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Google’s Topics API provokes a range of reactions

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Google's Topics API provokes a range of reactions

Earlier this week, Google announced the Topics API, its latest ad targeting proposal aimed at replacing third-party cookies. This leaves Federated Learning of Cohorts dead in the water while marketing and adtech platforms and advertisers try to make sense of the new proposal.

Topics may be a more realistic option than FLoC, marketers say

“Topics seem more likely to be acceptable to the broader ecosystem as they address several FLoC privacy concerns head on,” said Aaron Levy, head of paid search at Tinuiti. “It’s odd to call this an advantage, but I view anything that launches with a higher likelihood of stability and lesser likelihood of mass opt-outs a win.”

The other practitioners seemed to concur. “On their face, Topics seem like they should be less personally identifiable, which would be a plus for privacy,” said Julie Friedman Bacchini, president of Neptune Moon and managing director of PPC community PPCChat.

“I like that Chrome users will be able to see their topics and delete them if they wish,” said Christine Zirnheld, digital marketing manager at Cypress North. While this feature can make life harder for advertisers, options for users will help to appease privacy advocates and regulators, which increases the chances that Google will eventually be able to launch Topics.

Topic diversity and other potential hurdles for advertisers

The Topics API’s initial design includes approximately 350 topics, according to its GitHub page. Advertisers are concerned that this quantity won’t be sufficient enough to provide relevant targeting.

“Google’s current interest list [of topics] doesn’t offer the level of nuance most marketers need to target people who’d actually want to see their ads,” said Ashwin Balakrishnan, head of marketing at Optmyzr. “If Topics is going to be a success, Google needs to provide more detailed options.”

“Advertisers (at least as of now) would have few interests to actually target, and broader targeting does not usually lead to better performance,” Zirnheld said. “An interest in cars & autos doesn’t tell me if that’s luxury, rental, new, used, SUV, etc.,” Geddes added, “That means there will be more competition for less targeted ads,” noting that, at this point, it is still too difficult to predict how Topics will work in practice.

For reference, the IAB Audience Taxonomy contains approximately 1,500 audience segments. “One of the most popular drinks in the U.S. is Coffee,” Zirnheld provided as an example. “The IAB Taxonomy has ‘Coffee,’ ‘Coffee & Tea,’ ‘Coffee Creamer,’ ‘Coffee Filters,’ and ‘Tea/Coffee – Ready-to-drink.’ The closest topic Google has (at the moment) is ‘Food & Drink.’”

Despite the relatively low number of topics designed into the initial proposal, Google may already be aware of this issue: “This is a starting point; we could see this getting into the low thousands or staying in the hundreds [of topics],” said Ben Galbraith, Chrome product director.

In addition to the potentially limited topics, “The limited timeframe could be concerning for advertisers, as they are used to much more persistent inclusion of an audience than one to three weeks,” Bacchini said, caveating that it remains to be seen whether keeping interests more current might also yield benefits. Levy also touched upon this concern: “It feels more directionally accurate than truly precise,” he said. “I hope for some sort of a boolean setup longer term where we’re able to combine, expand or narrow topics, but of course time will tell.” 

As a privacy measure, there is a 5% chance that a random topic is returned, according to the GitHub page. This is to ensure that each topic has a minimum number of members. “While I understand that this helps ensure anonymity and privacy for internet users, this is obviously not a good thing for advertisers,” Zirnheld added.

Chrome might be the only browser to adopt, but that might not matter for some

“Chrome is still the big boy in the browser war,” said Steve Hammer, president and co-founder at RankHammer, “I do think Edge will matter as more people get Windows 11, but that’s the lone one I’d worry about for clients.”

“While Chrome’s market share is (slightly) shrinking, I don’t anticipate this’ll change our usage at all,” Levy said, “Rather, it will all fit into a broader theme of treating the data as directional rather than ‘right.’”

“If it’s limited to Chrome, we’ll see how that affects iPhone users,” Geddes said, noting that, “The lack of cross-browser support is a bit worrisome, but it won’t affect anyone’s budget if they are getting good returns from their marketing dollars.”

