Tag Archives: paid search

Part IV – Behavioral Data Trojan Horse

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4th Post in a 6-Part Series About the Behavioral Data Land Grab

Big G astutely recognized the latent value of the data being collected by a TMS several years ago when they released their free GTM platform. Such precious behavioral data could be used to power ad targeting business directly and in a more clandestine manner using algorithmic modeling. In so doing they brilliantly disrupted the tag management system niche…not unlike what happened with Web site analytics.

For those already using Big G’s free analytics for measurement, GTM was another way to get locked-in to the platform thus reinforcing the original decision. Even more valuable to Big G was that a free tag manager might entice other that were using Adobe Analytics, Webtrends and IBM Coremetrics enabling their data ingestion footprint a second chance at net new behavioral data. Not surprisingly, these days Adobe, IBM, Webtrends and even Matomo all offer companion tag management systems of their own.

Data Leakage by Design: Tracking Tags Disguise as Analytics

Free is Not Without Cost

The fact is that Big G’s new global site tag is not needed on Web sites for clickthrough measurement of digital campaigns for two reasons:

#1: Clients already have this tracked in their own enterprise Web site analytics systems and much better at that…

  • Clients can already thoroughly measure paid search and other click-based digital channels with their own enterprise Web site analytics platform that were purpose-built for measuring activity on the site and linking it to sources of traffic. By using query string parameters appended to clickthrough URLs , site analytics campaign tracking relies on either a single (CID, SID) parameter or multi-parameter (utm_) values added on to landing page URLs. This enable Web site analytics systems to associate site behavior like engagement or conversions with specific sources of incoming traffic, e.g. visit rate by channel, bounce rate by publisher, registrations by keywords, etc. The fact is that neither Big G Ads nor Search nor AdWords tracking can provide this level of detail. Such tracking is usually 1st party and fairly reliable.
  • For this reason, site analytics platforms are superior for measuring on-site engagement in granular interaction detail (downloads, exists, video watching, form abandonment) as well as having a comprehensive view of all the digital channels that are causing site visits (social, email, direct, organic search, referrals). Such a view allows for basic attribution of conversion events back to sources of traffic. For these reasons and not withstanding Big G Analytics, it is impossible for Big G to have as detailed information as Adobe Analytics, Matomo, Webtrends or IBM Digital Analytics.
  • What’s more, if Big G Analytics is not use then the advertiser’s Web site behavioral data is private and only for the client to use. That means, it cannot be repurposed or data mined to enhance somebody else’s ad campaigns elsewhere…including the advertiser’s competition. That is like unwittingly being in a de facto marketing co-op.
  • Advertiser’s media agencies should be using the enterprise Web site analytics platform of record’s data for performance optimization. Often times, this does not happen and for a variety of related reason’s advertiser’s end up with multiple site analytics systems. These seeds once planted tend to yield digital measurement chaos and costs.


#2: Big G is already keeping their own count albeit just not as accurate – effectively due to 3rd party cookie limitations. Big G’s own confidential and proprietary technical pdf document entitled, “Introducing the New DoubleClick Global Site Tag” states that prior (and in lieu of it), that there has always been a portion of conversions being reported using statistical modeling to estimate since Big G cannot measure traffic subject to 3rd party cookie blockers/deleters.

Why do Advertiser’s Need to Spend Time and Money to Help Big G Conversion Counting to Become More Accurate When Advertisers Already Have a Universe Count of Their Own?

Big G Search/Ads/AdWords cannot measure the universe of all of a Web site’s conversions using their 3rd party Floodlight tag that Web site analytics easily track using 1st party tracking cookie method.

Learn more:

Bottom-line: The reality is that the global site tag only improves Big G’s measurement and does not inherently benefit client-owned site analytics reporting at all. In practice and by Big G’s design, getting GTM in place will often create dysfunction by encouraging stakeholder interest in using Big G Analytics as well as they operational cost of maintaining two TMS and maybe two site analytics systems.

