Understanding Google Consent Mode & Facebook CAPI

James Lawrence: Welcome back to the Smarter Marketer podcast. I'm joined this afternoon by Sachin Rajah. Sach, how are you doing? 

Sachin Rajah: Good, James. 

James Lawrence: Good. Excellent. Well it's good to have you back. We recorded what we thought was going to be quite a dry podcast late last year, all about Ga4, and it turned out to be one of the more popular pods of the entire year. So we thought we would test the audience's patience by discussing privacy and cookies for 2024 to see if we can, uh, we can strike. Strike, uh, lightning twice. 

Sachin Rajah: Ouch. A lot of people will surprise you out there, James. They love. They love data. 

James Lawrence: Only, uh, not as much as yourself. So we were chatting before we hit record, and it is, um, it feels we're recording this pod in late February 2024, and it feels, after many years of probably not worrying too much about it. Like marketers, non-technical marketers are starting to kind of go, okay, what's the story here? We've, um, hearing a lot about moving to a cookie loss world. There's talk of. Google Chrome turning cookies off on a small subset of browsers. So I think it'd be good just to talk about what you're hearing from rocket clients and what you're having your team do. I guess just in the short term, have our clients and our clients teams ready for the changes that are coming. 

Sachin Rajah: Yeah, I mean, privacy is going to be a big topic in 2024 that we just simply can't ignore. Unfortunately, just like Ga4 last year, good news for marketers is that all these changes are actually behind the scenes and quite technical updates. So there is a great deal that will change in the day to day, like there was for Ga4 in terms of like what what we're seeing at rocket, definitely customers who are impacted by EU traffic safety advertising to EU, there is a need to kind of act quite immediately with regulations coming into play in March 2024, whereas, but in Australia we're seeing we've got a little bit more of a leeway looking at Q3, Q4 of this year to be compliant. 

James Lawrence: Cool. And so those practical things we are doing, like we've been working with clients since the beginning of the year, I guess just updating certain elements of Google accounts, Facebook accounts. So I think those things that would be suggesting to listeners of the pod to be doing if they haven't done. Yeah, 

Sachin Rajah: That's a good question. So first, what we've done is we've done an audit of our clients to understand where they're getting their traffic from. And because EU has been the first mover in the shift to more comprehensive privacy regulations, we've made sure that we've prioritized any client who has majority or a good portion of their traffic coming from EU to ensure that we go ahead with the implementation of Google consent mode, um, and other privacy technology that needs to be implemented across Facebook and LinkedIn and so forth. 

James Lawrence: Yeah. And so I guess we're talking here, Google consent mode. And then the Facebook API API changes. So the two big ones, 

Sachin Rajah: Those are the two big ones. And LinkedIn's coming out with its own as well. You might have also heard about Google enhanced conversions as well. So Google Ads has its own tech stack for this as well. 

James Lawrence: And what the marketers need to do 

Sachin Rajah: In terms of what marketers need to do. So. You have to work with your website administrator, could be a developer, or perhaps even your marketing team to first assess whether you are getting that traffic from the EU. And if you are, you need to act immediately. And what you need to do is install Google Consent mode via Google Tag Manager. Um, yes, it gets a bit technical. 

James Lawrence: That's okay. I think it's good to know just the top level of what needs to be done. So it's within Google Tag Manager. 

Sachin Rajah: Yeah so just within Google Tag Manager. And what you're having to do is you're having to link Google Tag Manager with something called a consent management platform. Now you may not know what this is, but I'm sure a lot of us have seen this. When you visit a website and you see a small pop up that says accept or decline cookies or privacy. That is the consent plugin like Google is going to require from March onwards. So it's the installation of that plugin, the setup of consent mode within Google Tag Manager, and then the testing and the implementation on your live site. 