If Chrome claims enough of the browser market, that might empower Google to continue with the Topics API without having to go to the bargaining table with its competitors. That independence can help the company stick to its Privacy Sandbox timeline, which shows that all associated initiatives are slated to be launched in Chrome sometime in Q4 2022.

Is Topics an improvement over FLoC?

As with all potential third-party cookie replacements, Topics must be evaluated from the user privacy perspective as well as the advertiser perspective. “FLoC raised privacy concerns and Topics seems more privacy-friendly and attempts to provide more control and transparency to internet users. In that way, Topics is ‘better,’” Zirnheld said.

“However, this means broader targeting for advertisers, meaning less control over who sees our ads,” she noted. “We might have to get more creative with targeting for our clients if this is the route Chrome is taking.”

“For advertisers, I expect that Topics wind up more restrictive with less options and less precision than we were hoping for from FLoC (which is already a reduction of current tactics),” Levy said. “It’s annoying, but also encouraging that Google is trying to come up with a solution that works for everybody.” 

Google is trying to address the significant pushback and concerns provoked by FLoC, said Yahoo CBO Iván Markman. “It is yet to be seen whether this next iteration is workable, given how high level and short-time-spanned it is. Google’s FLoC received negative policy and industry feedback, and there was concern that FLoC IDs could have been exploited for cross-site user tracking. With the release of Topics API, Google is providing a higher level of user obfuscation and localized browser storage vs. a centralized storage location.”

Wayne Coburn, director of product at cross-channel marketing platform Iterable added: “Google’s pivot — from FloC to Topics — shows that consumers have lobbying power and a voice they are not afraid to use. People understand that their data is valuable, and they are moving to preserve the value of their assets. With FLoC, Google was trying to ensure their continued dominance in the advertising space, and both consumers and the ad industry responded with a resounding no. With Topics, Google is admitting they need to do more to preserve and protect consumer privacy.”

Ultimately, third-party cookies are going away, so expect growing pains

“The current conversations around FLoC Topics highlight one thing: Third-party (aka advertising) cookies are dead,” said Coburn. “It is more important than ever for marketers to have and maintain quality first-party data. Consumers have to be able to trust the brands they interact with — from the ethics of the brand through to the way it handles personal information — and if a consumer doesn’t trust a brand, they aren’t going to let their data anywhere near it. That isn’t going to change, so the way big tech handles data has to.”

However, “Anything that is a departure from cookies is going to feel like a step down in targeting, I think,” Bacchini said. “We are going to have to adjust our thinking about what ‘accurate targeting’ actually means and come down off of the sense of strong or accurate targeting that we feel like we have had up until this point.”

Additional reporting by Kim Davis.


About The Author

1640838256 758 Inclusive marketing resources to strengthen your brands messaging

George Nguyen is an editor at Third Door Media, primarily covering organic and paid search, podcasting and e-commerce. His background is in journalism and content marketing. Prior to entering the industry, he worked as a radio personality, writer, podcast host and public school teacher.


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The Complete Guide to Becoming an Authentic Thought Leader

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The Complete Guide to Becoming an Authentic Thought Leader

Introduce your processes: If you’ve streamlined a particular process, share it. It could be the solution someone else is looking for.

Jump on trends and news: If there’s a hot topic or emerging trend, offer your unique perspective.

Share industry insights: Attended a webinar or podcast that offered valuable insights. Summarize the key takeaways and how they can be applied.

Share your successes: Write about strategies that have worked exceptionally well for you. Your audience will appreciate the proven advice. For example, I shared the process I used to help a former client rank for a keyword with over 2.2 million monthly searches.

Question outdated strategies: If you see a strategy that’s losing steam, suggest alternatives based on your experience and data.

5. Establish communication channels (How)

Once you know who your audience is and what they want to hear, the next step is figuring out how to reach them. Here’s how:

Choose the right platforms: You don’t need to have a presence on every social media platform. Pick two platforms where your audience hangs out and create content for that platform. For example, I’m active on LinkedIn and X because my target audience (SEOs, B2B SaaS, and marketers) is active on these platforms.

Repurpose content: Don’t limit yourself to just one type of content. Consider repurposing your content on Quora, Reddit, or even in webinars and podcasts. This increases your reach and reinforces your message.

