WHY CONVERSION MODELLING WILL BE CRUCIAL IN A WORLD WITHOUT COOKIES

After the introduction of regulations (GDPR in the EU and CCPA in the USA), many publishers, advertisers, data vendors and technology platforms will need to reevaluate and retool their approaches to data collection, audience targeting, measurement and attribution analysis. All those activities will change, from tracking and measuring the campaigns, to user behavior and websites optimization. Moreover, the customer journey has become more difficult than ever to measure, as users turn to multiple devices before buying a single item, which can lead to a fragmented view of consumer behavior. Even on one device, different browsers drive different paths to purchase.

Since assessing the effectiveness of the campaign is becoming harder due to so many blanks in the consumer journey and cookies restrictions in browsers, Google has introduced a new A.I. which is conversion modeling. For example, when measuring conversions across devices, the cookies might not be available to link these devices. In this case, you will be unable to attribute some the conversions to the customers who interacted with an ad. With a modelling foundation in place, observable data can feed algorithms that also make use of historical trends to positively validate and inform measurement.

Modelling enables accurate measurement while only reporting on combined and anonymized data. This unlocks a full, privacy-centric picture of the customer behavior, ensuring that the performance doesn’t suffer just because direct measurement isn’t always possible, hence connecting all the data touchpoints from the different platforms.

If conversion modelling is built into the structure of the measurement solutions, it can provide an essential safeguard that automatically fills gaps using data-driven signals customized to the campaigns. Accurate measurement is the vital foundation upon which the ongoing learnings, decisions, and optimizations are built. It is critical to get it right to continue improving our business outcomes over time.

Without having conversion modelling in place, not only the measurement framework for one campaign is affected, but there will be an impact on the whole business. Then we should ask if our campaigns are performing well vs. each other and collectively? Is your objective being met and reaching your ROI? Without a complete overview performance and a strong infrastructure, it will be very difficult to answer questions like these.