Google lets advertisers use data from signed-in users together with your Google Analytics data to build audience lists for cross-device remarketing.
Starting May 15, 2017, Remarketing Audiences created in Google Analytics will be enhanced to automatically take advantage of new cross-device remarketing functionality now available in AdWords and DoubleClick. This will allow you to reach your customers across devices when using Google Analytics Audiences.
Why is this important?
A Google research shows that 60% of internet users start shopping on one device but continue or finish on a different one. With cross-device using a user centric approach, if someone visits your website on one device, you can now reach them with remarketing campaigns using more relevant ads when they search or browse on another device.
According to Google, advertisers that are using cross-device conversions see a 16% lift in conversions.
A new report from Yahoo and Enders Analysis (may 2017) estimates cross-device audience ID matching will be used in 58% of online ad spend in the U.K. by 2020, compared with 28% in 2016. Audience IDs are online identity profiles created from anonymous identifiers in order to recognize and match the same user across different channels, devices or both.
How does Google Analytics cross-device remarketing functionality work?
If remarketing with Google Analytics is enabled, Google Analytics will collect Google-authenticated identifiers associated with users’ Google Accounts (and therefore, personal information) for those Google users that enabled Google to associate their web and app browsing history with their Google account to personalize ads.
Then, Google Analytics will temporarily join these identifiers to your Google Analytics data in order to support your audiences.
Advertisser can use broad behavioral criteria like having simply initiated a session on your site or opened your app, or you can use more narrow criteria like interacting with specific products
For example, you might create each of the following remarketing audiences and engage the users in them with the following kinds of ads:
- Users who viewed product-detail pages, but didn’t add those items to their carts: Ads for the items they didn’t add to their carts
- Users who added items to their carts, but didn’t complete their purchases: Ads with a discount code for the items in their carts
Users who purchased items X and Y: Ads for related item Z
When a user’s behavior meets the criteria you’ve specified, the associated cookie or Device Advertising ID is included in the audience. When any of the users with those cookies or IDs later visit sites on the Google Display Network or use Google Search, they are eligible to see one of your remarketing ads if you win the ad auction.
What I have to do?
- If you don’t wish to enable remarketing with Google Analytics, please turn off remarketing data collection.
- Be careful with the viewing frequencies of your campaigns and think of them in a multi-device environment.Review your website privacy policies and make any necessary updates to explain what data your business collects and shares with Google.
- As Google user, if you want you can opt out of personalized ads altogether at My Account.
Take-away.
With this functionality, Google closes a highly-demanded gap when it comes to attribution and user identification (specially in the cases where the user is not logged in). It remains to fully understand how will users react (as their personal information will be now used – first time Google admits it) and what impact the business will have. Time to time!
