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Analytics

Jun 13
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Why You Should Integrate Data Across the Entire Enterprise — and How to Do It Effectively

By Analytics, Insights & News No Comments

Every day, the world produces 5 exabytes of data. By 2025, we will produce data at a rate of 463 exabytes per day. Insights from this data can help companies understand exactly what their customers want, as well as inform a company’s processes and activities. Data can reveal whether you’re moving in the right direction, which areas can be improved, and how you might implement those improvements.  

Still, with all the data available to companies today, Forrester reports that 73% of corporate data goes unused for analytics and is rarely shared across the enterprise.

Why does data-sharing matter?

Leveraging data within your organization has the potential to deliver value in many areas. It can help lower costs and increase profits while also reducing risk. Pivoting to a data-driven approach will allow your organization to anticipate changes and challenges more effectively and accurately.

Insights derived from real-world data will allow you to look farther into the future. Customers openly provide insights to help brands understand their wants and needs. With an integrated data strategy, you’ll be able to set solid, measurable goals several years into the future and transform your business, through:

  • Personalized customer experiences. Your communication, products, and services will be tailored to your customers based on insights derived from data, which leads to greater customer satisfaction.
  • Improved decision-making. Key processes will be optimized, allowing you to make smarter decisions faster.
  • Improved efficiency.  Automate time-consuming manual tasks, which reduces costs and ensures more accurate results.
  • Stronger cybersecurity. Using AI-driven data limits the scope and impact of potential cyberattacks by identifying potential vulnerabilities before they become issues.
  • Ambitious social goals. Greater insight into your organization’s data won’t merely benefit you financially. It also helps identify new opportunities, such as increasing diversity or pursuing sustainable business practices more effectively.

So, how do you ensure your data is shared and leveraged?

Here are tips to make your data more discoverable, pervasive, and reusable across the company:

  • Foster a culture of “data-sharing” vs. “data ownership.” Data that resides only within one department must be analyzed and shared more broadly across the leadership team. To do this, you must foster a culture of “data-sharing” versus “data ownership.” We recommend creating data stewards who are responsible for company-wide dissemination of all insights.

You will also need to gain Leadership buy-in to remove the inherent obstacles to data sharing. Within your IT department, distinguish your data management strategy between data warehouses, data lakes and data hubs. This will help prevent silos.

  • Heighten accountability with a data ecosystem strategy.With increased transparency into your data comes greater accountability. When you create a data ecosystem with clear expectations around the purpose of data sharing across all departments, it’s helpful to have a single leader who is entrusted with the oversight of company-wide data sharing.

Often, CIOs or Chief Data Officers can fill this gap while addressing privacy concerns, ethics and cybersecurity. This leader can establish the expectations for data-sharing, including what data should be shared internally, what data should be sourced from partners and how to align the insights from the total ecosystem for a model that works best for all teams. In some cases, your agency partner can help establish this strategy with your data leaders.

  • Embrace unwelcome insights. Data analyses often challenge conventional assumptions about your customers’ wants and needs, including changes to the journey. This can mean your data reveals information that leaders don’t necessarily want to hear. But, as the saying goes, you cannot change what you don’t know. View all new insights as an opportunity to transform your business processes or user experiences.

Meanwhile, Many brands struggle with existing analytics solutions. According to Gartner, only 12% have the ability to collect online data at an individual level, and though 65% of brands report using digital analytics software, more than half (53%) say they’re not completely satisfied with their current solution.

At Acronym, we employ 40 billion data points daily and offer our Clients custom dashboards to ensure these insights are easily digestible and can be applied across the entire organization.

If you need assistance with your data ecosystem strategy, contact us today. Our Analytics teams are standing by.   

Apr 25
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What You Should Know About Google Analytics 4

By Analytics No Comments

What is GA4, and Why is it Important?  

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is Google’s latest web and app analytics solution offering reporting and analysis capabilities. The new tool delivers an increased focus on predictive analytics, data visualization, and insights generated through machine learning. This solution is meant to replace its predecessor, Universal Analytics (UA or GA3).   

