Does the marketing industry negatively impact the planet?

As an industry, marketing is among the worst in terms of the negative impacts it has on the planet. Ranging from more obvious concerns like data farms emitting staggering emissions, to less obvious ones around consumerism.

The impacts, whilst varied, do exist and present several long-term issues when not properly managed.

What is corporate sustainability?

Corporate sustainability refers to the business strategies taken to ensure a business’s ethical impacts don’t negatively impact their staff, environment or economy. The key point of focus for most businesses is:

• Environmental
• Cultural
• Economic
• Social

Integrated practices help to protect and preserve these pillars of sustainability. The added benefits of introducing sustainable practices include:

Having a real-time positive impact within your immediate community. Reputationally, brands that demonstrate being sustainable can build trust with customers, stakeholders, investors, and staff.

Taking on a proactive approach contributes towards reducing risks. Whether that be preventing climate change from worsening, or forging the path to long-term economic growth, without compromising the environment.

An advantage of adopting sustainability efforts is the positive financial impacts it can have, both for cost-efficiency and for increasing revenue. For instance, environmental sustainability often leads to businesses becoming more efficient with resources, using only what is needed, and reducing operational costs.

What sustainability practices can marketers adopt?

There are several practices businesses can select from to improve their sustainability efforts.

Some of the smaller, easier-to-implement strategies include walk-to-work days, carpooling policies, and producing digital-first content. Whilst some of the higher-impact, more complex strategies include things like trading or recycling schemes or switching to eco-friendly packaging.

Some of the additional approaches to being a sustainable marketing brand are:

• Using eco-friendly web servers
• Carbon footprint tracking
• Going paperless
• Partnering with influencers or organisations with sustainable practices
• Transparency around efforts

Sustainability in marketing isn’t a trend or a box to tick. It is a responsibility. As an industry built on influence, marketers have a unique opportunity to shape not just consumer behaviour, but the future of our planet. Every campaign, platform, and partnership is a chance to make more conscious choices.

Earth Day serves as a reminder, but meaningful change happens in the everyday decisions we make as professionals. By embedding sustainability into our strategies, whether through small operational shifts or larger structural changes, we can reduce harm while building stronger, more trusted brands.

The question is not whether marketing can be sustainable. It is whether we are willing to lead that change.

 Our Sustainability initiatives

It’s important to us that our environmental impact is little to non-existent. Which is why we’ve taken a look at our operations and found ways to ensure our carbon emissions are offset.

Going Paperless: One of the key decisions we’ve taken is to go paperless. We’ve eliminated printing and digitised our documents and opted for cloud storage for instant access from any location.

We utilise notebooks for meetings, which we will offset future purchases of notebooks with sustainable contributions to ensure we’re carbon neutral.

Work From Home Days: Our hybrid working model enables employees to work from home, reducing commuting and significantly lowering our overall carbon footprint.

Digital Clean-up: We also take steps to reduce our digital environmental impact. On the last Friday of each month, we carry out a “digital clean-up,” removing unnecessary emails and large attachments to reduce server load. As digital storage contributes to carbon emissions, this regular practice helps keep our systems efficient and environmentally responsible.

What we’re working towards

We are continuing to evolve our sustainability strategy. One of the next steps is introducing a quarterly green tech audit.

This will involve regularly reviewing our website performance and software stack, enabling us to prioritise energy-efficient tools without compromising the quality of our work. Sustainability starts with small, consistent actions. By making more conscious choices every day, we can reduce our impact and contribute to a more responsible future for our industry and our planet.

WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system that is used by millions worldwide to deliver content on their websites to end users. In this article, we will talk all about how beginners can use WordPress to create and deliver content and what some of the key features are that make it stand out from its competitors.

What is a Content Management System

A Content Management System is a software that allows users to upload, edit, design and publish content for users to view online. It makes content delivery more accessible for beginners who don’t know how to write code or have technical delivery skills. CMS’, such as WordPress, are not only used by beginners, but also make more complex, normally time-consuming tasks more streamlined, even for experienced web designers and developers.

What Content can you create on WordPress?

WordPress is a versatile Content Management System that can be used to create almost any type of content. The two main types of content that you can produce on WordPress are:

Pages – These are the cornerstone of your website and are static content that is designed to form a permanent structure and give people information about your site.

Posts – These are not cornerstone pieces but are time-sensitive pieces of content that are ideal for content such as articles, blogs and latest news sections. These posts can be organised with categories and tags (taxonomies) to create distinct sections of the site for end users.

Users can also create other types of content outside of pages and posts, such as galleries or product pages, but often these require plug-ins as opposed to using basic WordPress features.

