Headwinds facing the web analytics industry

Regulatory, behavioural and technological headwinds are contributing towards the sunsetting of third-party cookies, as well as inhibiting the collection of first-party cookies

Key points:

• Over the past years, privacy regulation and browser privacy have grown together, quickly eroding the support of third-party cookies
• With bot traffic having quadrupled since 2014, an inability to distinguish between human and bot traffic may adversely affect business decisions
• In order to demonstrate ROI on digital campaigns, it is key to have a cookie-free analytics tool in place to demonstrate the true volume of visits paid activity is bringing to the site

The digital landscape is changing rapidly, and a number of headwinds are affecting the data available to marketeers. Adblockers, privacy regulation and bot traffic are impacting campaign performance and on-site analytics, but cookie-free technology can enhance your campaign delivery.

Over the past years, privacy regulation and browser privacy have grown together, quickly eroding the support of third-party cookies. Some browsers are now actively blocking cookies, and actively promoting this as a USP. Alongside this a keener interest in privacy has been driven by controversies such as Cambridge Analytica, and Apple’s cleverly placed privacy-focused marketing, leading to a growth in the use of adblockers. Looking at four of the most popular adblockers, they have a combined active user base of more than 51 million.

Globally, 36.3% of internet users have an adblocker in place according to GWI Research, although this differs per region and type of device. Furthermore, 41.1% of users decline cookies, 44.9% use the private browsing functionality and 65.1% regularly clear their browsing history.

Among financial and investment professionals, adblockers are being used by between 27% (in the Americas) and 33.6% (in the Mena region) of users, while between 25.2% (in the Americas) and 35.4% (in Mena) decline cookies. And between 29.4% (in Europe) and 37.5% (in Asia Pacific) of them browse privately.

Impact on web analytics

Adblockers and the recent privacy-focused regulation are having detrimental effects on website analytics, with many legacy analytics platforms failing to accurately report site traffic.

Furthermore, bot traffic has quadrupled since 2014, which could affect business decisions, such as changing page content based on a high bounce rate. While not all bots are fraudulent or malicious, the growth in good or useful bots has been significantly less than that of the negative or malicious bots. An inability to distinguish between human and bot traffic based on cookie-derived audiences may for example result in significant parts of advertising budgets being spent on retargeting bots.

The amount of bot traffic varies per channel and region, but research by Alphix Solutions found that it can be as high as 49%. Paid channels often drive the highest volume of bot traffic, with display adverts on average seeing bot traffic of over 10% in Europe and the US.

These headwinds have a massive impact on downstream metrics, with fewer visitors being recorded significantly increasing the ‘cost per’ metrics. To demonstrate, let’s take a look at some average metrics and overlay them onto a campaign for $50,000 that’s delivered 2,000 clicks. Cookie-based analytics sees an average “drop off” from clicks to entrances of 80%, giving us 400 entrances and a cost per entrance of $125. Looking at cookie-free analytics we see an average “drop off” of 30%, which in this case would give us 1,400 entrances and a cost per entrance of $35 for the same campaign.

How Alphix Solutions can help

In order to demonstrate ROI on digital campaigns, it is key to have a cookie-free analytics tool in place to demonstrate the true volume of visits paid activity is bringing to the site. Cookie-less technology works by collecting data already being passed from the browser to the website and using this to demonstrate the volume of pageviews. No personal identifiable information is collected.

Knowing not just the volume but also the quality of the traffic coming to your site is key. By utilising cookie-free technology, we can see which firms are engaging, what they are engaging with, and for how long. This enables high-quality site analytics both for paid media attribution as well as for your PR and CRM-driven campaigns.

Understanding what firms are engaging with across your site allows you to build out more tactical and focused marketing strategies based on intent to drive the right message at the right time. Understanding what key clients are engaging with now also allows you to deliver key, actionable insights for the sales team to feed into their engagement strategies.