Google recently announced they will retire UA on July 1, 2023 for free accounts and on October 1, 2023 for 360 customers. There are several reasons Google is moving forward with GA4 despite its limitations. The primary reason is that it does not make sense for Google to maintain two parallel tools with different measurement models. Secondly, the European Union’s increasing scrutiny on Google’s data privacy practices almost necessitates a new approach to privacy, and perhaps a fresh slate free from problematic data collected previously. No matter the impetus, the announcement will affect all users of Google Analytics.  

What Does the Announcement Mean? 

This move forces marketers to migrate to Google’s latest analytics tool on shorter timeline than expected.  

Google confirmed data will still be available to view and export for at least six months after the retirement date, which gives marketers until the end of 2023 to export any data they may want from Google Analytics. Starting in 2024, it is likely that the data will be deleted from Google’s servers, and therefore inaccessible in the interface or via API.  

Of course, there will be challenges springing from this transition. Since the announcement, Google has not provided a straightforward way to: 

  • Directly upgrade UA to GA4 
  • Directly import UA data into GA4 
  • Find equivalents for out-of-the-box reports in GA4 without customization 
  • Easily migrate reports using the Google Analytics spreadsheet add on or any other third-party tool that leverages the API 
  • Prepare report consumers for changes in tracking methodologies, or shifts from historic reporting or patterns 

Acronym recommends taking proactive measures to ensure that these challenges are considered in your migration plan. 

What Are the Implications? 

GA4’s approach to data collection and reporting differs drastically from UA in a few ways that markets should understand:  

Event-Based Data Model 

UA uses a page view and session-based model for reporting on behavior with different types of hits (events, eCommerce, and social interactions) being grouped into these scopes. In contrast, GA4 is an event stream with every interaction captured as a single type of event. Unlike the familiar event schema (category, action, label) we know from UA, all events are simply captured as events requiring marketers to rethink their current tracking strategy. What is available, however, are event parameters, which are metadata that can be captured with events to provide further information about a given interaction.  

Reporting 

Some of the reports available in UA do not have an equivalent in GA4, so replication or rethinking of current reporting may take some time. However, GA4 does offer flexible reporting within the out-of-the-box reports and the option to create custom reports in the Explorations section. Additionally, the concept of views has not been implemented in GA4 yet, requiring marketers to use segmentation to filter out the data they need. 

Increased Flexibility 

Migrating to GA4 should be considered an upgrade with several new features that UA cannot offer. Sampling limits, a long-standing issue in UA reporting, are much higher at 10M events per query for free accounts and up to 1B for 360 users. Additionally, BigQuery streaming exports are now unlimited for both free and paid users of GA4. Lastly, web and app experiences can now easily be analyzed together within the same property providing a more complete view of your users.  

Differences notwithstanding, the motivation for migration is clear – data collection will cease and previously collected data will be deleted by 2024. Organizations need to start planning sooner rather than later for this reality. 

What Do You Need To Do? 

Create and execute a game plan to configure and install GA4 over the next couple of months. You should aim to have as much data in GA4 as possible to compare trends against UA.  

Acronym recommends using the following as a base for your game plan: 

