Read on Twitter
1/ @jonathanmendez's wonderful post omitted the potential role of @GCPcloud and BigQuery in particular. https://twitter.com/jonathanmendez/status/1195383697781989376
2/ Google Tag Manager works well for owned site-side interactions and site analytics, but doesn't offer much help for off-site paid media exposure (both targeting and measurement) other than loading retargeting pixels (which will all soon be blocked anyway).
3/ So one of the post's most ambitious statements is only half-fulfilled by Google Tag Manager. What will be the "lifeblood" on the paid media side? Especially in the era of Privacy?
4/ Started wondering today whether one of Google Marketing Platform's key approaches to managing #privacy will be to deprecate ALL direct I/O with respect to user-level data within the Google paid media environment (e.g., Input = data onboarding; e.g., Output = ad server logs).
5/ Note "within the Google environment." This doesn't really apply to Google Tag Manager (or GA360 to some extent), which is usually used in Owned environments (e.g., your own website). Also GTM doesn't need to pass data to Google in order to be useful.
6/ As I noted on @adexchanger last week, trying to solve for the "Opt Ins" is a game of whack-a-mole that is both costly and offers little net upside to the Walled Gardens. Everyone needs THEIR (e.g., Google's) data and users, not the other way around. https://adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/ccpa-means-its-an-opt-out-world-now/
7/ But...if Google Marketing Platform were indeed to deprecate all direct access to user-level data, what would fill the vacuum? Digital paid media targeting & measurement don't work very well without some kind of two-way street for data.
8/ Enter data clean rooms like Ads Data Hub. https://mightyhive.com/data-clean-room-slide-deck/
9/ But ADH isn't the only application being developed. Google obviously wants to equip developers (and marketers) with tools to work with data in "de-toxified" ways. https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/05/google-launches-an-open-source-version-of-its-differential-privacy-library/
10/ OK, so back to that "lifeblood" question. How do you satisfy Google Marketing Platform's (presumed) distaste for user data I/O while still allowing some kind of "lifeblood" to flow within paid digital media?
11/ BigQuery and @GCPcloud may be the solve. Together, they can be the 'ligua franca' on the paid media side where Google Tag Manager is the 'lingua franca' on the site/owned side. ADH is, after all, a custom application built on top of BigQuery. https://developers.google.com/ads-data-hub/guides/intro
12/ This is where it gets interesting (to me). ADH architecture assumes you have your own Private GCP Cloud environment where your user/1P data lives and Google can NEVER SEE IT. This solves so many privacy problems for Google Marketing Platform! (it also builds adoption for GCP)
13/ And the data interchange (targeting, bidding, measurement, personalization) between your Private GCP Cloud and Google Marketing Platform is all driven by Differential Privacy. https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.01917
14/ And of course there are all sorts of fun things you can do with your data in GCP. It's a cloud platform. The sky's the limit on I/O and transforms / queries / applications. As long as you can get into or out of BigQuery, it's the ultimate extensible playground for your data.
15/ So maybe you'll be able to use GMP tools like DV360 in "dumb" mode with all data cut off (except basic reporting), or you'll be able to spin up a prepackaged Private GCP cluster and start doing analytics and activation right out of the box.
