It has never been more important for small businesses to get their display advertising and remarketing efforts in order so that day-to-day operations can continue without running into problems with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) restrictions. We’re talking about the changes to AdWords advertising policies that are going to affect the work you do, how opt-in and opt-out cookies affect your audiences in AdWords, how to handle your data with these new regulations, the nature of Safari audience data collection on iOS devices, and the changes to YouTube and Gmail remarketing. There’s so much to learn (and relearn)… so, let’s dive in!
What Are You Doing Wrong?
To fully grasp what’s happening with post-GDPR PPC remarketing, you have to first address all of those things that you may be doing wrong. First, though, you should know that you’re not alone. Most marketers and advertisers are currently struggling with the following common misunderstandings:
- Assuming you’re not affected – Don’t make the mistake in assuming that data regulations won’t affect you. Even the smallest of changes can significantly impact the safety of your business and your customer base. Remember, you are solely responsible for the use of all programs (including Google products, of course).
- Delaying the opt-out option – With the new opt-out option on cookies, remarketing and display lists may decrease in size. So, to stay ahead of this decline, you’ll need to implement your opt-out option on-site as soon as possible. This is the only way to quickly assess how many new customer acquisition campaigns you may actually need to implement in order to compensate. You’ll also need to present strong content and persuasive advertising copy to give your users a reason to opt-in.
- Ignoring Safari changes – Apple has already updated Safari in an attempt to tackle GDPR, as the changes have affected the way cookies are being treated within the browser. Advertising audience and targeting will be largely impacted by the new intelligent tracking prevention feature (ITP). The feature stops agencies and businesses from capturing browsing data across sites. To condense, cookies are available for 24 hours after a user visits your site. After that, the cookie can still be used for things like email and login info, but it won’t be able to do much tracking or remarketing. It also expires after 30 days. Apple hopes that this will be the next big step in ensuring that all advertising is as targeted as possible while simultaneously uprooting advertisers who abuse remarketing cookies, turning them into spam.
- Misunderstanding YouTube – Much like other Google advertising products, YouTube advertising features are affected. Certain ad formats will need to gather some form of consent, including those that rely on remarketing, demographics, affinity audiences, in-market audiences, and similar audiences. Those that aren’t affected include YouTube search results and YouTube videos.
So, What Now?
Now that you know what you need to watch out for, the next thing to do is to take the following steps to ensure transparency and appropriate program usage:
- Include an opt-out button on-site for your cookies.
- Include further information on what customer data will be collected from cookies and how it is going to be used by you and third party agencies.
- Only use data collected by Google advertising products to ensure GDPR and general data compliance in AdWords advertising. Don’t attempt to gather any further customer data from adverts.
The point of all of this is to get more people to come to your site naturally, without the use of remarketing. To achieve this, you must give users a reason to click on your site over your competitors’. So, make sure you’re taking the time to get to know your audience. Learn what they want, how they want it and how you’re going to deliver it to them. As long as you stay within the parameters and pay attention to your gathered data, you’ll be able to reach an audience base on a much wider scale and turn them into repeat users.
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