First-party data has become a bit of a buzzword in digital marketing. We need to accumulate it and account for it with the depreciation of the cookie, but that can take different forms and require different levels of technical execution. 

The core difference between first-party data and third-party data is you own it. You built the relationship with the prospect that earned their consent to be tracked/have their contact info stored. You’re not using a bought list, nagging with remarketing just because a person visited your site or sharing data across domains outside the first party set. 

The core questions every business needs to ask itself are:

1. Is the data first-party compliant?
2. Does the opt-in process build trust and engagement?
3. Are you getting the full value out of your first-party data?
4. Is this a short-term or long-term implantation?   

1. Is the data first-party compliant?

There are two major considerations in first-party data compliance:

• National and international laws
• Integration with digital marketing channels

First and foremost, it’s important that your brand collect and legally store your first-party data. Both GDPR and CCPA have stringent requirements on storing data and its accessibility. 

One of the universal requirements is hashing data. Hashing data converts your first-party data into a random series of numbers and letters while maintaining the core functionality. You can use advertising tools like customer lists without compromising your prospects/clients’ privacy. 

Most ad platforms and CRMs will automatically do this for you. The only operational concern is when you need to download a list and share it with a team member/vendor. You can avoid this by sticking to existing data sync integrations (Zapier can be helpful if you need to create a custom one). That said, if there is no other option, the following protocols should be put in place to protect the data:

• User log-ins getting access should be protected with two-factor or multi-factor authentication.
• User data should not be stored on personal computers.   

The other big consideration is tracking. Sites using Google Analytics must use global site tags (which allow for GDPR compliant modeling) and language affirming the user consents to being tracked. The user must see the levels of tracking and opt into what they want (instead of opting out). 

Another significant consideration for brands is their domain structure. Google confirmed that brands are allowed five domains as part of their first-party data set. First-party data sets dictate which domains can share analytics and tracking data.

If you’re using a lot of vanity domains or country-specific domains, you will need to consider the pros and cons of consolidating into a sub-domain or subcategory structure. The biggest consideration is whether the data loss will be big enough of a con to outweigh the SEO fluctuations that come from migration. Regardless of which path you choose, you will need to make sure any paid traffic is on no_index/no_follow. 

2. Does the opt-in process build trust and engagement?

On-site tracking consent forms are essential for website design and CRO (conversion rate optimization). A lot goes into successfully securing user consent from the wording to the placement.

The core needs are:

• Simple and easy to understand permissions on tracking.
• A link to the privacy/cookie policy.
• The ability to accept or decline tracking.

Getting creative with the language can help inspire brand affinity. However, the clarity of the message must be maintained. 

HubSpot does this well with their verbiage:

“We use cookies to make Hubspot’s website a better place. Cookies help provide a more personalized experience and relevant advertising for you and web analytics for us. To learn more about the different cookies we’re using, check out our cookie policy (baked goods not included).”

It does a great job of disarming the user, and the design makes consenting to cookies a hard-to-miss CTA (call to action). That said, it leads with the brand benefits instead of user benefits, which could prevent users from accepting tracking. 

Going simple has its advantages, though – as NinjaCat displays:

“By clicking ‘Accept All Cookies,’ you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts.”

The additional step of letting folks see exactly what cookies they will be opting into is helpful as well:

While this approach doesn’t scream branded tone, the transparency and ease of use are powerful tools in securing tracking consent. 

If there’s one complaint about the NinjaCat approach, the cookie tracking consent element is small and on the bottom of the page. There is no hard answer on which approach is better. However, it is important to account for human behavior. Most people read from left to right, from the top down. A small consent element at the bottom might get missed. It’s important to test what works best for you. 

3. Are you getting the full value out of your first-party data?

First-party data has a lot of utility. From targeting audiences to tracking user behavior and interests, there’s a lot of value to harvest. It can be easy to fall into the trap of using data for only one channel or not sharing the resource across departments. 

When setting up your customer lists, make sure you’re configuring them in a way that can be easily synced into all ad platforms. The easiest way to do this is to use email addresses for targeting. However, this will impede the match rate (will remain closer to 70%). 

It’s important to note that LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter have different field orders. Be sure that you’re setting up the sync in a way that won’t break the system. 

Using these audiences across channels can help continue the conversation and find new prospects. Similar audiences (Google and Microsoft) will be created automatically. Lookalike (Facebook/Instagram/LinkedIn) requires you to manually create them.  

