The following announcement is currently available when you log into Google Analytics:
Important update to Remarketing with Google Analytics
Starting May 15, 2017, Remarketing Audiences created in Google Analytics will be enhanced to automatically take advantage of new cross-device remarketing functionality now available in AdWords and DoubleClick. This will allow you to reach your customers across devices when using Google Analytics Audiences.
Our research shows that six in ten internet users start shopping on one device but continue or finish on a different one. With cross-device remarketing in AdWords and DoubleClick, if someone visits your website on one device, you can now reach them with more relevant ads when they search or browse on another device.
Where users have chosen to enable Google to associate their web and app browsing history with their Google account, and to use information from their Google account to personalize ads, Google will use data from its signed-in users together with your Google Analytics data to build audience lists for cross-device remarketing. In order to support this feature, two things will happen: First, for users on your site, Google Analytics will collect Google-authenticated identifiers associated with users’ Google Accounts (and therefore, personal information). Second, Google Analytics will temporarily join these identifiers to your Google Analytics data in order to support your audiences.
No action is required for these changes to take effect but please review your privacy policies and make any necessary updates to explain what data your business collects and shares with Google.
If you don’t wish to enable Remarketing with Google Analytics, please turn off remarketing data collection.
As always, Google users can control their ads experience (or opt out of personalized ads altogether) at My Account.
This enhancement makes a lot of sense and will put a very interesting twist on conversion tracking. Basically hwat this means for advertisers is that a user who visits a site on one device will now be remarketable on other devices. Someone visits you on their smartphone can now see your remarketing ads on their desktop device.
It’s not a big stretch to imagine scenarios we’ve all been in that this would work towards. I for example often start my travel planning on a mobile device which I’m sitting in a coffee shop with my wife. The conversion itself rarely happens there but the discovery does. I’d be a great target for this. We’re currently planning a trip to Japan for next year and I may well forget some of the awesome things I saw in my random searches so remarketing to me locations, attractions, etc. would work well but you’d have to do that to my desktop which is where I spend most of my time online and where I will make my conversion decisions when it comes to this trip.
If you’re a PPC manager it’s time to think about how you’ll be reporting on the conversion side, especially if a conversion is offline.
I just became aware of the announcement but will be writing more about this in the near future I’m sure.