POV: Google Removes Access to Doubleclick ID

POINT OF VIEW POV: Google Removes Access to DoubleClick ID

By Kamila Czoch Senior Media Director, IgnitionOne

What Is Happening On April 27, Google announced that it would no longer allow marketers access to user IDs from DoubleClick Campaign Manager, its industry-leading ad server – ostensibly to protect user privacy in anticipation of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) effective date of May 25, 2018.

Google’s DoubleClick ID lets marketers associate a persistent identifier with each individual that accumulates customer engagement data from multiple sessions and devices. Because each user ID represents a unique individual, it is essential to multi-touch attribution (MTA) reporting.

Currently, marketers can access log files of mpri essions served on DoubleClick Campaign Manager to measure them against impressions served from other ad servers across the Internet.

However, as of May 25, the DoubleClick ID will no longer be available for data transfers on impressions recorded on DoubleClick Campaign Manager, or on Google’s DoubleClick Bid Manager demand-side platform. Google will also remove encrypted cookie IDs, IP addresses, and user list names from data transfer for all bids in its public inventory exchange, Google Ad Exchange.

What This Means With these changes, marketers will be limited in their measurement of campaign performance. The removal of user IDs makes it difficult for most marketers to distinguish the unique interactions that each customer has with their brand. Without user-level insights, marketers will be inhibited in their ability to build conversion attribution profiles and produce MTA reports.

While multi-touch attribution isn’t the only way for marketers to measure the impact of their ad campaigns, MTA reports nevertheless provide the most accurate and most comprehensive understanding of each customer’s journey across channels.

In order to mitigate the effect of this change, marketers who want to have a view of multi-touch attribution have a few options:

1) Rely (even more) heavily on Google. Some marketers may simply cede to Google’s expanding reign. Marketers who choose to run all of their advertising on Google won’t have to deal with matching and stitching disparate IDs, which makes it seem like the easy option – but doing so requires complete reliance on Google for reporting of your campaign performance. In other words, marketers will be even more beholden to Google’s ecosystem, and access to your own customer data will still be limited.

2) Learn the ins and outs of Google’s Ads Data Hub. Google has been pushing for wider adoption of Ads Data Hub (ADH) since its launch in 2017, but setup on the platform is extremely cumbersome – it requires match table creation, ID- and cookie-syncing, and familiarity with the Google cloud. Currently only five third-party vendors are integrated with ADH, and only one of these vendors specializes in multi-touch attribution reporting. Marketers who choose this option face a steep adoption curve with technology still in its early stages – on top of which, Ads Data Hub does not enable fully transparent MTA.

3) Use another ad server. Marketers do have alternatives to DoubleClick Campaign Manager available to them. Platforms like Sizmek and Adform offer similar ad stacks and are among the five vendors integrated with ADH. These competitors might enjoy renewed interest as marketers consider their options, but switching ad servers is disruptive – and marketers who do so also lose Google’s dominant market power and integration capabilities.

4) Partner with an MTA vendor. Marketers have the option of partnering with a marketing technology provider that utilizes its own ID to record the customer journey. The vendor’s pixel, attached onto landing pages and ads, records each impression served to distinct customers, providing marketers with the user-level insight necessary to assess campaign performance. Marketers who choose this option simply need to find a partner like IgnitionOne, with optimal cross-channel capabilities and refined methods for attribution reporting.

What IgnitionOne Can Do At IgnitionOne, we gather customer activity data across all media channels, working with partners to deliver a unified cross-channel attribution model. Our platform utilizes pixel-based user IDs to provide marketers with a unified, comprehensive view of each customer’s lifecycle stage, level of engagement, and areas of interest.

IgnitionOne’s Customer Intelligence platform can integrate seamlessly with your existing technology and aggregates customer data from all channels and campaigns across search, display, social, and your own website. We utilize robust identity resolution techniques to recognize each customer as the same individual across multiple channels and devices. Our MTA capabilities enable marketers to easily measure the performance of their campaigns, and attribute marketing results to the channels that are responsible for them.

It doesn’t have to be Google’s way or the highway. Our dedicated team of analysts and data scientists have the expertise to help marketers thrive in an industry that is continually shifting. When it comes to building an accurate attribution model that withstands partner changes, IgnitionOne has the technology to power smarter, more effective marketing decisions.

Get In Touch Need more information on how IgnitionOne can enhance your marketing efforts? Contact us today!

About IgnitionOne IgnitionOne’s leading Customer Intelligence platform empowers marketers to find and engage their most valuable customers across channels using a data-driven approach. By focusing on cross-channel scoring and robust personalization, IgnitionOne’s technology provides real-time, actionable insights for smarter marketing decisions and omnichannel engagement to maximize overall results. IgnitionOne is one of the largest independent marketing technology companies in the world, currently scoring over 600 million users monthly in 75 countries and powering more than $60 billion in revenue each year for leading brands, including General Motors, CenturyLink, La Quinta and Acer, as well as advertising agencies such as 360i, GroupM and Zenith Media.