In Other News…

With Big G’s Chrome browser privacy virtue signaling making their walled garden walls even higher, it will be interesting to see if an how the FTC plays the next move. Also of note, is the IAB pushing their DigitTrust solution for other ad tech stack players.

Next Post in Series: Part V – Implications for Digital Marketers

Part III – Big G & Media Minion Maneuvers

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3rd Post in a 6-Part Series About the Behavioral Data Land Grab

Big G and many of their media minions are quick to point out that by using the new global site tag, they can then get around ITP’s 3rd party tracking limitations. The reason is that the GTM tag architecture tricks the user’s Web browser to treating it as 1st party by changing the context. The legacy DFA Floodlight tag cannot do this as it is a plain and simple 3rd party tracker in a 3rd party context. That DoubleClick impression cookie served up on ad delivery (on media publisher site) and then later checked for by the DFA Floodlight (on the advertisers site) is notorious enough at this point to be easily black-listed by blockers and anti-virus platforms.

Voted Most Likely to be Blocked, Deleted or Purged

Manufactured Crisis?

The global site tag (gtag.js) request often comes from the media agency team as a panicked rush to install the new code snippet – toute suite. The implication is that if these new global site tags are *not* used, then campaign measurement and therefore campaign performance will dramatically suffer or to become questionable. The implied benefit of the new global site tag is that at minimum, current paid search measurement accuracy will be better. What this really means is that Big G AdWords conversions (clickthough and (post-clickthrough) can be more accurately counted.

Most advertisers and their agencies will miss the nuance. They may not realize that simply showing more conversions in AdWords reports does not mean that Big G paid search actually caused more of them to happen. Questionable incrementality is a broader problem with paid search attribution and Big G’s walled garden of search performance data. That aside, showing the universe of conversions that an advertiser is already receiving more accurately only means that Big G’s AdWords reporting approaches the conversion tracking accuracy of site analytics like Adobe’s. Stated differently, Big G fixed their conversion tracking problem (caused by 3rd party blocking by ITP, plug-ins and anti-virus deleters) which before the global site tag relied on a predicted count. That is what has been reported out for years in AdWords. It is all about Big G more confidently taking greater credit for more of the conversions in their analytics system (not advertisers’).

Dropping the Ball: Who Do They Work for Anyway?

Instead of pushing back to Big G on behalf of their clients or suggesting alternative solutions, too many media agencies are not doing their diligence. They are pressuring clients to just go along with the request and merely parroting that Big G recommends this without much question. The implication is that the global site tag is needed for the media agency to measure better and there fore to do their very job. At the same time, most digital advertisers today do not want to provide their media agency with another reason for bad analytics and poor measurement. Meanwhile Apple ITP is conveniently blamed for the problem.

Judas Goat Leads the Sheep Up to Slaughter at Chicago Stockyards

Expected to be stewards of their client’s digital media business, this is an unabashed agency fail. All told, the new global tag combined with an expanded tag footprint on the Web site is a shifty way for Big G to also ingest more highly valuable behavioral data at the expense of digital advertisers. Even more unseemly is that this is a clever end-run to thwart advertisers that sought to limit Big G’s behavioral data access by not using their Analytics/Tag Manager products in the first place. Worse, the end result is dysfunction with analytics teams and hidden operational costs of a maintaining a redundant de facto tag management system.

Such conduct by those representing themselves as agents of marketers is disappointing. Unfortunately, it is consistent with the unflattering issues of undisclosed incentives and rebates from tech companies, media vendors and others that was revealed in the ANA Media Transparency Report of 2015. Digital advertiser clients themselves are not blameless: the buck needs to stop with them.

Next: Part IV – A Trojan Horse for Digital Marketers

Part II – Apple ITP: Convenient Scapegoat for Data Grab?

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Apple Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Protocol

In September of 2018, Apple released Safari 12 and updated its Intelligent Tracking Prevention 2.0 as a follow-up privacy enhancement for their customers. The newer ITP 2.0 update was even stricter than ITP 1.0 (released in September of 2017) going from expiring 3rd party tracking cookies in 24 hours to immediate expiration, i.e. effectively blocking all of them. The ad tech and ad network industry is rightfully concerned about this existential threat to their way of doing business. However, it should not have been a surprise to them.