  • Develop a KPI roadmap. GA4 is substantially different in its approach to data collection, so now is the perfect time to revisit your stakeholder’s requirements to ensure there are no gaps in reporting. 
  • Update your documentation. If you have existing documentation surrounding your implementation, ensure that is accurate and complete. If you do not have any existing documentation, now is the perfect time to make your (and your team’s) future lives easier! Take the time to document your KPIs, implementation details, and configurations, including for any new requirements from your KPI roadmap. This is the prefect time to map out the UA events and goals to their counterparts in GA4. 
  • Configure the GA4 interface. Create the property if you haven’t already. Then, configure data streams, select your conversion events, and implement any other customizations you need.  
  • Update your tag management system. Using your updated documentation, make any necessary changes within your tag management system of choice and test thoroughly in your lower environments.  
  • Publish, monitor reporting, and adjust! Although GA4 and UA data will never match exactly, it is important to thoroughly review the data in GA4 to ensure that it aligns with your expectations and historic trends found in UA. If it does not, then review your implementation and configuration and tweak as necessary. You should keep UA enabled during this period, though Acronym recommends keeping it enabled until Google deprecates it.  
  • Finalize the GA4 configuration. Once you are satisfied that GA4 is implemented properly, add connections with any additional Google products you use, update your user lists, and re-label the previous UA properties to ensure stakeholders use the GA4 property moving forward.  
  • Provide training for your business teams. GA4’s interface and reporting model is drastically different than UA, so other stakeholders will need training and direction on how to properly use the tool. This is also the perfect time to set expectations that the data will not line up exactly with what was previously seen in UA. 
  • Finally, understand your historical analysis requirements & build a data export plan. Although UA properties are not disappearing immediate, Acronym recommends exporting historic data from these properties. The exported data not only allows for reporting continuity within external reporting systems, but also prepares for the end of 2023 when the UA data will no longer be available. There are several methods for exporting data, and Acronym can help with selecting the correct method and exporting data into your business intelligence tool(s) of choice. 

Of course, every organization is different and there are always additional details, considerations, and customizations that you must consider when tailoring the tool for your business. No generic guide is a substitute for an individualized or expertly created plan.  

How can Acronym help? 

Acronym’s teams of expert data architects, analysts, and engineers can help with the entire process of migrating to GA4. We strongly believe that the most successful Marketing programs are built on an Analytics foundation that is custom tailored to each brand’s unique needs. We leverage our knowledge of the industry and tool’s best practices, interview your relevant stakeholders, and perform a website discovery process to create a comprehensive and prioritized list of Key Performance Indicators, relevant and thorough documentation, as well as the full configuration and QA of the GA4 deployment.  Once GA4 is fully deployed, our team of data engineers can provide guidance and the muscle power to properly export UA data ensuring you have access to the historical trends you need. Contact us today to learn more.

POV By Philip Lawrence, VP, Digital Analytics, Acronym

Mar 15
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Linkedin’s Acquisition of Oribi Means Enhanced Analytics For Marketers

By Analytics, Social Media No Comments

LinkedIn announced its intention to acquire Oribi, which will showcase new analytics tools that deliver enhanced campaign attribution and enable simplified event tracking and response through key actionable insights to capitalize on performance trends.

As explained by LinkedIn:

“Understanding which channels and messages have the greatest impact on the decision to take a desired step, such as a buyer requesting a product demo or a job seeker applying to a job posting, is critical to the effectiveness of any marketing campaign. Through the integration of Oribi’s technology into our marketing solutions platform, our customers will benefit from enhanced campaign attribution to optimize the ROI of their advertising strategies.”

LinkedIn already offers a range of marketing and advertising solutions. However, users have pushed for targeted ad features and better attribution models within the professional networking platform. Solutions like Oribi, which competes with platforms like Google Analytics, could deliver those enhanced attribution metrics.

The new analytics tool will provide code-free data that makes LinkedIn a more robust platform as marketers can now see visitors’ actions on a brand’s website and group those actions into behaviors that can provide deeper analysis without the need for third-party cookies or in-app tracing. This will help LinkedIn align with emerging privacy trends and the deprecation of cookies.  

Marketers can use targeting features via platforms like LinkedIn to engage with a precise audience base or even network with peers in a specific role, industry, or interest. In fact, Acronym recently won Sprout Social’s Agency Campaign of the Year for its use of LinkedIn (and Facebook) to drive qualified applications and leads to Wharton Executive Education’s online “Wharton Live Programs.” The integration of Oribi’s technology will allow marketers to better optimize their ROI and overall strategies as it will become easier to measure conversions from various campaigns.

If you’d like assistance leveraging LinkedIn for recruiting or to better connect with business customers, contact us today. We’re happy to help.

Feb 22
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How UX and CRO Work Together to Help Brands Meet KPIs

By Analytics, Insights & News, Optimization, Web Analytics No Comments

When considering your website’s performance, it’s important to understand the commonalities between Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and User Experience (UX) and how they compliment each other.