WordPress Key Features

WordPress has a number of key features that help aid users in content creation:

Plug-Ins: These are extensions you can add to your Content Management System that let you add additional functionality to your site without having to add code, saving time and making functionality more accessible. Because WordPress is open source (available to develop and create for free), there are thousands of plug-ins that can be used to add functionality for almost anything you can think of!

Themes: Are added to your site and determine the style, functionality, layout and colour scheme of your site. Unlike plug-ins, which are optional, themes are a necessary part of a WordPress site, and your site will be loaded with a basic WordPress theme, which you can change for additional functionality.

SEO: Search Engine Optimisation is the practice of improving your website’s visibility and rankings in search engines by maintaining and improving your website. WordPress supports SEO and aids in its implementation, including adding titles and headers to content, adding alt text to images for increased accessibility and more. SEO plug-ins are also available and compatible with WordPress sites that add additional SEO functionality, such as Yoast SEO.

Media Library – WordPress’s media library allows you to upload and store content in the backend of your website for ease of use, such as images and videos. The media library will also generate multiple different sizes of your images to make sure it is always serving them on the web in optimal sizes.

These are just some of the different types of content and key features you can use on WordPress to improve your site. Once using WordPress, you begin to realise that the possibilities truly are endless in terms of site building on the platform if you know how to use it correctly.

Google’s decision to phase out Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) in favour of AI Max marks a notable shift in search advertising. While it is being positioned as progress, marketing departments should approach this change with a degree of scrutiny. Increased automation can drive efficiency, but it also reduces visibility and control, raising important questions about transparency, performance, and long-term reliance on Google’s ecosystem.

A Strategic Shift Away from DSAs

Dynamic Search Ads have long offered a practical way to capture incremental demand, particularly where keyword coverage was incomplete. They were not perfect, but they gave marketers a relatively clear view of how queries mapped to content and performance.

With Google removing the ability to create new DSA campaigns and automatically migrating existing ones, advertisers are being steered toward a more consolidated, AI-led approach. This shift limits optionality and signals a move away from tools that allowed for more hands-on management.

AI Max: Greater Efficiency or Reduced Control?

AI Max promises a more integrated approach, combining keywords, creative, and landing pages into a single system that optimises in real time. In theory, this should improve efficiency and performance.

However, that efficiency comes with trade-offs. As automation increases, the ability to see exactly how decisions are made can diminish. For marketing leaders, this raises valid concerns about where budgets are being allocated, how messaging is being adapted, and what levers remain available for meaningful optimisation.

Preparing for an Opaquer Future

As the transition unfolds, marketing teams will need to balance adoption with caution. Success will still depend on strong inputs such as high-quality creative and landing pages, but oversight becomes more challenging when decision-making is abstracted into AI systems.

Rather than fully embracing the shift at face value, leaders should test incrementally, monitor performance closely, and push for as much transparency as possible. This is not just a change in tools. It is a shift in control.

Ultimately, AI Max may deliver results, but it also concentrates more power within Google’s platform. For marketing teams, the priority should be ensuring that efficiency gains do not come at the expense of clarity, accountability, and strategic flexibility.

What is a brand ambassador?

A brand ambassador is usually a long-term partnership between a brand and a celebrity/influencer, where they act as a representative of the company. Some of the responsibilities of a brand ambassador extend beyond representation; they may also need to:

• Promote the brand
• Create content for it
• Attend events hosted by said brand
• Develop a rapport with customers
• Often, ambassadors will wear the products or use services year-round as part of their contract

Brand ambassadors can be paid, though the approach will depend on the business. Some may pay per post, some brands may offer a fixed salary, while others may provide products or services at a reduced price or remove costs altogether.

What is a brand affiliate?

Brand affiliates are a short-term relationship between a brand and an influencer/celebrity, often collaborating for a campaign or the release of affiliate codes through partnerships. Some of the key tasks they may undertake during this period include:

• Sharing products on social media
• Creating promotional content
• Delivering measurable assets (on which they will measure performance)

Brand affiliates are often paid partnerships, where the engagement and sales made through their code earn them a percentage of the revenue.

What are the key differences between a brand ambassador and an affiliate?

The two roles can look very similar on the surface, but they’re quite different in their structure, motivation and relationship with a company.

The nature of the relationship is often quite different. A brand ambassador has a long-term, closer relationship with the brand. Reflecting values and identities aligned with branding. By contrast, an affiliate relationship is more transactional. They help promote products when it benefits them, without needing to be aligned with brand values.

A key difference between an affiliate and an ambassador is the payment structure. Affiliates are only paid by performance, usually earning a commission on each sale made with their tracked link or code. While ambassadors are often paid or are gifted free products and are also given exclusive access.

Expectations in terms of brand representation often differ quite drastically. Ambassadors take on a role as a face for a brand, often working on events, product launches and campaigns. They establish a relationship with both the brand and its customers.