For digital marketers and particularly advertisers, canny moves by Big G are taking advantage of the “crisis” situation. With long-time business tentacles deep and wide, the intrinsic value and security of advertisers’ campaign and Web site behavioral data should be of particular concern. Consider how data once captured can be leveraged by and between paid media business (search, display ad network), ad stack (ad server, DSP, DCO) and the site-side stack (search console, analytics, attribution, optimization and tag management).

Super Basic Overview of 3rd Party Cookie Tracking

To recap, 3rd party tracking cookies are the kind of cookies that are used by ad tech/networks all or in part for analytics and optimization. These cookies are different from the 1st party tracking cookies used by Web sites that are actually visited by users to authenticate and personalize the user experience (custom content), e.g.  ecommerce sites and social networks. By contrast, 3rd party cookies are delivered to the browser by another and different Web server from the Web site domain that the user is accessing, e.g. Ford ads on the New York Times Web site. This is often called cookie “context.” Under the auspices of convenience, AdWords leverages an internal “link” to Big G analytics and the Big G ad server (DoubleClick/DART for Agencies/DFA/DCM/Big G Ads).

To put the tracking impact of ITP 2.0 on analytics and targeting in perspective, as of the time of this writing, Safari 12 (ITP 2.0) represents about 15-20% of all Web site visits for a typical brand with the prior Safari 11 (ITP 1.0) representing another 15-20%. That puts a combined total of 35-40% of Web site visits. In terms of unique visitors to a Web site, this is probably more like 15-20% that are at risk of being miscounted, misreported and therefore highly in-actionable. Maciej Zawadinski one of the founders of Piwik/Matomo, wrote an informative and objective piece on ITP and tracking.

For advertisers, it is also likely that there is a very distinct sociodemographic skew to this hard-to-reach and highly perishable user segment. The group tends to be higher education, more male and higher income. Think along the lines of an oldie but a goodie: ComScore’s Natural Born Clickers from 2007 updated in 2009.

Big G’s Timing and Blaming the Victim

Although 3rd party cookie tracking has been getting worse over the years, there has been a paucity of published research on this far-reaching problem. Despite having the biggest advertiser and publisher ad server market shares, Big G has nothing to say about how reliable their 3rd party tracking cookie really is in practice. Publishers and agencies are left to figure it out themselves though most do not have the time or resources. If the industry has such research it is sequestered at an account-level or within a QA group as it is unflattering at best and devastating at worst.

In one published study, programmatic tech company Digilant observed in 2012 that 3rd party ad cookies degraded quickly: by 43% in the first seven days and by 75% within twenty-eight days. That should not be a surprise with ad networks, ad servers, other analytics/targeting platforms’ cookies increasingly being blocked, blacklisted and actively deleted by users.

Instead, on Monday October 17, 2017 Big G proclaimed through the now retired DoubleClick brand’s blog:

Blaming Apple Safari ITP while Implying that Advertiser Measurement Will Improve

The two options offered (click the above link and scroll down) are:

  1. Use the fake gtag.js (see:GTM disguised as a Floodlight)
  2. Avoid any such pretense and use the naked GTM with the easy linking capability

The instructions to expand their presence and put it up on *all* pages almost seem helpful.

GTM Presents As A Helpful Measurement Solution…But Helping Whom?

The inconvenient truth for many digital advertisers, their media agencies and 3rd party cookie-reliant ad servers/analytics as a result of the miscounting is that important digital metrics are severely compromised. Ad tech company Flashtalking regularly quantifies and publishes research on the inaccuracy of ad metrics can be that depend on 3rd party tracking cookies. Most recently, they bravely put user cookie rejection rate at 47%! For individual users they estimate 25% are rejecters. That means that when it comes to analytics and optimization, reach and viewthrough conversions are effectively overstated while frequency is understated. For more information, see Viewthrough.org’s recent post, 3rd Party Tracking Weakening, Viewthough Impacted.