What is CRO, and what is UX? 

Testing different versions of web pages to improve conversions by deploying the “winning” version is known as as Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), also known as A/B or Multivariate testing and website optimization. Most people are familiar with the term “A/B testing” which refers to tests that compare a variation to a control. Multivariate testing goes beyond that, testing multiple variations at a given time. Both A/B and multivariate testing allows CRO strategists to find optimization opportunities backed by user behavior data. 

On the other hand, the term UX stands for User Experience, meaning how a user interacts with and emotionally responds to a website. UX is an important component of any optimization process because improving lead generation starts with improving the user’s experience on the site.

All of this may sound extensive, but a CRO team can deliver testing ideas, optimization opportunities, and friction points on your site in a digestible way. CRO teams can put together robust UX and data audits or smaller outlines detailing the next steps needed to get your site to where you need it to be.

How can you leverage a CRO/UX team? 

CRO teams help companies save time and money. This is especially valuable to teams who operate on budgets, such as paid media teams, because CRO and testing do not require any additional paid media efforts. CRO teams can help to improve ROI since UX reduces user friction and thus wasted spend. Marketing teams spend time and money to drive users to their websites, so having an optimal website experience is imperative. 

This optimal user experience isn’t limited to certain pages on a website either. UX optimization extends to landing pages and even emails. This is why it’s so important for CRO teams to work closely with paid media teams, because paid media strategists are constantly monitoring their spend and looking to increase their ad click rates to send the user to a dedicated landing page. Once the user lands on that landing page, their experience with that page matters. If they encounter too much friction, they will leave… which ultimately creates wasted spend for the paid media team.

Some of the more common KPIs (key performance indicators) that a CRO strategist may target for paid media landing page tests include improving:

  • Bounce rate (time on page)
  • Scroll depth, clicks on buttons
  • Completion of forms and more.

Moreover, CRO strategists can focus on improving UX without a measurable KPI (key performance indicator), meaning they focus on improving the overall experience of the user on the website or landing page with an aim to gain trust, build brand authority, create returning visitors and for a generally pleasant session experience.

These factors may not fall under “measurable” KPIs but they do affect business KPIs albeit indirectly.

CRO strategists work closely with digital analysts to find opportunities by dissecting the page performance and user behavior data. This data feeds into web analytics platforms such as Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics among others.

So how do CRO strategists know what kind of improvement a page needs? Or what the industry standards are for user experience? One of the many responsibilities of a CRO strategist is to stay up to date with industry standards and to have an “always learning” mentality. This allows the strategist to not only look for relevant opportunities but also to back up any of their ideas with industry baselines and tested data.

Let’s Get Started

By this point, you’re probably wondering what you can do right now to kick start your optimizations. Well, you’re in luck, because Acronym’s CRO team is ready to share paid media landing page best practices.

1. Keep landing pages short. Because the audience for paid media may be visiting from their phone, on the go, and they may even be unsure if they’re interested in your product at all, you want to keep the page short and sweet and straight to the point. Scroll depth – no more than 2x the initial height – Maria include as general statement. 

2. Add important buttons and forms above the fold. Ensure that your CTA (call-to-action) buttons are prominently placed above the fold. These CTAs will capture the users attention when they first land on the page, and even if they do not interact with it on the first pass, they will know its placement and are more likely to scroll back up to click. You may also consider making your CTA “sticky” where it follows the user as s/he scrolls on the page.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term “the fold” it simply refers to the area of the page that is visible on the first load without any scrolling. The space “below the fold” is what can be seen after the user starts to scroll down. This goes for desktop, mobile and tablet views.

3. Keep your copy concise, but don’t divulge too much information. This one can become a tricky balancing act. For paid media landing pages it’s best to give the user valuable information without losing their interest. This means that you’ll want to give just enough information to peak their interest and motivate them to become a lead to find out more information. Including keywords to match whatever leads them to landing page – ad copy – consistent with what was in the ad.

