During this week’s PPCChat, experts weighed in on first-party data sharing, examined features that assume access to customer data that many regulated advertisers simply don’t have, and shared successful approaches for dealing with competitors.
Q1: What’s the most important signal you can’t use, and what have you replaced it with, if anything?
I would say in many of my accounts, we can’t share 1st party data such as account profiles/memberships. So it’s a matter of creating privacy-first profiles or building a compliant CDP in parallel. @JuliaVyse
First-party data here as well – off limits for many clients. @beyondthepaid
I’m in healthcare – so we stay away from first-party data for ads because of HIPAA..@Galliguez
Do you have proxies that you find work well? @JuliaVyse
Curious if you can hash first party data in fields like healthcare? @williamhboggs
Uploading customer data – even for smaller accounts like a roofing company that should be leveraging those and getting them to upload it.. @alimehdimukadam
@williamhboggs AFAIK hashing doesn’t make it less risky because hashing is determinative. The same email address always produces the same hash which makes linking fairly easy. @Pete_Bowen
@williamhboggs here in Canada hashing does NOT make the data privacy compliant, so we tend to build other proxies. @JuliaVyse
I’ve got a great system for collecting down-funnel conversions and first party data and feeding it back to Google but actually getting clients to use it is always a hassle. Even if they’ve done it for years they sometimes just … stop. @Pete_Bowen
First-party data is the dream that usually doesn’t exist, and when it does exist, is still hard to port over in a compliant fashion. @revaminkoff
@JuliaVyse interesting, I’m curious what proxies you use? I’m not in healthcare, but I enjoy setting up tracking and a good workaround. @williamhboggs
@williamhboggs It does depend on the client’s goal, but for example, if it’s considering a specific medication, we do video completions and then aim at people who saw the video. The search for brand is IS%, and the search for generic is for good old landing page loads. @JuliaVyse
Q2: When using proxy data, or other signals, what do you optimize towards? Has the current push toward value-based bidding made you rethink what ‘good’ looks like in these accounts?
For reach campaigns such as governments, I tend to old-school optimize for clicks. For conversion campaigns I try to get landing page loads or sometimes a light form fill depending on what’s in the form. @JuliaVyse
When I have it, I tend to optimise for qualified leads. For me that’s been the sweet spot. Generally enough volume, and much less variance because of inconsistent sales processes. @Pete_Bowen
I use conversions first, then clicks if there are no conversions that can be used, but ideally clicks to whereever they could convert. I’m not sold on value based bidding for non-ecommerce accounts at all. @revaminkoff
@revaminkoff what would you need to do value-based bidding for non-ecom? is it a successful test, or things you want Google and Microsoft to add? @JuliaVyse
I think you need an algorithm to set the values and constantly adjust them to get them right, esp. for lead gen, and almost no clients have that data/set up/capability @revaminkoff
In theory, you could set up conversion events firing from a CRM and reporting value. I say “in theory” because I think most small businesses lack in the infrastructure. @williamhboggs
Yes, and it’s been a while for me that a lot of ‘set up time’ and the upfront work for running the campaign is trying to get the data pipeline fixed and find ways to pass some signal back to the algorithm @alimehdimukadam
I believe you can assign values in WhatConverts to phone calls and form leads, but again in theory bc most business owners won’t take the time to do this. @williamhboggs
But if the values you assign are a proxy, the danger is that people start to put too much weight on those proxy values and then people forget they were proxys. @revaminkoff
WhatConverts and a little bit of Zapier does solve most of the plumbing. @alimehdimukadam
and I used AppsFlyer for that kind of determination for in-app conversions and qualified downloads. It sounds like we have a few workarounds, but they’re expensive and yet another thing to deal with for smbs @JuliaVyse
@williamhboggs I’ve got this sort of thing, and it works, but it’s a pain when there is any kind of adjustment in the CRM that needs to be synced back. Also, in my mind, value-based bidding, where the value is an actual sale, doesn’t account for the variability of the sales process. Everyone who sees an e-commerce site sees the same thing, but every lead speaks to a variable human. @Pete_Bowen
so I’ve seen it where proxy values turn into the numbers everyone is using for an ROI calculation or revenue generated and neither is remotely close to the truth… and then you have another mountain to climb. @revaminkoff
@Pete_Bowen solid point! @williamhboggs
@revaminkoff or they were set once, 3 years ago and never adjusted after that @Pete_Bowen
Q3: Are platforms building features that assume a level of data access that regulated advertisers will never have? Are we becoming second-class citizens in performance media?
