Mystic Mike’s predictions: What does 2026 hold for paid media?
By Mike Sharp, Operations Director at Launch That time of year is here. The time when I confidently predict the…
On the 11th and 19th May we descended on Bristol and Exeter with fabulous speakers in tow to walk us through how to drive insights as we move towards a cookieless world.
Hailing from Google, Microsoft, Noisy Little Monkey, The Coloring In Department and Launch, our speakers broke down complicated topics into easy-to-understand formats to set attendees up for success.
Now, we can’t reveal everything, but there were some stand-out themes across each of the presentations – we’ve summed them up for you here.
1. Privacy is here to stay
Just in case you were hoping things might ease up, or revert back to the way things were… it’s time to abandon that school of thought.
Regulations and laws around the world are continuing to shift to give greater power to individuals over their data. Google’s recent ‘My Ad Center’ announcement only lends more weight to this, while lawmakers put increasing pressure on platforms to handle data responsibly.
Actions:
- Make absolutely sure your data capture processes are compliant
- Double check your cookie banner is behaving as expected
- Ensure you have permission to email your audience
2. Your data strategy needs to be customer-centric
First-party data is absolutely the way forward from here out, but you need to know exactly what you want from your data now and over the next five years. That’s going to help you narrow down what you need to be briefing your data wizards and developers. It’ll also feed into your discussions on whether you’re upgrading to GA4 – and you’ll want to make that decision soon!
Actions:
- Define your first-party data strategy
- Decide which analytics platform is going to best help you do that (GA4 or otherwise)
3. Get prepared to get ahead
Now is not the time to bury your head in the sand. Universal Analytics is switched off as of 1 July 2023, so if you want a year’s worth of data for comparison, you need to be making that decision very, very soon.
Meanwhile, bespoke tracking solutions will become the norm as you continue to drive in-depth insights without cookies. Are your teams ready? Is budget in place to manage the skills gap? There’s a lot to think about to ensure you’re not playing catch-up.
Actions:
- Assess your data maturity – what things would you like to know that you don’t currently?
- Decide whether you can outsource this, need to recruit, or arrange training for your team (we can help… )
And there’s more where that came from
Missed out on our ‘cookieless world’ events? No problem!
Get more insights like this by checking out our exclusive additional resources and downloads. Our in-depth event guide includes the takeaways from each talk from Bristol and Exeter, as well as a privacy checklist. On top of that, you’ll get access to Jill Quick’s ‘Get up and running with GA4’ presentation in full.
What are you waiting for?