4. Don’t forget about the hero image. The hero image or hero banner can be used to set the tone for the entire landing page. Do you want to target a certain audience? Find an image that reflects that audience to create a connection. Do you want to highlight an incentive? Make sure you include it in your hero image space. The same goes for creating brand authority. Hero image and/or banner space can be used to showcase brand colors, brand logos and other valuable marketing assets that reinforce user trust and brand awareness.

We’re here to help.

Your website should be constantly growing, improving, and changing to meet your users’ needs.

By analyzing user behavior on your website or landing pages, you’ll begin to detect patterns that help you better understand these needs. However, understanding their needs and meeting them are two very different things. Establishing a solid analytics foundation/set up is the key to success. You can’t measure anything if the analytics platform is broken. Optimization is about continuous feedback, build out test, learn from it, build out future tests from the learnings.

Thankfully, a CRO and UX team can both analyze your users’ behaviors, identify the patterns and address their needs, all while testing different ideas to hone in on what works and what doesn’t. Furthermore, an objective UX/CRO team can work with any development and design team to optimize your site based on their findings. Let us do an audit for you today so you can increase your conversion rates and meet or surpass your company KPIs.

Jan 05
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Five Data Analytics Trends for 2022 You Should Start Leveraging Today

By Analytics, Insights & News No Comments

Customer behaviors have permanently changed over the past two years. As more and more business – both B2B and B2C – is being conducted from home, it’s never been more critical to utilize data to create connections throughout the entire funnel.

In fact, data analytics is no longer merely an option for business success. In 2022 and beyond, data analytics will become a must-have for everything from product development and innovation to delivering successful customer experiences.

Here are the top five ways data analytics will transform your marketing strategies in 2022 and why you need to shift your approach today.

  • Predictive analytics is on the rise

Predictive analytics forecasts possible future outcomes and explains the likelihood of those events happening. This kind of forecasting helps marketers plan more effectively, set realistic goals, and avoid unnecessary risk/spend, thereby empowering teams to make better decisions faster Predictive analytics is expected to reach $22.1 billion by the end of 2026.

  • Natural Language Processing (NLP)

With advancing NLP capabilities, platforms will become more accessible to more users. Depending on the source, it’s estimated that only one quarter to one-third of employees use data to inform their decisions. NLP utilizes data queries in a more natural language with written or spoken words. As NLP gains critical mass, companies and marketers will increasingly lean on AI to help improve data quality and discovery. We expect to see improvements in NLP tools understanding the nuances of language including synonyms, words that sound similar and words that have multiple meanings based on context. With these improvements, we will see NLP grow in usage.  

  • Auto Machine Learning (AutoML)

Natural language processing and automated machine learning will grow rapidly in 2022. AutoML tools enable self-service data science. Using no-code/low-code tools, marketers can build, train and deploy data modes for deep analysis. The process of automating the tasks of applying machine learning to real-world problems, AutoML will cover the complete pipeline from the raw dataset to the deployable machine learning model.

  • Cloud-native analytics solutions will be necessary

Cloud Native Analytics allows you to identify seasonal patterns of events and temporal event groups while running on a container platform. This transforms analytics and business intelligence as marketers can better understand how data is exposed across workflows, and platforms. 

  • Data Analytics Becoming an Essential Business Function in 2022

No matter how you slice it, all indications point to data analytics finally becoming an essential business function. No longer will analytics be a “nice -to-have” asset with reports and intelligence delivered and set aside. The pandemic proved that companies need real-time, accurate data in order to develop fluid strategies. Moreover, implementing live dashboards will be necessary for businesses to immediately access relevant information. In fact, look for new on Acronym’s new live dashboards in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, if you need assistance with the identification, collection, and analysis of you brand’s data, please contact us. Acronym’s Analytics team is standing by to help.

Dec 15
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CRO and UX Will Take Center Stage in 2022

By Analytics, Design, Insights & News, Optimization, Web Analytics No Comments

CRO? UX? You may have heard these terms in the past, but they are especially important now as companies with teams that operate on budgets are increasingly investing in these specialist roles to maximize their spend and improve their websites.  