The style and type of content created for a brand. There’s an overlap in terms of the content expectations placed on an affiliate or ambassador.  Ambassadors usually produced consent that is designed to feel authentic, with lifestyle-based content of the product being used. Affiliates are often associated with more sales-based types of content, whether that an ad, or softer types of content like their top 5 products.

Commitment levels vary for affiliates and ambassadors, but generally speaking, ambassadors are loyal to the brand, avoiding promoting any competitors. Whereas an affiliate doesn’t need to concern themselves with what brands they associate with.

Which is better for my brand: A brand ambassador or a brand affiliate?

Either role is inherently “better”; it depends on the goal. For brands, ambassadors are better for long-term brand building and trust, while affiliates are better for driving immediate sales and measurable results. For creators, ambassadorships offer stability and stronger partnerships, while affiliate roles offer flexibility and performance-based earning potential.

Each serves a different purpose depending on the goals of the brand or creator. Ultimately, the choice between a brand ambassador and an affiliate comes down to whether the priority is building long-term relationships and trust or driving short-term, measurable results.

Google’s March 2026 core update appears to have caused a much more dramatic reshuffle than the December 2025 update, with significantly heavier movement across top rankings and far less stability in the results. According to SE Ranking data reported by Search Engine Land, 79.5% of top-three URLs changed position, while 24.1% of pages that were in the top 10 dropped out of the top 100 entirely. That is a much sharper level of disruption than we saw after the December update.

For anyone working in digital marketing, this matters because core updates can quickly affect visibility, traffic and lead generation. They are not niche SEO events. They can alter how discoverable your brand is in Google almost overnight. We have already covered how these kinds of changes can ripple into newer search experiences too, particularly in our article on how AI Overviews are affected by Google core updates.

What is a Google core update?

A Google core update is a broad change to the main systems Google uses to rank content in search. Rather than targeting one specific tactic or technical issue, these updates affect how Google evaluates the overall quality, relevance and usefulness of pages across a huge range of queries.

That is what makes them so important. A core update is not just about whether a site has done something wrong. More often, it is Google reassessing which pages deserve to rank most prominently.

In practical terms, core updates matter because they can:

• shift rankings across entire sectors, not just individual websites
• reduce traffic even when nothing on your site has changed
• reward pages that Google now sees as more useful, relevant or trustworthy
• affect leads, enquiries and revenue, not just SEO reports

If you need a simpler backgrounder for clients or colleagues, this fits with the same pattern we discussed in our piece on Google’s November 2024 core update and what digital marketers need to know. We also looked at a completed rollout in our coverage of the June 2025 core update.

Why this update matters

The March 2026 update looks more severe than December because the search results were far less stable at every major ranking tier. In the top three positions, only 20.5% of URLs held their exact place, down from 33.1% in December. In the top 10, that dropped to just 9.3%, compared with 16.9% previously. This was not a light reordering of similar results. It was a deeper reset.

That matters commercially too. When pages drop out of the top 10 or disappear from the top 100, the consequences are rarely limited to reporting dashboards. The knock-on effect is often felt in:

• organic traffic
• lead volume
• enquiry quality
• overall revenue performance

For brands that rely heavily on organic search, a volatile core update can quickly become a much wider business issue.

We were already expecting something like this

What makes this update interesting is that the scale of disruption was large, but the fact that something bigger was coming did not feel completely unexpected.

In the days before official confirmation, many marketers were already seeing unusual ranking turbulence. Search results were moving more than normal, visibility looked unsettled across multiple sectors, and there was a sense that Google’s results were wobbling before the formal announcement arrived. That kind of pre-update instability often points to broader recalibration already taking place.

The logic is fairly straightforward. Google rarely goes from total calm to full-scale disruption with no signs at all. More often, there is a period where results begin to fluctuate, some sectors become noisier than others, and tools start showing elevated volatility before Google confirms a rollout.

That is why this March update felt less like a bolt from the blue and more like a formal confirmation of what the SERPs were already hinting at. In practice, this is one reason it is worth watching turbulence patterns closely instead of relying only on Google’s official announcements.

A useful way to think about it is this:

• isolated ranking drops can happen for all sorts of reasons
• wider volatility across sectors is more meaningful
• sustained turbulence often signals that Google is testing or preparing broader change
• by the time an update is confirmed, the effects may already be underway

Why the timing made everything feel even noisier

Another reason this rollout felt especially messy is that it came immediately after Google’s March 2026 spam update. That spam update finished unusually quickly, in less than a day, and the core update began just after it. The overlap makes attribution more difficult because some of the disruption may have been amplified by the proximity of both changes.

We covered that separately in our article on Google’s March 2026 spam update, but the key point here is that when two major Google systems shift close together, the search landscape can look more chaotic than usual. That does not always mean every ranking swing should be taken at face value in the moment. It often makes more sense to step back and watch the wider direction of travel once the dust settles.

