Smoke & Mirrors Around Google's Privacy Sandbox API

Another Friday, another day for me to claim the data made me write this newsletter. Fully un-opinionated and data-driven insights, of course. This week's edition is very Google-focused, but we'll make sure to include more variety in next week's "Superweek Special" of this newsletter. Let's dive in ??.

Is Google's Privacy Sandbox API About Protecting User Privacy or Increasing Google's Moat?

By now, you know "the cookieless future" is upon you (surprise; we'll still use cookies), and Google Chrome is now testing out its "Privacy Sandbox API" on 1% of its traffic. This rollout will have a big impact on digital advertising capabilities.

Some, like James Rosewell , are questioning whether the Privacy Sandbox API is about protecting user privacy or just a disguised way to give Google a leg up over other players in the digital advertising space. It seems that with the Privacy Sandbox, Google will still be able to identify cross-site behavior by specific users, unlike other AdTech participants in the network. This would mean Google would lose less of its targeting capabilities relative to its competitors. (Link)

First Results of Chrome 1% Cookie Deprecation

While we're on the topic of a cookieless future, Paul Bannister shared his first preliminary results of what they're (as a publisher network) seeing as an effect of the 1% of Chrome users now browsing without 3rd party cookies.

In theory, this should limit advertisers' ability to target users based on their cross-site behavior (and thus, resulting in advertisers being willing to bid less due to less information). ??

Google Consent Mode V2 Parameters in Measurement Protocol

As noticed by Alex Ignatenko , the (new) Google Consent Mode V2 parameters "ad_user_data" and "ad_personalization" can now be passed along as parameters via measurement protocol hits into Google Analytics 4. This is essential if you want to ensure the data is handled properly by Google, according to the consent given by the user. Check out Alex's findings here.

Whatever system you're sending data from, e.g. your CRM, you should still be aware if you have proper consent to do so, and inform Google accordingly.

(Note that this also allows Google to say, "We're not in the driver's seat here; we just provide all the tools.".)

Google Consent Mode V2 will be required for users who want to utilize Google Analytics 4's audience capabilities on visitors from the EEA after March 2024. If you want to learn more about Google Consent Mode V2, check out this excellent guest post by ?? Markus Baersch on Simo Ahava 's blog.

New: Free Course on Dataform for GA4 BigQuery Dataset

We published our second free crash course this week and already got over 100 students to sign up and learn about Dataform for the GA4 Dataset in BigQuery. All you have to do to sign up is comment on our LinkedIn announcement and we'll DM you access to the course for FREE! Learn more? Click the image ??

Next Week: Superweek Special Edition

Superweek is coming up, and I'll be sharing many insights from the world's best digital analytics conference next week. If you want to follow along with me live, I recommend you follow me on Twitter (ahum, X). If you're looking for a more condensed review, subscribe to this newsletter and prepare for Friday's Superweek Special Edition of "Data Made Me Do It".

Talk to you next week!

The "Data Made Me Do It" Newsletter about Data-Driven Marketing is published every Friday. It's authored by Rick Dronkers the founder of Data to Value. We're a marketing analytics consultancy that enables marketing teams to become data-driven. We help you develop your data strategy, implement your marketing technology and advertising technology, and ensure you have high-quality available for your marketing team to base their decisions on.

On average, we have a waiting list to start work on new clients of ~3 months. But we'd love to get to know you and learn what challenges you're running into.

I'm always taking (free) exploratory calls in which I (Rick) will take 60 minutes to review your current challenges in data-driven marketing and give you my honest and unfiltered advice. If it's mutually beneficial, we might end up working together; if not, you've gotten free advice, and I got to exercise my problem-solving muscle. A classic win-win situation, right? ??