In this episode I’m giving you the process that’s used in my agency’s work to get B2B companies onto Google’s full analytics stack. This episode is split into two parts.

Installing GA4 (from 1:30 to 10:45) – For the first third of this episode, I go through the steps that companies should follow to install GA4, including setting up streams, conversions and links to Google Ads accounts.

Installing Google and third party components for consolidated analysis and visualization of your marketing data (listen for melody at 10:45 to end) – the remaining time roams through the rest of the tools that give a complete picture of your B2B funnel.

People, products & concepts mentioned in episode:

Scott Kelley

Jim Sterne

Jim Cain

David Krevitt

You may also be interested in this other reporting-related solocast:

How Dashboards Make the Whole Funnel Work, from podcast episode 9

Episode Reboot:

Another path for completing this process is to implement them together with peers in a workshop environment.  By the end of the session, you leave ready to make reports leveraging all your company’s marketing data. I am leading several two-day workshops in several Eastern states and provinces. To find out more, visit https://gafast4ward.com

A lot of changes have happened with Data Privacy lately, as people have grown more aware of information that companies have on them. Cookies were introduced to allow sites to improve the visitor experience. But their usage has mushroomed so much, we now need pop-ups on sites just to say how many cookies are being used.

With privacy regulations passed and more looming, big tech players like Apple and Google are pre-emptively changing data tracking. Google’s taking away the individual targeting on which they have sold ads for the last 20 years. 

There will be more episodes on this topic, because it is changing and we won’t know how it fully impacts marketers for another year or two. But for now, let’s explore all that’s happened and look at tactical alternatives we as site owners and marketers can take to react to this.

People/Places/Concepts

• GDPR – EU General Data Protection Regulation
• CCPA – California Consumer Privacy Act
• VCDPA – Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act
• Canada Modernizing its Privacy Act
• First-party and third-party cookies
• Cambridge Analytica scandal
• RDP – Restricted Data Processing (Google)
• LDU – Limited Data Use (Facebook)
• ETP – Enhanced Tracking Protection (Mozilla)

Apple Technologies:

• ATT – App Tracking Transparency
• ITP – Intelligent Tracking Protocol
• IDFA – Identifier for Advertisers

Google Technologies:

• FLoCs – Federated Learning of Cohorts
• FLEDGE – First “Locally-Executed Decision over Groups” Experiment
• Turtledove – “Two Uncorrelated Requests, Then Locally-Executed Decision On Victory”

Lawsuits brought by Governments in US against Google

Surveillance Capitalism (term coined by author Shoshana Zuboff)

Porter Model:

Resources:

Google Ads Announcement on Privacy Sandbox and FLoCs

Page that Julie Bacchini and the #ppcchat community are curating: Privacy & Cookieless Resources

Eric Seufert’s podcast on this topic

Episode Reboot:

Ensure your site complies with opt-in provisions and limited data collection policies.

Collect first-party data on your leads/buyers, including which advertisements they saw. Form inferences on which ads your entire potential-buyer population should see, based on this statistical sample. 

Encourage visitors to provide their email early, so you can track them as they go from visitor to lead to customer. You will be better prepared when Google Ads switches to selling cohorts of users based on interest.

Today’s episode is a simple solocast of me talking to you. I’m recording in an extraordinary time when stress is being put on healthcare, public institutions, whole industries and even entire economies. All the uncertainty out there is invading our digital marketing world. What’s going to happen? Just thinking about current events can induce fears about budgets getting cut, teams getting shrunk and we feel an existential threat to our very career. 

To help, the first part of the episode goes through how uncertainty affects everyone’s mindset. I share what some authors like Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and Kurt Vonnegut have observed about these reactions change over time. By understanding them, we’ll hopefully cycle through these emotions more quickly. 

Peter Drucker said we shouldn’t scale back at times like this, but to make investments that “enable a business to make its future. That, in the last analysis, is what planning for uncertainty means.” So having dealt with how we respond to uncertainty as humans, I devote the rest of this episode to how we can respond as marketers.

I talk about investments we can make around planning, doing, analyzing and improving processes. I share resources that have helped me during crises so the way I market fits with new outside realities. Hopefully it helps propel you to act in a way that you can look back on with pride when it’s all over.

People/Products/Ideas Mentioned:

Mr. Micawber from Charles Dickens’ “David Copperfield”

Pandora’s Box

Andrea Bassi, co-author of “Tackling Complexity”

Apollo 13

The Shawshank Redemption among other ‘Man in Hole’ movies

Craig Ferguson final “Late Late Show” monologue

SWOT analysis

Porter Five Forces Model

Business Model Canvas popularized by Alex Osterwalder and Ash Maurya

Anzoff Matrix

“An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth” by Chris Hadfield

Mark Schaefer’s Content Shock

Shell Oil’s There Is No Alternative (TINA) Scenario Planning

Dr Flint McGlaughlin, Founder MECLabs, on marketers using their art to help others in crisis. 

Reboot:

Go find another group who would benefit from clarity on their strengths and ways to express their value to their audience.

This episode looks at the impact of fraudulent traffic on digital marketing. We’ll talk about how big a problem it is for publishers, ad platforms and advertisers. We will step through what advertisers can do to make their campaigns less vulnerable to attacks by fraudsters, and give thoughts on how to give your non-marketing colleagues reasons why it’s still good business to advertise, in spite of problems with ad fraud.

Shownotes:

Ideas and Products mentioned in the episode

Humans Account for Less than 40% of Global Web Traffic.

Pixel Stuffing (see ‘pixel stuffing’)

Ad Stacking 

Misrepresentation ad fraud (video) 

Ad injections

Google Data Centres

Ad Fraud Bots reported by White Ops 

IAB.canada

Media Rating Council (MRC)

TAG standards

Blade Runner Voight-Kampff machine 

Polygraph Machine    

Ads.txt

Google Tag Manager Conversion Linker (Video) – incorrectly called it Conversion Looker in the audio.

Anti-drug PSA 

Arthur Andersen & Enron conflict of interest

Script to find How much of your traffic uses adblockers

People mentioned in the episode:

Bob Hoffman (adcontrarian) 

Mark Schaefer 

Scott Stratten

Gabe Leydon 

Augustine Fou 

Reboot:

To see invalid traffic numbers and percentages in your Google Ads account:

1. login to your account and navigate to the campaign level
2. Click the Columns icon and add the invalid interaction data columns
3. If there are clicks you consider invalid that are not reported, you can request an invalid traffic investigation. Details are at the bottom of this page: https://www.google.com/ads/adtrafficquality/what-you-can-do.html