So, what is CRO?  

Testing different versions of web pages to improve conversions and deploying the “winning” version is referred to as  Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), also known as A/B or Multivariate testing and website optimization.  

Most people are familiar with the term “A/B testing” which refers to tests that compare a variation to a control, but multivariate testing examines multiple variations at a given time. Both A/B and multivariate testing allow CRO strategists to find optimization opportunities that are backed by user behavior data. In other words, it’s statistically sound without any guesswork.  

How does it work? 

A CRO strategist will collect your website performance data and user feedback/behavior to form a hypothesis to test. In tandem with data analysis, a web page variation is created based on the hypothesis that this new variation will improve the web page’s performance. By testing against a control or against recorded data, the CRO strategist can attribute any measurable change in performance to the test. 

CRO teams help companies save time and money. This is especially valuable for companies that operate on budgets, such as paid media teams, because CRO and testing do not require any additional paid media efforts. CRO teams can help to improve ROI since UX reduces user friction and subsequent wasted spend. Marketing teams spend time and money to drive users to their websites, so having an optimal website experience is imperative.  

Why is CRO important?  

It’s also important to note that a CRO team’s job is never done. Websites will never be fully “optimized” due to the ever-changing digital landscape and evolving industry best practices. A CRO team must follow the optimization process:  

What about UX?  

The term UX stands for user experience, meaning how a user interacts and emotionally responds to a website. But how does UX play a role in the world of a CRO team? UX is an important component of any optimization process because improving lead generation starts with improving the user’s experience on the site. 

Think of it this way: Let’s say your website needs to have 100 sign-ups by the end of the month. Your buyer persona has a high-quality rate – meaning s/he is more likely to become a lead - but you notice halfway through the month that you’re not going to meet your sign-up minimum. What’s going on? Why aren’t your users signing up? 

This is a great example of how the user’s experience directly impacts the conversion rate which, in this example, is the rate at which site traffic converts to a lead by signing up. Even with a good product or a great offer, the user is less likely to become a customer if they are left feeling frustrated after interacting with your site.   

How you can leverage a CRO team?  

If you’re interested in learning more about CRO and are considering adding a CRO strategist to your team, contact us today and our team of CRO strategists, UX experts and analytics leaders can outline the best approach to achieve your goals.  

And please stay tuned to our blog because we will release a whitepaper on CRO and UX in the new year.   

POV By Maria Vera, CRO Strategist, Analytics 

  

Aug 23
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Snapchat Introduces Trends Tool

By Analytics, Insights & News, Social Media, Uncategorized No Comments

Snapchat continues to boast 293 million daily active users who share visual moments from their lives. For marketers who want to improve their engagement on Snapchat, the platform introduced a new Tools feature called Snapchat Trends that highlights the most popular keywords so you can better engage with your audience.

How This Impacts You:

Market Research can now be found within Snapchat through trend data showing changes in conversation volumes for targeted keywords, including behaviors and categories. This can help marketers shift their messaging focus to better connect with Snapchatters.

Messaging and Copywriting can be adjusted to reflect keyword usage within Snapchat in a way that ensures marketers create contextually relevant content for target audiences.

Better User Profiles and Personas can be created based on the behavior insights from Snapchat Trends. By capturing more intelligence around your target audiences’ daily lives, including when and how they shop, marketers can better target media strategies that align with your target customers’ core interests to drive purchase.

Key Moments Identification becomes easier. We know that Snapchatters use the platform to celebrate major milestones. Now, with Snapchat Trends, marketers can identify the “hashtag holidays” that matter to their customers. From National Ice Cream Day to International Women’s Day, brands looking to “own” a relevant moment in time can utilize this new data for content planning.

Competitive Research on Snapchat is made easier with this new Trends tool. Marketers can not only understand customer sentiment around brands or products, but they can also gain competitive insights on how those products fit in the market. By analyzing multiple keywords in one query, you can evaluate customer conversations to determine brand health as compared to the competition.

