TPE #75: Your Conversion Tracking Will Break [Now What?!]

Read time: 7 minutes

Yo guys, Miles here. I’m gonna get right to the point today:

Your conversion tracking is going to be break soon.

This might be the most important issue of The PPC Edge I’ve ever written.

A lot is going on in the PPC and online advertising world:

• Google has just started phasing out third-party cookies (scary).
• Consent Mode V2 is going to be mandatory by March (wth?).

Drop everything you’re doing, right now, and read this newsletter carefully.

If you don’t take action on time, you won’t be able to track conversions optimally…

And your results will drop.

I guarantee it.

I want you to crush it this year, so please — take 5-10 minutes and study the content in this newsletter.

If you don’t, you risk falling behind, and we don’t want that.

So let’s dive in, shall we?

Two nuclear bombs are about to hit the PPC industry

Tracking is a huuuuge mess (due to ad blockers, privacy regulations, cookie blockers etc.), and it’s only going to get worse from here.

As some people say: the apocalypse is here.

The PPC industry is going to change forever because of 2 things:

1: Third-party cookies are going away.

Google will phase out all third-party cookies somewhere in the second half of 2024.

And they just started testing with 1% of Chrome users (on January 4th).

This is going to change EVERYTHING.

2: Consent Mode V2 is going to be mandatory in most of Europe (EEA region).

New privacy regulations are going to be enforced and regulated in March 2024.

I won’t bore you with the specifics, but the Digital Markets Act (DMA) states that large advertising platforms like Google and Meta are responsible for collecting user consent in order to run their advertising services.

In response to the DMA, Google is making it mandatory for advertisers to use Consent Mode V2. That way, Google knows whether a user gave consent to track them or not (from their cookie banner). Google will then adjust tags and tracking to respect users’ choices.

These regulations only apply to the European Economic Area (EEA) for now, but it’s only a matter of time until we see a global rollout.

Even if you’re not advertising in the EEA region, you still need to set up Consent Mode (I’ll explain why in the next section).

If you don’t take action now, you will cripple the algorithm.

Your Google Ads performance is directly tied to the quality of your data.

Without proper conversion tracking, you will never get your desired results.

If you don’t take action now, you will cripple the algorithm:

• You will get suboptimal results.
• The algo will be restricted from learning properly.
• The algo will not be able to predict conversions accurately.
• The algo will spend your budget inefficiently.

Improper tracking is a recipe for disaster.

If you can’t track users properly, your results will drop… Now what?!

Proper conversion tracking is the foundation for your Google Ads performance.

There are 3 things you need to do ASAP.

And with ASAP, I mean: today.

Most people wait until the last minute to fix their conversion tracking setups, leading to a lot of stress, inaccurate datasets, and ultimately performance drops.

Don’t be like most people.

Instead, implement these 3 techniques to make sure your data quality is of the highest level (and that you comply with regulations):

1. Implement Consent Mode
2. Implement Enhanced Conversions
3. Implement Server-Side Tracking

Solution 1: Implement Consent Mode V2.

You need to implement (Advanced) Consent Mode V2 to comply AND track more data that would have otherwise been lost:

• Comply with EEA regulations.
• Prevent significant data losses when users don’t give tracking consent.
• Consent Mode automatically adjusts how your tags behave based on the cookie consent status of your users.
• Using consent signals, Google uses Conversion Modeling to recover lost conversions from users who didn’t consent to ads cookies.
• Without Consent Mode, you won’t be able to build up new audiences in the EEA region.

Here’s a graph that shows the value of (Advanced) Consent Mode V2 for your data in Google Ads (thanks to Adriaan Dekker):

Consent Mode V2 contains 2 new variables:

• ad_user_data (tells Google whether a user has ‘granted’ or ‘denied’ consent to track advertising cookies).
• ad_personalization (tells Google whether a user has ‘granted’ or ‘denied’ consent to use personalized information for remarketing and other purposes).

When do you need Consent Mode V2?

Make sure you implement Consent Mode V2 TODAY!

If you want to fail and procrastinate like most people: you need it BEFORE MARCH 2024.

But again, please, do NOT wait until the last minute...

Consent Mode V2 is crucial for your success with Google Ads in 2024 and beyond.

Solution 2: Implement Enhanced Conversions.

With Enhanced Conversions, you can recover conversions that wouldn’t have been measured without it.

There are two ways to use Enhanced Conversions:

1. Enhanced Conversions for Web.
2. Enhanced Conversions for Leads.

The best part about it: you can see the impact of how your conversion uplifts in Google Ads (we tend to see uplifts between 5-25%):

Solution 3: Implement Server-Side Tagging.

The last solution that is an absolute necessity to get ready for H2 when Google removes ALL third-party cookies.

The benefits of Server-Side Tagging:

• It prevents data loss due to client-side issues such as ad blockers, cookie restrictions, or browser limitations.
• It increases tracking accuracy.
• It leads to faster page load times and improved UX, because the processing load is shifted from the user’s device to your server.

It’s a bit of a technical setup and I’m running out of space in this newsletter… But please let this be your reminder that you NEED Server-Side Tagging to have success with Google Ads in 2024 (especially in H2 when all cookies go away).

Implement Consent Mode V2, Enhanced Conversions, and Server-Side Tagging to beat your competition this year!

So to summarize this important newsletter:

• Cookies are going away this year (Google is already testing with 1% of Chrome users).
• You need Consent Mode V2, Enhanced Conversions, and Server-Side Tagging to prevent data losses and comply with (EEA) regulations.

Most people wait until the last minute to fix their conversion tracking setups, leading to a lot of stress, inaccurate datasets, and ultimately performance drops.

Don’t be like most people — take action today!

And if you want our help with that, consider enrolling in our Conversion Tracking Mastery course.

It’s a huge shortcut that will help you master Google Ads conversion tracking with all the latest techniques to measure more than your competitors (including over-the-shoulder implementation videos and resources).

There’s a lot more that you need to set up than just Consent Mode, Enhanced Conversions, and Server-Side Tagging to improve your datasets.

If you don’t want to lose to your competition, you need to prioritize advanced conversion tracking.

Because as we all know: whoever has the most high-quality data, wins.

Without crystal-clear data, you are doomed to fail (sorry if that sounds harsh but it’s true as you’ve seen in this newsletter — proper tracking is incredibly hard these days).

Take this shortcut so you don’t fall behind.

Enroll in Conversion Tracking Mastery now to always be one step ahead.

Thanks for reading, I wish you the best of luck.

See you next week!

Cheers,

Miles (& Bob)