Based on how you’ve set up your domains, you’ll be able to share analytics and tracking data across your teams. This will enable you to craft better customer journey messaging and maintain attribution. 

4. Is this a short-term or long-term implantation? 

As you decide on the right actions for your business to be first-party data ready, it’s important to balance short- and long-term impact. 

If your current domain structure doesn’t lend itself to the five domain maximum for first-party data sets, you will need to decide whether you migrate. Migrations might make perfect sense long term, but they will be expensive and disruptive in the short term. Testing a cookie consent element will be a much easier change to implement, but the impact is dependent on getting enough traffic for statistical significance. 

Ensure that you’re communicating timelines of changes and coordinating with your teams. A good example of this is the need for 2FA/multi-factor authentication in ad networks. Before making the switch, it’s crucial all practitioners have turned on that setting and have access to their means of authenticating. 

Key takeaway

First-party data is the path to profit in the privacy-first web. Ensuring compliance is crucial, but that doesn’t mean you need to sacrifice user engagement.

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Google Search has reduced the irrelevant results shown in Google Search by over 50% in the last seven years, the search company announced. With that, Google also dropped another nugget of information saying they have seen a more than 60% increase in natural language queries.

Irrelevant results. Google is constantly making changes to Google Search. In 2021, Google said it made more than 5,000 improvements to search and ran more than 800,000 experiments. For comparison, in 2020 Google revealed it made 4,887 changes to search.

Google’s changes and experiments are all aimed at improving search quality and relevancy. Google said that the 50% decrease in irrelevant search results over the past seven years is measured based on internal metrics based on quality rater data. There is no independent source for this metric, but these are internal metrics Google uses to measure the relevancy of its own search results.

Natural language queries. The other metric, that there is over a 60% increase in people entering queries into the Google search box using natural language is interesting. Google said that they have “seen people’s search queries evolve, too.” “Since 2015, we’ve seen a more than 60% increase in natural language queries in search,” Google wrote.

So if you write your content, like people normally write and speak, then you should do well in Google Search. Google wrote “this means people can find what they need more easily, and using language that’s closer to the way we normally write and speak.”

Why we care. One thing we can expect from Google is constant change. This change is not for the sake of change itself but rather for improving search quality and relevancy. That means the bar for ranking your site high in Google Search continues to be raised.

SEO and search have evolved over the past 25 years, shortcuts are hard to come by these days. Working hard on quality, writing like humans are reading that content and providing the best user experience and content is something that should not be laughed at in 2022.

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Google has begun the rollout of the third version of the products reviews update, a search ranking algorithm update targeted at ranking product review related content on the web that is most helpful and useful to searchers. The first product reviews update was launched on April 8, 2021, the second was launched on December 1, 2021 and now the third has been released on March 23, 2022. The new is named the March 2022 product reviews update.

Google product reviews update. The Google product reviews update aims to promote review content that is above and beyond much of the templated information you see on the web. Google said it will promote these types of product reviews in its search results rankings.

Google is not directly punishing lower quality product reviews that have “thin content that simply summarizes a bunch of products.” However, if you provide such content and find your rankings demoted because other content is promoted above yours, it will definitely feel like a penalty. Technically, according to Google, this is not a penalty against your content, Google is just rewarding sites with more insightful review content with rankings above yours.

Technically, this update should only impact product review content and not other types of content.

What has changed. With the third release of the product reviews update, Google said this update “builds on” the work of the first two product review updates to enhance Google’s “ability to identify high quality product reviews.” “This will make it easier for us to get sound purchasing advice in front of users, and to reward creators who are earnest in being helpful,” Alan Kent of Google added.

Google listed the following criteria for what matters with the product reviews update:

• Include helpful in-depth details, like the benefits or drawbacks of a certain item, specifics on how a product performs or how the product differs from previous versions
• Come from people who have actually used the products, and show what the product is physically like or how it’s used
• Include unique information beyond what the manufacturer provides — like visuals, audio or links to other content detailing the reviewer’s experience
• Cover comparable products, or explain what sets a product apart from its competitors

The rollout. This rollout will happen over the “next few weeks,” Google said. These, and core updates, normally take a few weeks to rollout, so that should be no surprise. You should expect the bulk of the ranking volatility to happen in the earlier stages of this rollout.