In other words, with this new Trends tool, Snap can provide insights into top organic trends, helping brands monitor community chatter and understand top Snaps for trending topics. This helps brands learn more about potential consumers and the Snapchat community as a whole, so they can better research organic behaviors to determine the market fir for their vertical or product/service.

If you’d like to learn more about how to leverage Snapchat to drive brand engagement, contact us today.

Jul 12
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Understanding The Google Page Experience Metrics

By Analytics, SEO No Comments

Google’s mission is to provide its users with information that best satisfies their information needs. Thus, one of the most important signals for Google is whether or not the end user has a positive experience in their search journey. If your site’s content satisfies the information need and provides a good page experience for the user, your website will be rewarded with better rankings.

In recent months, Google announced the Page Experience’s full role in search rankings will roll out by the end of August 2021 with an update to their search ranking algorithm. This update impacts how Google evaluates the ‘page experience’ of websites, including visual indicators in search results to highlight sites that have a great page experience. This means Search marketers have a window of about one month to perform key optimizations to their websites and ensure we’re providing the best user experience to searchers.

What is Page Experience?

Google uses a set of signals to detect whether users are likely to have a positive site and content browsing experience. These signals consist of how quickly a page loads (page speed) to give users what they want in the moment; whether or not the page renders properly on mobile devices; and if the site has secure encryption and does not pose a security threat; and if the site has any disruptive pop-ups or interstitials. All of these fall under what Google calls Page Experience signals. Within these signals, Google is introducing a new set of metrics related to page speed that are called Core Web Vitals. These metrics look at load times for the main content elements on a page, load times before a page is ready for user interaction (i.e., clicks, scrolling), and the extent to which content elements shift positionally on a page as it loads and renders. You may reference the diagram below that illustrates the Page Experience signals.

What Does This Mean?

Although page speed has always been a key factor for SEO marketers, the new Core Web Vitals provides additional and clear metrics for how we should optimize page load times.

Additionally, the introduction of a visual indicator in search results will notify users that certain pages have been determined by Google to offer a positive page experience.

Google is no stranger to providing users with such icons, with previous examples including AMP icons, PageRank, mobile-friendly labels, and more. Nothing has been detailed yet on what this visual indicator will look like, but there is some testing going on and we expect to see the label to be rolled out with the updates. The new label is likely to be interpreted by users as a “seal of approval” by Google and therefore its presence or absence can have a substantive impact on clickthrough rates on search results.

Brands can prepare for the upcoming updates by prioritizing efforts to improve page speed for their web presence. This includes identifying pages with longer load times (optimizing the file weights of images and animation and removing unnecessary code from pages. The Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console is also an excellent place to start understanding how your site is performing in these areas.

If you’d like an audit of your website in preparation for these new metrics, please contact us. We’re happy to help.

POV from Winston Burton, SVP, SEO, Acronym.

Jun 25
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holding ipad with google

Google Delays Chrome’s Cookie-Blocking for 2 Years

By Analytics, Insights & News, Privacy, SEO No Comments

Google announced the company is delaying its plans to block third-party cookies until late 2023 as it reconciles the challenge of protecting user privacy while still enabling advertisers to deliver personalized ads.

Chrome’s Engineering Director Vinay Goel said in a blog post:

“We need to move at a responsible pace, allowing sufficient time for public discussion on the right solutions and for publishers and the advertising industry to migrate their services. This is important to avoid jeopardizing the business models of many web publishers which support freely available content.”

One part of Google’s rationale for pushing back its plan is centered around concerns that blocking cookies now might encourage tracking companies to use more controversial tactics like fingerprinting to gather browser configuration details.

Meanwhile, the company has faced backlash around both its use of cookies across the web and its plans to block them. In fact, earlier this week, the European Union said it is investigating Google’s plan to remove cookies as part of a wide-ranging inquiry into allegations that Google has abused its prominent role in advertising technology.

And, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google has separately pledged to give the U.K.’s competition watchdog at least 60 days’ notice before removing cookies to review and potentially impose changes to its plan, as part of an offer to settle a similar investigation. That probe stemmed from complaints that Chrome’s removal of cookies would give an advantage to ads on Google’s own products, like YouTube or Search, where Google will still be able to do individual-level targeting.

In the U.S., Google’s cookie-replacement plan was raised in a December antitrust lawsuit against the company brought by Texas and nine other U.S. states.

Google has been testing several new tools to replace various functions of third-party cookies, as part of what it calls a privacy sandbox. The first such replacement technology, dubbed federated learning of cohorts, or Floc, is intended to allow advertisers to target cohorts of users with similar interests, rather than individuals, in order to protect their privacy.

Acronym’s SVP of Performance Media, Gregg Manias reacted to the news:

“I’m not really shocked by this, we have seen over time that privacy search engines like Duck Duck Go blocked it, then we saw large publishers like New York times block it, then we saw competitor browsers like Firefox block it, I think the death of this plan by Google was last week when Amazon blocked FlOC right before prime day.”

Google, of course, plays a central role in the online advertising ecosystem as the company owns the dominant tools used to broker the sale of ads across the web. Cookies, small bits of code stored in web browsers to track users across the web, are widely used in the industry, including in Google’s Chrome browser, which has 65% of the market globally.

Acronym’s EVP of Analytics, Stephanie Hart added:

“Google needs a way to provide advertisers with the ability to target users and it doesn’t seem that the current version of FLOC is it. Google is having a difficult time balancing the demand from regulators and users for privacy against the need for revenue. The market will continue to evolve as Google develops solutions to this dilemma.”

Meanwhile, as the Search giant seeks to find a resolution, Acronym’s SVP of SEO, Winston Burton recently shared some of the other ways marketers can capture customer information through permission-based tactics, including content which, when done right, captures users’ interest at every stage of the funnel.

Google said it expects to complete testing of all of its new cookie-replacement technologies, and integrate them into Chrome before late 2022. Then the advertising industry will have a nine-month period to migrate their services, during which time Google will monitor adoption and feedback. The final phaseout of cookies will happen over three months in late 2023, the company said, adding that it will publish a more detailed timeline.

In the meantime, if you need assistance planning for these changes, please contact us. Our experts can help you navigate these ever-changing waters so you deliver the personalized experiences your customers expect in a way that still respects their right to privacy.

Jun 15
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The Potential Impact of Google Allowing Users to Opt-Out of Tracking

By Analytics, Content Marketing, Web Analytics No Comments

Ahead of an upcoming developer conference, Google announced it will let Android users opt out of being tracked by the apps they download from the Google Play Store. 

This move mirrors Apple’s roll-out of iOS 14, which gave consumers the option to opt out of tracking via the IDFA, or device identifier that tracks consumer behavior across apps. 

According to the announcement, this will be launched via a Google Play services update in “late 2021.” 

Why is this important?  

Since Apple’s iOS 14 announcement in 2020, advertisers have been waiting to hear how Google will respond to its competitor. With all three major smartphone players (iPhone, Android & Samsung) using either the Google Play Store or Apple Store, this means nearly all social media app users will have the option to disable tracking.  

Considering that more than half of all worldwide web traffic so far this year was generated via mobile devices, the option to disable tracking will significantly impact first-party data.  

What is the impact on brands? 

This update will further decrease audience size, bringing higher CPMs and less qualified targeting via website data, in the same way Apple’s iOS 14 does. However, the severity of this decrease will depend upon whether this switch will be automatically pushed to users, or if this switch is simply an option users will have to manually turn off in settings. 

What action should brands take?  

First party data will be the name of the game in this privacy-first era. We recommend brands continue to find ways to leverage and foster first-party audiences, whether by creating a newsletter that requires email, a Facebook Store where shoppers interact, or leveraging video ads that can track people who watch most of the video or engage with your ad. 

If you’d like help identifying the best approach for your brand and your specific audience, please contact us. Our experts are available to help.

 

POV by Acronym’s Paid Media Team