James Lawrence: So the sentiment being the EU, like a lot of this stuff, has basically pushed it, saying these things have to be done. Uh, the tech platforms have responded in kind with, with this set up. And does it feel fair to say that even though. You know, the majority of listeners to the pod. Their websites, in all likelihood, aren't having a majority of traffic from the EU. But you kind of have to do it because we're having our hands forced by Google and Facebook. If we, um, if we don't do it, what are the kinds of downsides? 

Sachin Rajah: Yeah. And that is the big question with not a lot of information online about the impacts on what this would have specifically in the local market in Australia. But Google has given us hints about what to expect. So I remember I was talking earlier about GDPR. We do see Australia eventually moving to replicate something similar in relation to the restrictions that GDPR has in Europe, and Google has acted on that. And that's why we're seeing the removal of cookies from Google Chrome in Q3 and Q4 of this year. And when we get to that stage, I believe that Google is going to make it mandatory to have consent mode installed in Australia as well. 

James Lawrence: Yeah so I think from a technical viewpoint, it's important for marketers to integrate those setups as we've touched on. And then I think from a how does this actually impact me as a marketer? It's the move to the calculus world, which I think has the most question marks around it. To give some background, basically, Google came out late last year. I mean, they've been talking about moving cookie laws for many years, but essentially came out and said that they would take cookies out of 1% of Chrome browsers worldwide starting from January 1st this year. That's now happened. And there's a really good article in Mi3, which is dated 13 Feb 2024, which talks about. It's a really interesting article looking at both locally and globally kind of what's happening since that occurred. And it's actually quite an interesting push and pull there where Google has done it. Data suggesting that CPMs for that subset of users has dropped 30% because obviously less information is now being known about those users because of cookies. These copy placed third party cookies can be placed, and there's actually a lot of pushback from a lot of adtech providers, um, around the world actually not wanting to kind of fast track that move to to being calculus, because I guess those changes that the technical changes we're making in some ways will then give Google probably better insight into users behavior and therefore allow us, as marketers, to target those users that I guess if you're relying on third party cookies and buying audience data through programmatic, would that be fair, Sach? 

Sachin Rajah: Yeah that's right. That is for users to actually consent to their information being captured by Google. Yeah. Then you've got a sub subset of users who will just, you know, completely opt out and Google is going to lose that capability of having information about that segment of users.  

James Lawrence: Do those users when you say users, do you mean end users to a website, or are you talking about people using Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics? 

Sachin Rajah: No so that's an end user to a website. Yeah. 

James Lawrence: So I think that the big question for marketers and the ones I guess we're getting search is more around - okay, coo,. I understand there's these shifting kinds of sounds around privacy and tech between Google or the European Union and, you know, all these things I can't control. And I guess the questions we're getting are, you know, will I still be able to remarket afterwards? Will I still be able to feed my database and, and match with users? If I'm a car manufacturer, will I be able to target people in the market for buying a car? I guess they're the things that we're getting asked and like what will actually happen out there. 

Sachin Rajah: There’s a couple things. So the first one that you touched on, personalized ad targeting for those users who just simply don't opt in, they don't provide consent when you're advertising your potential audience for targeted ads matching. So marketers may see that reach being reduced targeting could be less precise, um, because with the granular consent options that are now provided to users, we may not be able to collect a whole bunch of information that we previously used to, um, collect about them before. And then what I tend to see happening with this is there's going to be an increased reliance on contextual targeting and custom targeting. So with contextual targeting, that's effectively relying on the content of a website. So if I'm on an automated website, Google will know that. And it can serve me ads based on that contextual information. Um, and custom intent targeting. We're using first party data here. I go to Google, I type in, buy a Honda, and Google will know that I'm in the market to buy a Honda. 

