Metadata
- Author: [[httpsblog.sentry.ioauthorsmatt-henderson|Https://blog.sentry]]
- Full Title:: We Removed Advertising Cookies, Here’s What Happened
- Category:: 🗞️Articles
- Document Tags:: Gdpr, Google Analytics,
- URL:: https://blog.sentry.io/we-removed-advertising-cookies-heres-what-happened/
- Finished date:: 2024-01-13
Highlights
• Become an early adopter as ad platforms continue to optimize and introduce newer solutions for cookie removal like Enhanced Conversions, GA4, Conversions API, Conversion Lift, etc. so as to not cause any drastic shake ups until the platforms are ready for the shift. • Completely remove cookies sooner rather than later, and start directing your time and energy towards future models that respect your users’ privacy. (View Highlight)
We chose the third route despite Google sending us an entire deck to tell us why we shouldn’t. We actually took it a step further by removing all user tracking, period. Was (View Highlight)
• Our attribution models (first and multi-touch in our case) • Our marketing reports in our business insights tool • Google Analytics • All of our SEO reporting (built on GA and GA4) • Google Ads smart bidding • Procurement of onboarding new tools • Remarketing (View Highlight)
how much less of a remarketing pool did you have across ad platforms when people started opting out of the consent banner on your site, 30% reduction? 50%… or more? On top of that, you were already dealing with ad blockers, and probably depend heavily on walled gardens to give you targeting options that work for your specific audience. (View Highlight)
we saw around a 30% increase in our cost per click (CPCs) in Google search. It (View Highlight)
Ad blockers were already plaguing your ability to see a large portion of your audience. 42.7% of internet users worldwide use ad blocker (View Highlight)
On top of this, we had to switch attribution models from First and Multi-touch (depending on what we were measuring) to Last-click because we would only be able to track the previous page visited by a user before conversion without storing data on the user’s browser. We were lucky to have a competent BI team and alignment top-down to be able to pivot and get a new attribution model and new table of underlying data. (View Highlight)
After more than a half a year of cookieless attribution, my takeaway is that UTMs and referrer data, when done right, directionally do the trick for understanding which ads, publishers, campaigns, and audiences are performing. The self-reported attribution survey we prioritized now helps remove our bias and uncover new expansion areas. We’re also working on understanding blended data. All of these are excellent muscles to develop for a cookieless future. (View Highlight)
Often a tool will claim that they are cookieless and still do some form of user tracking. For example, we switched from GA4 to Plausible and needed to know the nuances of how they use IP addresses. Know that if you want to remove your cookie banner, even if a tool is “cookieless”, you still may not be able to use it because cookie laws can apply broadly to tracking technology. Make sure to get on the same page about this with your legal team early on, before you make any procurement decisions (View Highlight)