Follow Your audience: Go where your audience goes. If they’re active on X, that’s where you should be posting. If they frequent industry webinars, consider becoming a guest on these webinars.

Daily vs. In-depth content: Balance is key. Use social media for daily tips and insights, and reserve your blog for more comprehensive guides and articles.

Network with influencers: Your audience is likely following other experts in the field. Engaging with these influencers puts your content in front of a like-minded audience. I try to spend 30 minutes to an hour daily engaging with content on X and LinkedIn. This is the best way to build a relationship so you’re not a complete stranger when you DM privately.

6. Think of thought leadership as part of your content marketing efforts

As with other content efforts, thought leadership doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It thrives when woven into a cohesive content marketing strategy. By aligning individual authority with your brand, you amplify the credibility of both.

Think of it as top-of-the-funnel content to:

  • Build awareness about your brand

  • Highlight the problems you solve

  • Demonstrate expertise by platforming experts within the company who deliver solutions

Consider the user journey. An individual enters at the top through a social media post, podcast, or blog post. Intrigued, they want to learn more about you and either search your name on Google or social media. If they like what they see, they might visit your website, and if the information fits their needs, they move from passive readers to active prospects in your sales pipeline.

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How to Increase Survey Completion Rate With 5 Top Tips

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How to Increase Survey Completion Rate With 5 Top Tips

Collecting high-quality data is crucial to making strategic observations about your customers. Researchers have to consider the best ways to design their surveys and then how to increase survey completion, because it makes the data more reliable.

→ Free Download: 5 Customer Survey Templates [Access Now]

I’m going to explain how survey completion plays into the reliability of data. Then, we’ll get into how to calculate your survey completion rate versus the number of questions you ask. Finally, I’ll offer some tips to help you increase survey completion rates.

My goal is to make your data-driven decisions more accurate and effective. And just for fun, I’ll use cats in the examples because mine won’t stop walking across my keyboard.

Why Measure Survey Completion

Let’s set the scene: We’re inside a laboratory with a group of cat researchers. They’re wearing little white coats and goggles — and they desperately want to know what other cats think of various fish.

They’ve written up a 10-question survey and invited 100 cats from all socioeconomic rungs — rough and hungry alley cats all the way up to the ones that thrice daily enjoy their Fancy Feast from a crystal dish.

Now, survey completion rates are measured with two metrics: response rate and completion rate. Combining those metrics determines what percentage, out of all 100 cats, finished the entire survey. If all 100 give their full report on how delicious fish is, you’d achieve 100% survey completion and know that your information is as accurate as possible.

But the truth is, nobody achieves 100% survey completion, not even golden retrievers.

With this in mind, here’s how it plays out:

  • Let’s say 10 cats never show up for the survey because they were sleeping.
  • Of the 90 cats that started the survey, only 25 got through a few questions. Then, they wandered off to knock over drinks.
  • Thus, 90 cats gave some level of response, and 65 completed the survey (90 – 25 = 65).
  • Unfortunately, those 25 cats who only partially completed the survey had important opinions — they like salmon way more than any other fish.

The cat researchers achieved 72% survey completion (65 divided by 90), but their survey will not reflect the 25% of cats — a full quarter! — that vastly prefer salmon. (The other 65 cats had no statistically significant preference, by the way. They just wanted to eat whatever fish they saw.)

Now, the Kitty Committee reviews the research and decides, well, if they like any old fish they see, then offer the least expensive ones so they get the highest profit margin.

CatCorp, their competitors, ran the same survey; however, they offered all 100 participants their own glass of water to knock over — with a fish inside, even!

Only 10 of their 100 cats started, but did not finish the survey. And the same 10 lazy cats from the other survey didn’t show up to this one, either.

So, there were 90 respondents and 80 completed surveys. CatCorp achieved an 88% completion rate (80 divided by 90), which recorded that most cats don’t care, but some really want salmon. CatCorp made salmon available and enjoyed higher profits than the Kitty Committee.

So you see, the higher your survey completion rates, the more reliable your data is. From there, you can make solid, data-driven decisions that are more accurate and effective. That’s the goal.

We measure the completion rates to be able to say, “Here’s how sure we can feel that this information is accurate.”

