Are Adwords Enhanced Conversions GDPR compliant?
The folk ad Google have been nagging me to include 'enhanced conversion data' for sales on the website. This entails passing over to google personal information about the person who placed the order (email, name, address).
This seems like a privacy no-no. I'm in the UK so GDPR law applies, but regardless it seems like shady behaviour to pass these details on to another company without consent. Is it compliant with GDPR law?
Also, what's in it for me? Google say it makes the conversion tracking more accurate, but they would, wouldn't they?
Just check the resource page https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9888656?hl=en-GB, which gives you the answer. Check the how it works and look at step 3, and ask yourself which user gave you permission for sharing their email, allow Google to hash it (like it would stop to be personal data under the GDPR) and allow Google to stitch it against their Identitity Map.
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Google, like many other platforms need to move away from cookies given the rise of importance of privacy and legislation like GDPR and CCPA (+ so many others), to keep providing reasonably accurate conversion data they need to increase the volume of what they can "observe" (this ga4 video explains observed v modeled data)
To your point of whats in it for me, the answer is that in a word that is less able to rely on cookies, the platforms prividing conversion data will have to increase modeling or use other methods. Google want to model data rather than use what it suggests are non privacy-safe tactics like fingerprinting. Any advertiser relies on reasonably accurate marketing to help make better, more informed decisions. Digital advertising and google have always prided themselves on prividing that.
There are some clear privacy considerations that your business should make before implementing, the main one is how do we ensure active, informed consent. Hashing and pseudo anonymization using the SHA256 or other encyption, while the general go to across the industry does not turn PII in something that can be freely used and . Users have an expectation (and right) that there data is used reponsibly.
With all the above said, if you are ensuring you have informed consent, and you are using in limited ways (as Google suggest they are) users then there are some important reasons why advertsiers and and business will benfit from enhanced conversions.
Advertisers rely on conversion data to understand what is effective, google has always offered some of the most reliable conversion data to help its advertisers optimise campaigns and while the ultimate aim of google may be to make more money, the win win win of Advertisers that see guenuine sales, customer buying products of value to them and Google being paid to join the two parties is key.
The Quality Score element if Google is a good example of why Google offers actually quite relevant ads, if you serve irrelevant/poor ads you essentially get priced out. This has nothing to do with conversion tracking, just an example of how the business seeks to deliver a good "product". If your ads are hitting home with users, you pay less (this benefits cutsomer, advertisers and means google is the biggest search engine in most countries so they gain more overall).
You can learn more generally about enhanced conversions here
Sorry to revive this post but I would like to add to this question / discussion. What would be the difference between Enhanced conversions vs. Offline conversions uploads. The former uses (hashed) user personal data, the latter uses google click ids. But since they both identify a conversion on your website which is to be communicated to Google - is it true that Offline is slightly better approach + if you do one then you probably do not need the other ?