What is impacted. Google said this update may impact those who “create product reviews in any language.” Google said the initial rollout will be “English-language product reviews” but they have seen “positive effects” from this update in the past and the search company “plans to open up product review support for more languages” in the future.

Initially, Google said this update is looking at “English-language product reviews across many sites.”

Please note that these updates can be very big, almost as big as core updates.

Previous advice on the product reviews update. The “focus overall is on providing users with content that provides insightful analysis and original research, content written by experts or enthusiasts who know the topic well,” Google said about this update. That is similar advice to the core update recommendations mentioned above, but here is a list of “additional useful questions to consider in terms of product reviews.” Google recommends your product reviews cover these areas and answer these questions. Do your product reviews…

• Express expert knowledge about products where appropriate?
• Show what the product is like physically, or how it is used, with unique content beyond what’s provided by the manufacturer?
• Provide quantitative measurements about how a product measures up in various categories of performance?
• Explain what sets a product apart from its competitors?
• Cover comparable products to consider, or explain which products might be best for certain uses or circumstances?
• Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of a particular product, based on research into it?
• Describe how a product has evolved from previous models or releases to provide improvements, address issues, or otherwise help users in making a purchase decision?
• Identify key decision-making factors for the product’s category and how the product performs in those areas? For example, a car review might determine that fuel economy, safety, and handling are key decision-making factors and rate performance in those areas.
• Describe key choices in how a product has been designed and their effect on the users beyond what the manufacturer says?
• Provide evidence such as visuals, audio, or other links of your own experience with the product, to support your expertise and reinforce the authenticity of your review.
• Include links to multiple sellers to give the reader the option to purchase from their merchant of choice.

Google also linked to its blog post from earlier this year named providing better product information for shoppers.

New advice. Google added three new points of new advice for this third-release of the products reviews update:

• Are product review updates relevant to ranked lists and comparison reviews? Yes. Product review updates apply to all forms of review content. The best practices we’ve shared also apply. However, due to the shorter nature of ranked lists, you may want to demonstrate expertise and reinforce authenticity in a more concise way. Citing pertinent results and including original images from tests you performed with the product can be good ways to do this.
• Are there any recommendations for reviews recommending “best” products? If you recommend a product as the best overall or the best for a certain purpose, be sure to share with the reader why you consider that product the best. What sets the product apart from others in the market? Why is the product particularly suited for its recommended purpose? Be sure to include supporting first-hand evidence.
• If I create a review that covers multiple products, should I still create reviews for the products individually? It can be effective to write a high quality ranked list of related products in combination with in-depth single-product reviews for each recommended product.  If you write both, make sure there is enough useful content in the ranked list for it to stand on its own.

Not a core update. Google also previous said that product reviews updates are not the same as core updates. This is a standalone update they’re calling the product reviews update. This is separate from Google’s regular core updates, the company told us. Nonetheless, Google did add that the advice it originally provided for core updates, “about producing quality content for those is also relevant here.” In addition to that advice, Google provided additional guidance specific to this update.

Why we care. If your website offers product review content, you will want to check your rankings to see if you were impacted. Did your Google organic traffic improve, decline or stay the same?

Long term, you are going to want to ensure that going forward, that you put a lot more detail and effort into your product review content so that it is unique and stands out from the competition on the web.

Also, those impacted by previous core updates, that put in the work, may be rewarded by this March 2022 product reviews update.

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All of Meta’s automated ad products will exist together under the name of Meta Advantage, the company announced. Five of its existing ad products are getting a new name and will be joined by a sixth new-ish product – Shopping Campaigns – set to roll out to all advertisers sometime later this year. 

According to Meta, the suite will actually consist of two types of Advantage products:

• Advantage: This lets you automate a specific part of a manual campaign.
• Advantage+: This lets you automate a campaign from beginning to end or part of a manual campaign (e.g., placements or creative).

Same tools, new names. Here’s a quick recap of what Meta announced is changing: 

• Lookalike Expansion becomes Advantage Lookalike. This tool helps advertisers reach a broader audience than what is defined in their Lookalike audience. 
• Detailed Targeting Expansion becomes Advantage Detailed Targeting. This tool finds additional audiences based on the advertiser’s targeting preferences (e.g., interests).
• Automated App Ads become Advantage+ App Campaigns. This tool uses real-time data to adjust ads across audience, placement and creative.
• Automatic Placements become Advantage+ Placements. This tool decides where your ad will show on Meta (e.g., Facebook Feed, Instagram Stories, Reels), with the goal of delivering better results.
• Dynamic Experiences becomes Advantage+ Creative. This tool creates multiple variations of an ad using a single image or video.

