Building a First-Party Data Foundation: Highlights from Google's Rethink ROI Event

I recently had the opportunity to attend and speak at Google’s Rethink ROI event in New York. This incredible event brought together industry leaders to explore the future of marketing, with a specific focus on measurement, AI, and the crucial role of first-party data (1PD).

1PD is the data businesses collect directly from their own customers, such as website interactions, purchase history, and engagement with marketing efforts. It is foundational to success in an AI-driven world because it allows brands to learn about their consumers in a reliable, accurate, and cost-efficient way, enabling them to execute marketing more effectively. 

1PD is a Must-Have for Modern Marketing 

During a conversation with Kamal Janardhan, Senior Director, Product Management at Google, I shared several important ways that marketers can prioritize and strengthen their 1PD:

• Begin with an Outcomes Framework: Before diving into 1PD collection and analysis, it's essential to start with clear outcomes in mind. By defining your objectives early on, you can create a measurement framework that aligns with your goals. This, in turn, helps you identify the data foundations and technologies required for success. 

• Build High-Quality 1PD Sets: By growing and nurturing large and active 1PD sets, you offset potential signal loss and position yourself to take advantage of AI-driven marketing solutions. Key steps for capturing and strengthening 1PD include using sitewide tagging, collecting consent, integrating with solutions like Google Data Manager, and implementing robust data governance practices to ensure data is clean, consented, and ready to use. 

• Explore 1PD Across Your Entire Business: Different departments within your organization may hold valuable 1PD. Sales, Product, IT, and Customer Service teams can possess a wealth of information that hasn’t traditionally been tapped for media activation, offering new opportunities. For example, we combined a tech client’s supply chain insights (inventory and shipping times) with customer preference data to develop an AI-driven solution that predicted when a customer might cancel an order, offering alternate product suggestions through Display & Video 360 creative, dramatically reducing order cancellations and increasing conversion rates. 

• Think Beyond Reporting: Data isn’t just for reporting. Think creatively about how data can inform unique activation strategies. For instance, we helped an education client use their 1PD on prospective students to develop a custom machine learning model that predicted which students were more likely to enroll. These insights were then applied to bidding strategies, resulting in a higher rate of students actually starting their programs vs. simply applying. 

Overcoming Challenges to Maximize 1PD Value

While the benefits of 1PD are clear, truly maximizing its value can be challenging. Many brands struggle with siloed data, disconnected systems, and a lack of coordination across teams. This makes it difficult to orchestrate marketing strategies that effectively leverage 1PD.

Fortunately, there are a number of things you can do to overcome these challenges, particularly within Google Marketing Platform (GMP) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Google’s 1PD features and seamless integrations enable marketers to connect their data and scale their efforts. 

For example, one of the most critical aspects of leveraging 1PD is ensuring data is stored in a centralized and scalable environment. Cloud platforms, such as Google Cloud, can help businesses consolidate their data across the organization, making it easily accessible. This centralized foundation opens new opportunities to integrate AI and machine learning capabilities, ensuring that data is actionable across every part of the marketing ecosystem. 

There are also solutions and tools within GMP that can help brands make the most of their 1PD: 

• Enhanced Conversions (EC): This tool supplements purchase / conversion data with user-provided 1PD, improving the accuracy of conversion measurement while optimizing bid algorithms within Google’s advertising platforms. 

• Google Analytics 360 (GA360): With advanced modeling and integration with GMP and BigQuery, GA360 helps you understand traffic and conversion patterns while providing rich 1PD insights. 

Getting the Most from AI Starts with Your Data 

AI is shaping the future of marketing. This was a key theme at the event at large, and attendees saw multiple examples of how AI is empowering marketers with new capabilities, opportunities for growth, and exciting ways to work with data while respecting user privacy.

However, to get the most from AI, you need to have the right 1PD foundations and strategies in place. Only then will you be able to fully tap into AI’s power to extract deeper insights from your data, enhance data availability, and build innovative activations and applications around your data.