After months of very little news in the analytics space due to the Pandemic, August is showing a return to form with a number of updates for analytics professionals to be aware of and potentially act on. Here’s the top 5 items I came across in the month.
1: California releases the final regulations for the CCPA
After long last, California has released the final version of the rules for the California Consumer Protection Act, which governs data collection and use for businesses doing business with residents of California.
Of note is the rules went into effect immediately. These are the standards which organizations must adhere, and it involves aligning the company to different legal and technical requirements.
Key Takeaway: Work with legal counsel to determine if/how you have to comply, then ensure you are in compliance.
2: Google releases Server Side Google Tag Manager to Public Beta
Previously announced at Superweek, Google is actively developing a server to server implementation of Google Tag Manager. This entered public beta this month, and Simo Ahava has a excellent write up where he goes into how to get it up and running on Google Cloud Platform. Google has also released some pretty bare bones documentation which can be found on the official site.
This is something to watch, as it could allow you to comply with different aspects of Tag Management easier than a fully client side solution. For example, you may be able to more easily deploy solutions like Content Security Policies and Subresource Integrity validation. You may be able to work with / around certain limits placed on you by Intelligent Tracking Prevention or other browser updates.
Still, it’s in beta – and may be worth checking out. I would expect considerable investment in this space over the next year as Google attempts to catch up to offerings such as Tealium’s EventStream and Segment.
Key Takeaway: Performance, compliance and security concerns will continue to be factors going forward, and it may make sense to leverage Server Side tagging in effort to get better Core Web Vital scores, which will influence page ranking in Google Search sometime in 2021. In light of this expected shift, it may make sense to review your tagging solution and roadmap if that will get you where you need to be, based on how the analytics ecosystem (technical, business, legal) is developing.
3: Firefox updates Enhanced Tracking Prevention
Earlier this month Firefox began the roll out for an update to Enhanced Tracking Prevention, which they titled ETP 2.0.
Firefox announced they will block redirect trackers by default. This may affect tracking with ‘view through’ attribution when the conversion event happens over multiple days. This is due to the fact that if Firefox recognizes the view through page as a known tracker, it will purge the relevant data after 24 hours.
The list of data they will clear when this happens is fairly extensive, and I would encourage people to review the technical write up of how the feature works. It should be noted that this is an alternate implementation of something Safari already does (Safari refers to it as bounce tracking). One notable difference between the two is Firefox considers scrolling an interaction, where Webkit (Safari) does not.
Key Takeaway: “View through” attribution scenarios are apt to be allocated incorrectly in Firefox when the conversion event occurs more than 24 hours after the view through occurs.
4: Safari starts experimenting with limiting CNAME usage
Safari looks ready to test a feature which would impact CNAME Cloaking when the first party subdomain resolves to a third party domain. In such scenarios it would subject cookies set through this action to a 7 day expiry, bringing it in alignment with the rest of Intelligent Tracking Prevention.
This could impact many analytics, optimization and media vendors who have shifted to CNAME based solutions in light of Intelligent Tracking Prevention over the past year.
Key Takeaway: Work with your technical teams to identify how/if this impacts you, and determine what your plans would be if this went into effect. Monitor the feature testing / news to be aware of any updates to stable channel deployment.
5: The Clock continues to tick toward iOS14 release.
As previously mentioned, a number of changes will come to the Apple ecosystem this fall, very likely in the September / October timeframe.
For the web, Intelligent Tracking Prevention will apply to all browsers on iOS 14 and iPadOS, this can affect analytics, optimization and paid media programs and cause sizable shifts in both reporting as well as how features technical behave.
Mobile Apps on the App Store will need to list whom they share data with (including their SDKs) and prompt for consent prior to various actions, such as accessing the IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers).
Facebook announced that the proposed changes could result in a nearly 50% revenue loss on their AudienceNetwork, and may even consider shutting it down for iOS. If you leverage personalized advertising on Facebook, it’s recommended you also review the impact to the AudienceNetwork blog post they presented.
Key Takeaways: Time is running out to understand and prepare for how these changes will impact your business. Depending on your site and app work, there could be considerable effort to retool them enough to mitigate the impact of these pending changes.
Additionally, seek to understand how this may impact your marketing efforts, and what your plan may look like if you lost the majority of your iOS/iPad OS ad targeted revenue. Consider the rapid adoption rate of Apple operating systems as you work through the Q4 plans for marketing efforts, as if the release is in the expected September / October time frame the odds are 70% adoption by early November if this year tracks to past updates.
Conclusion
There is much work to be done as we head into the Christmas shopping season, but the best advice I can give you is to pay attention to what’s happening and work with your development staff, agencies and vendors to ensure you can position yourself in the best place possible for the coming changes to the analytics ecosystem.