Coming soon: Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns. Currently known as Automated Shopping Ads, this is in beta testing. Meta said the goal of these ads is to help advertisers drive conversions by automating the optimization of ad creative, targeting, placements and budget. 

Why we care. The push toward automating everything continues. Most of this is a simple rebrand and making clear which of its products are automated – somewhat reminiscent of Google’s attempts at simplifying its ad offerings when it rebranded as Google Ads in 2018. In particular, the Shopping campaign rollout later this year will be one to watch for marketers. Meta made sure to highlight that all of these products can improve conversions, increase return on ad spend (ROAS) and reduce costs. However, as always, test for yourself. 

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Many brands want to see their ads rank at the top of Google and have a great conversion rate. But this can be a challenge for brands.

Understanding the impact of these two metrics, and how to think about these metrics when optimizing, can improve the overall health of your paid search campaigns.

Vanity vs. performance: I want it all

Are you someone who likes to run search queries periodically to see if your brand or clients’ ads are at the top? It feels good to know that you are number one. I get it. There is no denying the feeling that all is right with the world when your brand’s ad takes pole position.

However, being number one may come with a higher cost per conversion. There is that ongoing struggle to deliver both efficiency and volume. This case study looks at this specific problem. 

I pulled in various account data for this article and looked at the relationship of cost-per-conversion between different metrics like absolute top impression share and click-through rate (CTR). The findings probably won’t surprise you, but seeing the data often forces you to think about your account differently.

At the very least, I hope to arm you with some data to finally discuss with the brand manager who insists on seeing their brand be number one. 

Cost per conversion vs. absolute top impression share

When Google decided to remove the average position in 2019, it was a solid move toward focusing on results versus vanity. The metric they provided to take its place was absolute top impression share and top impression share. Giving advertisers what they needed to answer, “Are we number one?” and “Are we above organic rankings?” 

The data in the chart below compares the cost per conversion across our accounts (I normalized/indexed them so they could be viewed on a similar scale) versus absolute top impression share over the past year.

The hypothesis was the more frequently brands were in the true number one position, the more expensive those conversions would cost them. Effectively a tradeoff between efficiency and volume.

The data shows a 60% increase in cost per conversion from ads that were <10% absolute top impression share to those that were >80%. There are certainly outliers. But the trendline tells the story. 

Cost per conversion vs. click-through rate

I took the same data and wanted to compare CTR vs. cost-per-conversion. This is a little starker of a story.

The cost per conversion is down as the CTR increases by a larger margin (I removed the CTR data scale from high to low, left to right). So having a better CTR provides a better cost per conversion. 

Why?

• Keywords that have a higher CTR are most likely resonating better with consumers and therefore flow through to having a higher conversion rate/lower cost per conversion.
• Branded terms typically have the highest conversion rates and CTRs. This is a debate for another time and article.

The key to this data set is to focus on relevance. If you focus on relevance, branded or otherwise, you will see better conversion rates.  

3 ways to use this data to improve your paid search campaigns

Focus on relevance

Google rewards relevance. This comes in the form of higher quality scores by keywords matching ad copy, which also matches landing pages. The more you can create tighter keywords groups based on themes, the better.

The best lens to view this through is the customer experience. Think about what the customer is searching for. What would they expect to experience when reading that ad copy or clicking through to the site? The answer to this question is your true north. It will lead you to a relevant experience and reward you with better performance.

Understand efficiency and volume

This is a constant tradeoff that is made in business all the time. Brands do it with the pricing of products, but we often don’t see it as frequently in marketing.

Take a group of keywords that are performing well and see how far you can push them. Run a test to increase bids by 25-50%, raise the budgets and see what happens.

• Do you get any incremental lift?
• What was the cost per incremental conversion?
• Is that tradeoff better than any other opportunity you to spend on either other keywords or marketing tactics?

The best part about paid search is the real-time feedback you get with data to help make informed decisions. Use that to your advantage.

ABT: Always be testing

This is a combination of the two prior recommendations but keep testing. The algorithms, your competitors, your customers – they are constantly changing.

Ongoing ad copy testing is just one element, but that shouldn’t get you off the hook more broadly.

Create a test and learn strategy. Work through it methodically. Have a hypothesis and prove or disprove it through your testing. Rinse, repeat.

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