The digital analytics industry is going through seismic shifts, and it is important for CPG organizations to stay abreast of the changes and stay compliant with the frequently varying industry trends and regulations. At InfoTrust, we enable some of the largest CPG organizations to stay compliant with industry standards by deploying large-scale analytics implementations on thousands of assets. How do we do it?
The Need for Large-Scale Deployments in CPG
Most CPG companies have multiple brands and geographical regions they operate in. This generally leads to the need for managing many digital assets (apps/websites) for all these brands and regions. Hence, when it comes to governance and global standardization, it is one of the biggest challenges for CPG companies. Especially these days, there are differing legal regulations for digital data collection and storage across different regions of the world, and hence a one-size-fits-all approach will not work for these truly global organizations. Hence, there arise scenarios where a localized change needs to be deployed on hundreds of assets which are part of a specific region (the European Economic Area, for example), as well as scenarios where a company’s self-defined global standards need to be enforced across assets in all regions irrespective of the geographical location. This is where our automation solutions come in.
Types of Large-Scale Deployments in CPG
The following are some examples of large-scale deployment needs in CPG organizations:
- Google’s Consent Mode Rollout
- Consent Mode is a Google feature which uses modeling to estimate conversions without using cookies or compromising user identity for non-consented users.
- Recently, Consent Mode v2 was launched, which includes a couple of additional signals for Google to identify if user consent was provided for sharing user data as well as remarketing purposes.
- Consent Mode will soon be a mandatory requirement for websites and apps that collect data for audience-building or remarketing use cases with Google’s advertising services, especially in the European Economic Area (EEA).
- Google Analytics 4 Implementation
- Large-scale Google Analytics 4 (GA4) deployment and enablement can be done to ensure CPG organizations are ready for the deprecation of Universal Analytics.
- A customized approach may be followed for implementing the Google Analytics 4 configuration tag, including specific custom dimensions that are relevant for a CPG organization—these changes usually need to be deployed across all assets and in a standardized way.
- Large-scale automation can be performed for configurations such as custom events, custom dimensions, audience configurations, and conversions, among others.
- For large multi-brand organizations, adherence to global tracking standards is a necessity for streamlined global reporting and KPI measurement. Especially with new implementations of GA4, it is an opportunity to ensure technical debt is not carried over from previous Universal Analytics implementations and to start fresh with a standardized tracking framework.
- Consent Management Platform Implementation
- With the regionally varying privacy regulations and requirements, it is much easier for large organizations to deploy consent models (such as Opt In or Opt Out) via a dedicated Cookie Consent Management platform like OneTrust. Regarding CPG organizations that have hundreds of assets spread across different markets, managing CMP implementation at scale requires careful consideration and surgical precision (stop those rogue tags from firing before consent).
- Third-Party Pixel/CDP Implementation
- Third-party pixels for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or other MarTech platforms such as CDPs can be implemented at a large scale to maintain consistent configurations across all brand assets in a multi-brand ecosystem.
- Google Signals Enablement
- Google Signals is a Google feature that enables better remarketing and cross-device reporting. Some compelling reasons to enable Google Signals include the ability to fully leverage remarketing as well as cross-device and Engaged View Conversion modeling. Previously, there were reporting impacts due to Google Signals enablement (specifically “Data Thresholding”), however, Google has announced that Google Signals is removed from the reporting identity in GA4 properties from February 2024.
- Privacy Audits
- Conforming to privacy legislation requirements is the newest headache for many global companies and large-scale privacy audits are not easy to set up without the infrastructure to deploy auditing tools and collect data according to varying legislative and regulatory requirements. This is where Tag Inspector comes into the picture, and it enables highly customized privacy audits at a large scale across hundreds or even thousands of websites.
- Pilot Runs for New Platform Features
- Digital Analytics platforms like GA4 continue to evolve and new features get rolled out frequently. Testing new features for functionality, compatibility, and compliance against an organization’s digital measurement strategy is something we specialize in, and the results from successful pilot runs can be applied at scale across many assets.
Concluding Contemplations
In short, deploying large-scale digital analytics implementations for CPG giants is not a one-man job. Without strategic guidance, efforts to keep things clean can go haywire in a thousand ways. Let us be your guiding star in this digital wilderness, orchestrating measurement at a colossal scale to streamline your analytics implementation and propel your organization towards success.