What to Do About It?

Digital marketers do have options to improve both targeting and analytics without risking more Web site behavioral data leakage to hidden players in the ad tech stack. Fortunately for advertisers these days there is a new breed of ad server that is more transparent and uses more reliable tracking methods: Flashtalking, TrueEffect and possibly Sizmek. Are there others out there? Let TOTSB know!

Next up: Part III – Big G Media Minion Maneuvers

Part I – Keeping Big G Out of The Digital Cookie Jar

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Part 1 – Introduction

This will be a multi-part post about recent developments that should be of concern for serious digital marketers. In particular, large digital advertisers that use Adobe Analytics (or other non-Big G Analytics platforms) and whose media agencies (or internal digital media buying teams) also use Big G Ads/Search/AdWords beware.

The Problem

Apple’s most recent Safari release in September 2018, which effectively blocked all 3rd party tracking cookies is being blamed for what amounts to a clandestine behavioral data land grab by Big G. In going along with this charade, digital marketers everywhere risk the de facto relinquishment of digital measurement and customer behavioral data to others with different and not non-transparent interests that create a competitive disadvantage.

Through major brands’ own media agencies, Big G has been cannily pushing everyone to use a new kind of Web site tracking tag that circumvents Safari’s strict privacy features.  The new code snippet replaces the legacy DoubleClick Floodlight tags that have been historically appended the brand’s destination Web site on key actions, e.g. order thank you page. The loading of that page and associated 3rd party tags signal a successful “conversion” event for analytics and ad targeting optimization purposes.

Who Has the Behavioral Data?

Floodlight 101

The DoubleClick Floodlight tag was created as an adjunct to the agency ad server (a/k/a 3rd party ad server) which was initially developed to enable ad impression delivery in the user’s browser to be associated with later events on the advertiser’s Web sites. In this way, a kind of campaign measurement could be performed showing cause (ad delivery) and effect (purchase event). However, the method relies a 3rd party cookie from doubleclick.net set at time of ad delivery to be safe and secure in the user’s browser and recognized by the Floodlight tag when the user subsequently interacts on the advertiser Web site.

Additionally, the Floodlight tag has the capability to piggyback other tags from media vendors like ad networks so that they could also measure and optimize their campaigns in flight based on actual performance, e.g. order confirmation pages firing. Similarly, ad analytics uses include brand lift studies and multi-touch attribution. Not surprisingly, over the years Big G has shoved more and more back-end server-side functionality into the Floodlight tag to help their other businesses like AdWords, Bid Manager and Dynamic Creative Optimization.

The problem with the new code snippet is that the tag is no longer the kludgey Floodlight but the much more powerful Big G tag manager. The latter was engineered to sending data back to Big G faking 1st party even though it is not really (similar to Big G Analytics). Compounding the challenge for digital marketers is the aggressive recommendation to install the new GTM code snippet onto *all Web site pages* instead of just swapping out existing Floodlight tags.

The Bait and Switch

Within the new code snippet itself, note that the comment text still says “DoubleClick” but the actual server being called is not doubleclick.net anymore but is googletagmanager.com. Big G’s timing of the recent name change dropping the DoubleClick brand from everything is interesting and has further caused confusion with the site operations and ad operations team that work with these technologies.

Before: Legacy Floodlight code snippet
After: New global gtag.js code snippet

Major digital advertisers that are not already using Big G Analytics/Tag Manager are particularly susceptible to the false sense of urgency in this crafty switcheroo. Especially those from industries with limited digital competency. In the end, Big G gets better clickthrough conversion tracking for search and client-owned Web site analytics platforms like Adobe Analytics, Webtrends, IBM Digital Analytics or Matomo remain as is.

Clients should consider pushing back on what amounts to a digital behavioral data cookie grab.

COMING UP: Part II – Victim-blaming with Apple ITP.