drop brands may be seeing in conversion data by using brands own first party customer data.
Their technology solution means conversion data is improved whilst adhering to privacy policy rules.
What exactly is enhanced conversions?
Put simply, this new Google solution improves the accuracy of your accounts conversion measurement. The solution sends hashed first-party data from your site to Google in a privacy compliant way.
How does it work behind the scenes?
As a user completes a conversion on your website (e.g. a product sale), you should receive first-party customer data including information like their email address (the preferred information for Google), name, home address and/or phone number. The Enhanced Conversions solution can capture this data in your conversion tracking tags, in a hashed form and send this to Google. This information is then matched up against the Google accounts they were actively signed into when they engaged with your ad.
Google states they use the data to “improve the reporting of the online conversions driven by ad interactions. We use SHA256 algorithm for hashing your customer data, which is the industry standard for one-way hashing of data.”
For anyone like me who needs an example - Google posted this 4 step process which sums up really clearly how the solution does its job!
To enhance conversions, or not to enhance conversions?
We as a team are really excited about this update and getting support for our brand partners on updating the tracking required for this technology solution. It will mean:
- Lots more conversion data to report on
- Lots more conversion data for our bidding algorithms to work with. The way we see it… the more data Google has to learn from, the better their automation can work, therefore we’re anticipating a rise in overall Google Ads performance as a result.
- A clearer understanding of performance. The more accurate the conversion measurement, the better the picture on what is performing well vs what is not.
- With the last point in mind, it also means your decisions for next steps with the campaigns are based on more accurate data.
How do brands set this up?
There are two really easy ways in setting this tracking up, depending on the tracking structure you currently have in place, either through your Google Tag Manager account or via the global Site Tag. For instructions on both set ups, follow the instructions directly from Google here.
To wrap up…
This is a great move by Google in combating lost data due to privacy restrictions in force and those due to come into play soon too. We’ve already seen the likes of Facebook bring out their own solutions (Advanced Matching) in this privacy-led industry and will likely see other platforms following suit this year too. We’re working closely with our Google Premier Partner team in collaboration to support the brands we work with in the implementation side of things and are already eager to see the change in data as a result.
If you're looking to continue the conversation, connect with Sarah on LinkedIn here!