New Consumer Privacy Laws
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) have been in place for some time now, but it's clear how consumer privacy laws will impact pay-per-click advertising. Now, more states in the United States are set to implement their own laws in the coming months. All of these states share common themes that may impact pay-per-click advertising: opt-out of data collection, user consent, and transparency.
New State Privacy Laws
July 1stThis year, Florida enacted the Florida Digital Rights Act (FDBOR).stOregon has enacted its own privacy law, the Oregon Consumer Privacy Act (OCPA), which joins Texas' Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (TDPSA). Montana will soon be following suit with the Montana Consumer Data Privacy Act (MCDPA), which goes into effect in early October. Finally, Iowa will have the Iowa Consumer Data Protection Act (ICDPA), which goes into effect in January 2025.
These laws contain many provisions and sections that are not relevant to PPC, so we will discuss the relevant sections. As mentioned above, there are some sections that are common to all five regulations that may affect PPC.
Consent and Transparency
These are two main themes that recur in the new law: organizations must be transparent about what data is collected and obtain user consent for data collection. Transparency also requires organizations to give users the right to access, restrict, and delete the data collected. All websites must be transparent and make it easy for users to opt out of data collection by clearly and transparently displaying data consent and opt-out messages on their websites.
Impact on PPC
The most significant potential impact is the loss of conversion tracking. Because users are given the clear option to opt out of data collection, conversion tracking may not be able to attribute sales or leads as conversions to Google Ads. This may result in fewer conversions and make your campaign performance appear worse than it actually is. Additionally, Smart Bidding strategies optimize better the more data you input, so having less conversion data will also have a negative impact.
The next thing that will be affected will be your audience targeting and remarketing campaigns. Similar to the loss of conversion tracking, users cannot be automatically opted in. As mentioned above, users will need to be shown the data collection/cookie consent message, and if they decline, they will not be added to your audience or retargeting lists. Most likely, you will see a reduction in the size of your audience and retargeting lists.
A common theme among these new state privacy laws is the requirement for user consent and transparency. For PPC, conversion tracking will be most affected, as you will no longer be able to track conversions from users who opted out of data collection. This will obscure the true performance of your campaigns and you will see fewer conversions. Remarketing and audience campaigns will also have a smaller reach, as more users will likely opt out of data collection, reducing the size of your audience and remarketing lists. Advertisers will have to rely on other types of measurement to determine the success of their ads.
