Prepare for paid media challenges with steps to enhance compliance, optimize first-party data, and adopt cutting-edge tracking solutions.
The marketing measurement picture as we head into 2025 is complicated.
Third-party cookies are less impactful but still hanging on, at least in Chrome. New privacy regulations are always looming in the background.
Ad platforms have released new functions to help with measurement even as they’ve scaled back some data collection methods.
Perfect PPC measurement won’t be possible in 2025. But don’t worry, your competitors won’t have it either.
By taking key steps now, you can position your media campaigns to drive results and gain valuable insights.
Those are:
- Ensuring privacy compliance.
- Auditing your third-party cookie usage.
- Investing in first-party data collection.
- Adopting privacy-first measurement strategies.
- Getting serious about server-side tracking.
Let’s get into it.
1. Ensure privacy compliance
Privacy compliance is playing a good defense against possible fines or restrictions.
If you’re advertising in the EU, GDPR makes strict privacy compliance essential. In the U.S., laws like CCPA also make it crucial to stay updated on regulations.
You need to respect users’ decisions regarding consent. Giving them an opt-out option and not recording that preference is as bad as not giving them the option.
Do your research and put a consent management platform in place if you haven’t yet done so.
Dig deeper: 4 ways to check your website’s Google consent mode setup
2. Audit third-party cookie usage
Zoom out to understand where cookies are headed and take steps to prepare. To do that effectively, you must understand how you use cookies.
Do a deep dive into where and how you’re using pixels.
- Have you set up enhanced conversions in Google and Conversions API (CAPI) in Meta and LinkedIn?
- How is your tag management system set up?
This knowledge will guide you in building the necessary framework for when third-party cookies lose their effectiveness (given Google’s pending opt-out option for Chrome users) or are completely eliminated.
Without that understanding, you may direct your resources into solutions that aren’t right for your particular needs – or may not anticipate how sweeping your needs will be.
Dig deeper: Thanks, Google – but we’re keeping these 5 post-cookie initiatives
3. Invest in first-party data collection
You’ve heard this one for years: first-party data is golden. That’s even more true as third-party cookies crumble.
First-party data has enormous benefits:
- You own it.
- You control it.
- It’s on the right side of privacy compliance (assuming you’ve collected it in the right way).
I have two overarching recommendations for first-party data collection:
Give people every opportunity to give you the data you truly need
- Make sure you’re capturing information like name, email, lead source, etc.
- Collect data that will tell you who they are, where they came from, and what they engaged with.
- Every point of content consumption and interaction – blogs, Q&As, chats, social media profile visits, etc. – represents a chance for you to ask for user data.
- Don’t be afraid to test exit intent popups and intermediate conversion steps, such as email signups, for exclusive promotions or product releases.
Pay attention to whether that data is piping into your systems effectively
- Examine your data regularly to see if your collection may be springing leaks.
- For instance, if you see a strangely high proportion of “direct” traffic to a particular landing page, drill down to ensure you’ve set things up correctly.
- Monitor your source breakdown over time in your CRM (whether that’s Salesforce, HubSpot, or something else) to ensure there are no big upticks in direct or undefined leads or customers and that required fields are pulling in logical results.
4. Adopt privacy-first measurement strategies
Google’s enhanced conversions and Meta and LinkedIn’s CAPI were designed to help advertisers understand more about their conversions without the benefit of click IDs.
Advertisers can pass conversion events from their servers back to the platforms when they have these in place.
In turn, the platforms can confirm that users interacted with ads before taking action, such as web conversions, offline actions tracked in the advertiser’s CRM, etc.
These features work in a privacy-compliant environment, and they’re fast becoming industry standard.
If you still need to set them up, be aware that:
- Enhanced conversions require some development work, while CAPI requires a bit more.
- You must set up field mapping to capture and store your data.
The biggest mistake I’ve seen brands make is being slow to set up these functions.
A close second is brands that set them up and ignore errors and low match rates, which is data the platforms provide.
Meta provides an event match quality score from 0 to 10 based on the quality of the customer information.
You want to try to get this between 8-10. Anything below a 7 is a red flag that should be addressed.
For Google, you can see the percentage of events with sufficient user data provided, so monitor them for any performance blips.
Dig deeper: How to evolve your PPC measurement strategy for a privacy-first future
5. Explore server-side tracking
Third-party cookie tracking is browser-side tracking. (Specifically, Chrome browser-side tracking, since other browsers like Safari and Firefox have already removed cookies.)
An alternative we’ve been busy setting up for many of our clients is server-side tracking.
This method uses CDPs and/or server-side Google Tag Manager tracking with first-party cookies to collect first-party data.
It’s more expensive and complicated than third-party cookie tracking, and you still need to make sure you’re privacy compliant.
You won’t automatically get the same data as browser-side tracking. Be proactive about what you want to track and ensure the right mechanisms are in place.
Also, your data needs will likely change over time with new events or properties.
Moving to server-side tracking requires strong communication between marketing, sales, and product teams to regularly update your data model.
It’s more complex than third-party cookie tracking, but it’s a much more durable solution you should get familiar with soon.
Dig deeper: Advanced analytics techniques to measure PPC
Stay ahead in PPC: Navigating privacy, cookies, and measurement in 2025
If you’re looking for splashy marketing projects, none of these qualify.
This is the behind-the-scenes grunt work of marketing, and ignoring it because it’s not something that jumps out of a QBR deck will ultimately put your campaigns at a big disadvantage.
If your team lacks the skills or bandwidth to take on this project, find a partner with experience and good reviews in your vertical and build a plan to tackle the initiatives above.
Ultimately, you’ll put yourself in a much better (and privacy-compliant) position to understand what’s working and what’s not in your campaigns and where to push to find more efficient growth.