And if there’s a Maine Coon tycoon looking to invest, will they be more likely to do business with a cat food company whose decision-making metrics are 72% accurate or 88%? I suppose it could depend on who’s serving salmon.

While math was not my strongest subject in school, I had the great opportunity to take several college-level research and statistics classes, and the software we used did the math for us. That’s why I used 100 cats — to keep the math easy so we could focus on the importance of building reliable data.

Now, we’re going to talk equations and use more realistic numbers. Here’s the formula:

Completion rate equals the # of completed surveys divided by the # of survey respondents.

So, we need to take the number of completed surveys and divide that by the number of people who responded to at least one of your survey questions. Even just one question answered qualifies them as a respondent (versus nonrespondent, i.e., the 10 lazy cats who never show up).

Now, you’re running an email survey for, let’s say, Patton Avenue Pet Company. We’ll guess that the email list has 5,000 unique addresses to contact. You send out your survey to all of them.

Your analytics data reports that 3,000 people responded to one or more of your survey questions. Then, 1,200 of those respondents actually completed the entire survey.

3,000/5000 = 0.6 = 60% — that’s your pool of survey respondents who answered at least one question. That sounds pretty good! But some of them didn’t finish the survey. You need to know the percentage of people who completed the entire survey. So here we go:

Completion rate equals the # of completed surveys divided by the # of survey respondents.

Completion rate = (1,200/3,000) = 0.40 = 40%

Voila, 40% of your respondents did the entire survey.

Response Rate vs. Completion Rate

Okay, so we know why the completion rate matters and how we find the right number. But did you also hear the term response rate? They are completely different figures based on separate equations, and I’ll show them side by side to highlight the differences.

  • Completion Rate = # of Completed Surveys divided by # of Respondents
  • Response Rate = # of Respondents divided by Total # of surveys sent out

Here are examples using the same numbers from above:

Completion Rate = (1200/3,000) = 0.40 = 40%

Response Rate = (3,000/5000) = 0.60 = 60%

So, they are different figures that describe different things:

  • Completion rate: The percentage of your respondents that completed the entire survey. As a result, it indicates how sure we are that the information we have is accurate.
  • Response rate: The percentage of people who responded in any way to our survey questions.

The follow-up question is: How can we make this number as high as possible in order to be closer to a truer and more complete data set from the population we surveyed?

There’s more to learn about response rates and how to bump them up as high as you can, but we’re going to keep trucking with completion rates!

What’s a good survey completion rate?

That is a heavily loaded question. People in our industry have to say, “It depends,” far more than anybody wants to hear it, but it depends. Sorry about that.

There are lots of factors at play, such as what kind of survey you’re doing, what industry you’re doing it in, if it’s an internal or external survey, the population or sample size, the confidence level you’d like to hit, the margin of error you’re willing to accept, etc.

But you can’t really get a high completion rate unless you increase response rates first.

So instead of focusing on what’s a good completion rate, I think it’s more important to understand what makes a good response rate. Aim high enough, and survey completions should follow.

I checked in with the Qualtrics community and found this discussion about survey response rates:

“Just wondering what are the average response rates we see for online B2B CX surveys? […]

Current response rates: 6%–8%… We are looking at boosting the response rates but would first like to understand what is the average.”

The best answer came from a government service provider that works with businesses. The poster notes that their service is free to use, so they get very high response rates.

“I would say around 30–40% response rates to transactional surveys,” they write. “Our annual pulse survey usually sits closer to 12%. I think the type of survey and how long it has been since you rendered services is a huge factor.”

Since this conversation, “Delighted” (the Qualtrics blog) reported some fresher data:

survey completion rate vs number of questions new data, qualtrics data

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The takeaway here is that response rates vary widely depending on the channel you use to reach respondents. On the upper end, the Qualtrics blog reports that customers had 85% response rates for employee email NPS surveys and 33% for email NPS surveys.

A good response rate, the blog writes, “ranges between 5% and 30%. An excellent response rate is 50% or higher.”

This echoes reports from Customer Thermometer, which marks a response rate of 50% or higher as excellent. Response rates between 5%-30% are much more typical, the report notes. High response rates are driven by a strong motivation to complete the survey or a personal relationship between the brand and the customer.

