How to identify users and track behavior even after cookies are regulated



From the viewpoint of privacy protection, the tracking of user behavior on the Internet is being regulated. The use of

cookies to deliver digital advertisements is one of the things that are regulated, and Google is also developing a new advertising mechanism to replace cookies . Meanwhile, a new `` mechanism to identify users and track their behavior on websites without using cookies '' has been released.

How to track users for analytics in a privacy-first, cookie-less future
https://www.narrator.ai/blog/how-to-track-users-for-analytics-in-a-privacy-first-cookie-less-future/



A cookie is an identifier for a person who visits a website. By using cookies, the website can store the user's browsing information and input information on the user's PC and retrieve that information on subsequent visits. Since it is possible to identify individual users who have visited the website, it is possible to track the behavior of specific users, but if cookies are rejected, tracking will not be possible. If cookies are not available, even if the user visits the website after the second time, it will be recognized as a different person from the first visit.


The European data protection regulation GDPR stipulates that user consent is required for websites to use cookies, and past surveys have shown that only about 20% of the total consent. In other words, websites do not assign identifiers to most people, and much of what users do on websites is anonymous.

For websites, knowing 'what the user was doing before conversion' is directly linked to sales. However, without cookies, it is difficult to know what transitions individual users make on the page and what actions they take. There are various analysis tools such as Google Analytics, but it is difficult to cross multiple analysis tools.



Meanwhile,

Narrator , which provides a data analysis platform, explains in a blog, 'How to identify users even if cookies are abolished.' The figure below clearly shows the method. It shows the flow that a person who clicks on a Facebook ad and visits an online shopping site purchases a product. At this time, a unique parameter is attached to the URL of the Facebook advertisement, and when the user purchases the product, the user is given an identifier called an email address, and the corresponding email address and the parameter are linked to all the user's actions on the website. It is a mechanism to grasp



If it is the method shown by Narrator, it is possible to link 'information on users who have converted' and 'behavior of users before conversion' and analyze what actions the users who have converted have taken. When Narrator actually tried this method, even after Apple strengthened its privacy policy, the client company was able to link 95% of the anonymous data to converted users.

Specifically, we enable user identification through the following three steps.

Step 1: Track all pageviews and sync them with your 'data warehouse'
Using Google's data warehouse ' BigQuery ', Segmen's ' Analytics 2.0 Javascript Library ', Snowplow's ' JavaScript Trackers ', etc., all page view data is assigned an anonymous ID and saved. If cookies are available, ID consistency can be maintained over multiple sessions.

Step 2: Identify Users by Unique URL
Users are anonymous when they first visit the website. In this anonymous state, in order to know 'who is on the website', there are two options:

1. Use unique and non- PII (Personally Identifiable Information) URLs
2. Use existing pageview tracker identification features

If you are using '2', Narrator recommends '1' because it may get caught in Chrome extensions. Methods include adding a unique 'order_id' or 'subscription_id' to the thank you page displayed after purchasing or subscribing, or adding a unique 'contact_id' to the URL provided in the email. I'm here.

Step 3: Connect Anonymous Pageviews with Users
Steps 1 and 2 will result in pageviews assigned unique and consistent anonymous identifiers for each user and identifiable user behavioral data such as orders, subscriptions, and emails. You can get it.

Using these, first search the data warehouse for page views that include 'order_id' in the URL and obtain the customer's email address. Find the anonymous id from the pageview with the order_id and overwrite what you use as identifier from 'email address' to that 'anonymous id'. By doing this, it is possible to assign a user's identifiable ID to all page views.

in Web Service, Posted by darkhorse_log