James Lawrence: Yeah. It's interesting. Recorded a pod probably about a month ago now with our MD David and talking about the importance of first party data. And I guess just how these changes are just one of the reasons as to why first party data has become more and more critical, but it definitely is just another kind of… reason as to why first party data has to be taken so seriously. And in that Mi3 piece, it was really interesting that they were kind of saying that in their research, often the more top end of town brands, bigger budgets, bigger brands had invested much more significantly in first party data ID solutions, customer data platforms to actually ready themselves for this change. And it does really reinforce the importance of taking data seriously, because it is going to be more difficult to do. Not that we could do 1 to 1 remarketing and retargeting, but that kind of one to very close proximity, where it feels that these changes are going to have users based. I think, like a lot of the Google word is FLoC, and it's kind of more about looking at users that behave in a particular way or interested in a certain product or service or habit or trait, and will be probably marketing more in those types of areas rather than in this kind of much more precise - You've been to my website. Now, six days later, you're going to kind of get a certain message.  Sachin: 

Sachin Rajah: That's it. I think it's a really important point to emphasize here, because once the legislation comes into effect in your region, we simply won't be able to retarget to users who don't provide you consent. And there's no way around that, even if they're logged in, you know, with their Google account or their meta account, you still cannot retarget them. Um, so yeah, that's my first party. Data is really, really important because then you have the ability to reach your prospective users, your existing users, and even your lapsed users as well. 

James Lawrence: Yeah. Interesting. At the moment, the push by a lot of the non-google ad tech providers and platforms, they're actually saying slow down. We don't want Google to fast track the rollout of the cookie list this year. And they've actually they're kind of putting a position paper forward in the UK to have the government stop it on kind of competition grounds. And I think the feeling there is that Google is, is implementing and adopting this system themselves because they have it's incredible touch point with users through Chrome and through maps and YouTube and whatever else is that if you're a marketer or an advertiser that is previously relied on third party data. So kind of if you're buying programmatically and you're buying audience types programmatically, it's kind of there where this change is likely to have quite a large impact in the short to medium term. Yeah. The initial look at how that 1% of Chrome users that have been moved to calculus in the first six weeks of the year was suggesting that CPMs in that segment had dropped 30%. And I presume that's because. There isn't the granular level of targeting of those users like we have had to date, and kind of feels to me such a little bit like the iOS 14 changes a few years back, where it impacted certain clients more than others within Facebook, and it had basically everything to do with the audience targeting of those clients within Facebook. And doesn't mean that social media has become kind of a debunked way of advertising, but it just means that its effectiveness will change for certain businesses, and some will come out ahead and some will come out behind. 

Sachin Rajah: Exactly. 

James Lawrence: Another element to this is how the changes are going to impact tracking, measurement and conversions. Like what are you seeing there and any advice for marketers out there to prepare?  Sachin: 

Sachin Rajah: Yeah. So when this does come into effect, unfortunately we will see conversion data impacted specifically for those users who do not provide consent. But this is where Google consent mode comes in. So when a user does opt out, what consent mode will do is that will actually use AI to model that users behavior and activity, to then predict conversions to appear in Nougat form. Now it won't be 100% accurate, and you may even find larger discrepancies between, you know, your  go for and your internal CRM. So I do want to flag that. But then this is where I feel the feedback loop is really important here. So when you're working with those who manage your digital ad platforms, it's really important to feed back that data to them, to let them know what is actually working and what's not working, and compare the discrepancies between what they're seeing and what you're seeing. Yeah. 

James Lawrence: So it's a really, really good point. Sach I reckon that is perfect in terms of the level of detail that we needed to go into today. If you want more information on Google Consent Mode, Facebook API, we published an article on the rocket website. So Rocket agency.com in the blog, which goes into a lot of detail about the changes and what you need to do. So feel free to jump to that. I think the Mi3 article I referenced is just really good. If you're looking at it more from a targeting point of view, what's going to happen by the back end of the year? AdTech, programmatic versus buying within Google. That gives you probably the opposite end of the, um, of the spectrum, just in terms of how it might impact you. But other than that, actually, unless you've got anything else you want to cover, I think that's a really useful part. 

Sachin Rajah: Yeah, definitely. I think that's really good. Really. Do you see CA 2024 just being that big inflection point when it comes to privacy. So saying make sure we do  take it seriously.

James Lawrence: Perfect. Thanks. 

Sachin Rajah: Thanks, James.