From regulations to technology, the digital marketing landscape is dramatically changing this year. Here are three priority areas to ensure you’re ready.
The coming months mark a pivotal moment for the marketing landscape. Regulation and technologies are evolving in line with people’s expectations for privacy online. This is the moment for marketers to review and adapt their data and measurement strategies for the better in 2024.
As Matt Brittin, president at Google Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, explains: “This is not only a new beginning for the industry, it’s a moment of opportunity for your customers, your business, and your team.”
Understanding this year's regulatory and technological updates is front of mind for many clients. Chiara Leoni, a lawyer at Baker McKenzie says: "This is a key priority for us and for our clients. We are helping our clients understand the impact of upcoming regulatory changes affecting the wider tech landscape, such as the Digital Markets Act, as well changes affecting the ads industry in particular, such as Chrome’s planned third-party cookie deprecation in the second half of 2024 and higher consent standards expected by data protection authorities.”
We sat down with specialists across EMEA to hear their valuable insights and actionable advice that can help marketers understand the implications and prepare for change. Here’s what you need to know:
Understand the impact of tech changes
Marketers will see a number of updates to Google advertising products and tools this year. For example, one development will be a greater focus on implementing more sophisticated solutions — providing customers with better consent management experiences, and marketers with more robust data and technology controls for both personalised advertising and measurement purposes.
“We are taking this as an opportunity to reshape our approach to performance marketing,” says Lennart Paulsen, co-founder at marketing technology experts Digitl. “We can’t just ignore it.”
Natalija Bitiukova, data protection officer at Ikea Retail, believes it’s a positive opportunity to reset traditional industry data practices. By putting more emphasis on a strong first-party data foundation, Bitiukova believes that “everything will be traceable, and we’ll know precisely how the data we’re using was collected”.
This can only be a good thing for the long-term, which can lead to a virtuous cycle in building more trusting relationships with customers. Sandra Wojciechowska, data protection officer at digital marketing consultant E-Dialog, explains: “Minimising data use overall helps direct attention to utilising customer information more effectively, and purposefully.”
By gathering and activating permissioned data, marketers can develop a unique dataset to help identify their valuable customers. This data acts as the fuel to AI-powered tools such as enhanced conversions, consent mode and Google Analytics 4.
We are rolling out changes to these tools this year. We have provided some practical steps to help marketers prepare at the end of this article.
Understanding consent management and the role of communication
In order to effectively gather the right consented data, the emphasis should be on implementing a robust consent management system. Our experts say this is essential to offer customers control and choice around how they interact with a brand.
Bitiukova notes: “Building integrated preference centres allows for customers to choose exactly what they’d like to happen with their personal data, and in turn get the experience they expect, and want.”
It’s not, says Wojciechowska, an “anonymous tick in a box” but a more thoughtful approach to respecting customer preferences that allows you to really “tell a story, and guide people through what’s needed to make them feel comfortable sharing their data.”
Consent goes hand in hand with transparent and clear communication. Katie Eyton, chief ethics and compliance officer at marketing communications firm Omnicom Group, explains: “You can’t get informed consent unless people understand what data is being collected, what it will be used for and who it will be shared with.” Ultimately, this is about providing information to people in language they understand. “Jargon and shorthand stands to confuse, not educate people,” Eyton says.
This starts by building your own understanding. For instance, it is very helpful, says Hannes Kuhl, data protection officer at cloud and marketing technology business Trakken, to have data flowcharts “which clearly show how data is created, sent somewhere, and then how it gets removed”.
Educate yourself on team structure
Adapting to these changes is as much an organisational task as it is technical. Getting buy-in from key stakeholders at the earliest stage possible will help more easily alleviate obstacles that come up.
Bitiukova’s advice is to bring your data protection officer (DPO) into conversations from the start of the process to truly help you achieve “privacy by design”, and allow for those experts to add their value. Wojciechowska adds that this stage in particular can really pay off: “When we take a moment and ask ourselves what we need to get moving, it is often ensuring that strategies are aligned.”
Privacy is unique because it naturally calls for different business areas — law, data, and marketing — to work together from the beginning to be effective.
But Eyton believes that if marketers can have an understanding of what regulations require, and build this into their business case before taking it to the DPO, this will make it much more likely to be signed off.
She explains: “Marketers don’t need to be legal experts, but having an understanding of the core principles will help to foster a much more productive dialogue with your DPO and legal team.”
This is also helped through businesses developing ways of speaking the same language to allow people to connect through “cross-disciplinary teams,” says Ikea Retail’s Natalija Bitiukova. “This is when the magic happens.”
Realising your marketing’s potential
Now is the time for marketers to harness better-quality, consented data. It should be seen as the starting point for a transformative journey towards a more ethical, transparent, and customer-centric marketing approach.
Lennart Paulsen highlights the potential: "If you act fast you can make this a huge opportunity. Especially in the next few months if you become an early adopter.”
Foundational steps marketers can take
There’s still time to get your strategy right this year. To help your team get ready, here are our suggested next steps to help ensure you are prepared for the upcoming changes.
1. Respect user consent
Collect valid consent for users, respecting legal requirements in your markets, preferably via one of Google’s Partner Consent Management Platforms (CMPs). Make sure you continue to respect the existing Google EU User Consent Policy.
2. Communicate consent signals
Adopt consent mode to ensure that you are able to retain your conversion measurement. Consent mode is necessary to maintain remarketing from March 2024.
3. Understand your users
Migrating to Google Analytics 4, built for the future with AI at its core, will help you to maintain remarketing with Google Analytics audiences, conversion export, and bidding optimisation.
4. Upgrade your infrastructure
Make sure you have the right data consent signals flowing, even for data collected offline, with the latest Google APIs & SDKs.