To an extent, yes. It’s frustrating for advertisers in regulated fields @beyondthepaid
I mean, YES! I see so much investment in ROAS based ecom from Google, Meta, Microsoft, Reddit, and it’s like, gang: if I can’t place a pixel, or share 1st party, do all you big brains have suggestions? But I think they’re moving in a direction where there are more options for us. Now that ROAS is well covered! @JuliaVyse
A partial yes to both. But I think this is also where our value as PPC professionals now come to the fore against rep advice of run all things AI Max. AI will amplify garbage and you don’t want that to happen. Garbage in -> Amplified Intelligent Garbage Out @alimehdimukadam
@alimehdimukadam very well-put! I might steal that for my next slide deck. @JuliaVyse
What @alimehdimukadam said pretty much hits the nail on the head, but I just want to add that yes, it’s nice that Google is building these features but there’s a difference between building the features and then assuming that everyone can use them…@revaminkoff
If I had to place a bit on where platforms are going, I’d put my money on Local Service Ads or something similar. Highly profitable (for the platform), low complement costs (no need for a website, agency etc) and a very simple take-on. I just realised I didn’t answer the question you asked. Maybe I’ll take up politics as a career..@Pete_Bowen
Q4: In accounts where you can’t out-target or out-data the competition, what actually moves the needle? Is there a skill premium for working in regulated verticals?
Yes, but I really worry about how to promote that skill premium. It’s not well-understood that a practiced, strategic ppc lead is different than an ecom lead, and that results will be different between the two. @JuliaVyse
I’ve decided that I won’t be working with industries where I can’t get the data I need. This came about after I was asked to consult with a small firm here on my island. Only after I was booked in did they tell me that they weren’t allowed to track any data. I had some advice left over from 2009 but I felt like I didn’t have much to offer. I think the differences in managing with data vs without data are going to be more and more significant. @Pete_Bowen
Oh wow, I’m surprised they didn’t mention it before booking in. Worried they could be charged more? It’s so strange talking to clients about how they know they won’t get the results without data, but they’re still unwilling to share it. I have one client who would LOVE nothing more than to feed in all their data asap and is not permitted to. Those are a good and fun group who enjoy our brainstorms for workarounds. @JuliaVyse
They didn’t know what they didn’t know. I helped them figure out that they’d be in trouble if they started spewing PII around. There was a lot of backwards and forwards with some legal guy on the phone too @Pete_Bowen
When legal is on the call you know you’re about to charge for a whole afternoon of re-reading what you’ve already read. @JuliaVyse
The skill premium in my opinion, is knowing and getting the client to work with their legal beforehand and be honest about what is it that they are trying to achieve and what can or cannot be done until legal clears it. I’ve had clients work it out with their legal department coz for a lot of tools and third-party apps which the client already uses and shares data for – the same guardrails apply with a look at whether advertising using that data is allowed or not as per the country, state laws, coz it’s different for each geo @alimehdimukadam
Fully agree. Have you found yourself in an environment where legal doesn’t actually know how the tech works? I find those teams tend to just say no to everything. @JuliaVyse
Ohh yes, and I have been on calls with legal explaining exactly what we need and why. For some, it works, for others, once they set their mind on something and raise ‘liability’ in front of the client, then the conversation just stops and plans get shelved. What has helped me is always knowing what will trip up legal so I give the heads up to the client before they take me down the road, which I know is going to get blocked so I ask them to clear with legal first before we put in our time and energy. @alimehdimukadam
Q4 a: What do you see as successful in dealing with competitors? In some cases, they have the same restrictions you do, but what if you don’t have the resources your competitor does to get around some of these issues?
Compliant CDP is one avenue; reporting on brand lift and search lift is another. Reviewing proxies is another. I feel like every solution is bespoke, and every new challenge is even fussier than the last! @JuliaVyse
Unfortunately, there is no work around the guardrails, and you will be liable as the agency if something goes wrong. Better to follow the law of the land in that case. @alimehdimukadam
So much of what we do is giving advice about staying in the lines and not ignoring rules. And it’s fun to sometimes share with Google reps about how their product interacts with rules. I just had a convo on this with Apple, and they were SHOCKED. yep. The ‘privacy first’ platform was tickled to hear that Canada has different rules. @JuliaVyse
Q5: As platforms push harder into AI-native formats, such as Business Agent for Leads, AI Max, Advantage+ (why are they all Max or Plus???) where does that leave regulated advertisers in the next year or so?
Honestly, not sure. Some will be able to do automated creative to a certain extent, others will be able to do light automations in platform, but I think it’s about to be a mess. Up here, we have an added conversation of using automation tools where data is hosted in Canada, and that’s a whole additional can of worms. @JuliaVyse
In a way, it will force the companies to move faster and keep up with the changes but laws and regulations will be the last to move, so for a lot of regulated industries, the answer is they will be left behind or will have little to work with. But something like the private cloud compute and Google’s privacy data manager feature, should help resolve. Data residency is a big thing @alimehdimukadam
maple moment: Evan Solomon (Minister of AI) is, I think, very focused on just this topic. How do we move forward, invest in local data, local clean rooms, and do our rules need to evolve as technology evolves. @JuliaVyse
Yeah, there is a build Canada group which is active and they aren’t really a fan of the minister. CA has a lot of AI stalwarts. In fact this current wave is partly attributed to UoT @alimehdimukadam
omgd build Canada. Let’s not bring all our very formal infighting into this group. @JuliaVyse
PPCChat Participants
- Julia Vyse @JuliaVyse
- Melissa L Mackey @beyondthepaid
- Reva Minkoff @revaminkoff
- Dave Galliguez @Galliguez
- Boggs @williamhboggs
- Peter Bowen @Pete_Bowen
- Ali Mehdi Mukadam @alimehdimukadam
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