If your business does little person-to-person contact, you’re out of luck. Customer Thermometer says you should expect responses on the lower end of the scale. The same goes for surveys distributed from unknown senders, which typically yield the lowest level of responses.

According to SurveyMonkey, surveys where the sender has no prior relationship have response rates of 20% to 30% on the high end.

Whatever numbers you do get, keep making those efforts to bring response rates up. That way, you have a better chance of increasing your survey completion rate. How, you ask?

Tips to Increase Survey Completion

If you want to boost survey completions among your customers, try the following tips.

1. Keep your survey brief.

We shouldn’t cram lots of questions into one survey, even if it’s tempting. Sure, it’d be nice to have more data points, but random people will probably not hunker down for 100 questions when we catch them during their half-hour lunch break.

Keep it short. Pare it down in any way you can.

Survey completion rate versus number of questions is a correlative relationship — the more questions you ask, the fewer people will answer them all. If you have the budget to pay the respondents, it’s a different story — to a degree.

“If you’re paying for survey responses, you’re more likely to get completions of a decently-sized survey. You’ll just want to avoid survey lengths that might tire, confuse, or frustrate the user. You’ll want to aim for quality over quantity,” says Pamela Bump, Head of Content Growth at HubSpot.

2. Give your customers an incentive.

For instance, if they’re cats, you could give them a glass of water with a fish inside.

Offer incentives that make sense for your target audience. If they feel like they are being rewarded for giving their time, they will have more motivation to complete the survey.

This can even accomplish two things at once — if you offer promo codes, discounts on products, or free shipping, it encourages them to shop with you again.

3. Keep it smooth and easy.

Keep your survey easy to read. Simplifying your questions has at least two benefits: People will understand the question better and give you the information you need, and people won’t get confused or frustrated and just leave the survey.

4. Know your customers and how to meet them where they are.

Here’s an anecdote about understanding your customers and learning how best to meet them where they are.

Early on in her role, Pamela Bump, HubSpot’s Head of Content Growth, conducted a survey of HubSpot Blog readers to learn more about their expertise levels, interests, challenges, and opportunities. Once published, she shared the survey with the blog’s email subscribers and a top reader list she had developed, aiming to receive 150+ responses.

“When the 20-question survey was getting a low response rate, I realized that blog readers were on the blog to read — not to give feedback. I removed questions that wouldn’t serve actionable insights. When I reshared a shorter, 10-question survey, it passed 200 responses in one week,” Bump shares.

Tip 5. Gamify your survey.

Make it fun! Brands have started turning surveys into eye candy with entertaining interfaces so they’re enjoyable to interact with.

Your respondents could unlock micro incentives as they answer more questions. You can word your questions in a fun and exciting way so it feels more like a BuzzFeed quiz. Someone saw the opportunity to make surveys into entertainment, and your imagination — well, and your budget — is the limit!

Your Turn to Boost Survey Completion Rates

Now, it’s time to start surveying. Remember to keep your user at the heart of the experience. Value your respondents’ time, and they’re more likely to give you compelling information. Creating short, fun-to-take surveys can also boost your completion rates.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2010 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Take back your ROI by owning your data

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Treasure Data 800x450

Treasure Data 800x450

Other brands can copy your style, tone and strategy — but they can’t copy your data.

Your data is your competitive advantage in an environment where enterprises are working to grab market share by designing can’t-miss, always-on customer experiences. Your marketing tech stack enables those experiences. 

Join ActionIQ and Snowplow to learn the value of composing your stack – decoupling the data collection and activation layers to drive more intelligent targeting.

Register and attend “Maximizing Marketing ROI With a Composable Stack: Separating Reality from Fallacy,” presented by Snowplow and ActionIQ.


Click here to view more MarTech webinars.


About the author

Cynthia RamsaranCynthia Ramsaran

Cynthia Ramsaran is director of custom content at Third Door Media, publishers of Search Engine Land and MarTech. A multi-channel storyteller with over two decades of editorial/content marketing experience, Cynthia’s expertise spans the marketing, technology, finance, manufacturing and gaming industries. She was a writer/producer for CNBC.com and produced thought leadership for KPMG. Cynthia hails from Queens, NY and earned her Bachelor’s and MBA from St. John’s University.

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