What marketers should take from this

For marketers, the biggest takeaway is that core updates are not abstract SEO events happening in the background. They shape who gets seen, who loses visibility and which sites Google currently trusts to answer users’ questions.

This also reinforces the importance of building content that offers real value, not just surface-level optimisation. Stronger brands, clearer expertise, original insight and more useful pages are generally better placed to weather this kind of turbulence. That broader shift also connects to what we explored in our piece on keyword research and search intent, because ranking well is no longer just about matching terms. It is increasingly about being the result Google believes best satisfies the intent behind the search.

There is also a wider search context to keep in mind. Google’s search experience is changing beyond the traditional blue links, which is why articles like our look at Google’s move towards AI Mode matter too.

For marketers, the practical takeaway is to focus on:

• genuinely useful content
• stronger signals of expertise and trust
• clearer alignment with search intent
• a broader view of visibility beyond simple rankings

Final thought

The March 2026 core update looks more volatile than December’s, but the early signs of turbulence suggested Google was already preparing to make bigger changes. In that sense, the update was dramatic, but not entirely surprising.

For digital marketers, the lesson is simple. Pay attention when the SERPs start to feel unusually unstable. Those moments often tell you that Google is preparing to make a broader judgement about what deserves to rank, and by the time the official announcement lands, that process may already be well underway.

I can also make this a bit more punchy and blog-like, with stronger subheadings and a slightly more opinionated tone.

In my previous blog on guerrilla marketing, I explored how brands use surprise, disruption and creativity to cut through the noise. But in 2026, guerrilla marketing’s not just about being unconventional; it’s about creating unforgettable, shareable, and sometimes controversial campaigns.

Guerrilla marketing is engineered to produce unexpected, high-impact interactions that spark emotional responses and people to share with word-of-mouth.

The Evolution of Guerrilla Marketing

Guerrilla marketing strategies continue to evolve as audiences grow and new campaigns enter the landscape. Increasingly, we see brands hijacking culture, leveraging trending topics, events, or conversations to tap into existing engagement.

In many cases, brands are now embracing experiential storytelling. Rather than passively consuming a campaign, audiences are invited into it and become part of the narrative itself. This creates more memorable moments and, ultimately, stronger engagement.

Another emerging approach is controversy-led virality, built on the idea that attention, whether positive or negative, can fuel visibility.

Two recent campaigns show just how far brands are willing to go…

BuzzBallz & The Pink Lemonsqueezy Ring

BuzzBallz tapped into experiential storytelling by positioning its product as an engagement ring. This immediately introduces a familiar narrative, the proposal, and invites audiences to engage with it.

Viewers are prompted to ask:

Would you take this seriously? Would you say yes?

This kind of campaign draws people in, sparking online debate and discussion. It is a clever way to generate attention and brand awareness without relying solely on the product itself.

The Drama: When Guerrilla Backfires

However, guerrilla marketing does not always land as intended.

The recent film The Drama offers an example of where things can go wrong. For those familiar with the film, its underlying themes create a stark contrast with its marketing.

The campaign’s pop-up chapel activation in Las Vegas presented a tone that felt misaligned with the film’s subject matter. While the intention may have been to create intrigue and surprise, the mismatch led to criticism.

Guerrilla marketing thrives on tension, but when that tension crosses ethical or cultural lines, it can quickly turn into backlash.

The New Rules of Guerrilla Marketing

The rules are constantly changing with guerrilla marketing, but the following most certainly apply:

1. Shareability > Visibility

If it’s not TikTok/LinkedIn worthy, it’s not guerrilla anymore. Social media is an incubator for conversation and debate; if it can’t thrive in this environment, it simply won’t work.

2. Emotion is the currency

BuzzBallz → humour + absurdity

The Drama → shock + discomfort

It’s about achieving some sort of emotional response from the audience. A response is active engagement, which is a super-effective promotion tool.

3. Risk is built in

Guerrilla campaigns are inherently unpredictable. Without careful consideration, they can easily miss the mark.

What marketers can learn

It is no longer enough to simply “be different”. Brands need to be strategically different.

The most effective campaigns are built for:

• participation
• sharing
• conversation
•  

Ultimately, the key question is:

Will this spark the right kind of attention?

Google has finished rolling out its latest March core update, following the latest spam update that took place across March 23-24th. The update started on March 27th and has just finished rolling out on the 8th April which means SEOs can now compare pre- and post-update organic performance to see how their sites have been affected.

What this means for Marketers

As with any core update, rankings are likely to change for better or for worse. If your rankings have dipped, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have violated one of Google’s policies, but they are constantly assessing content during the updates to see how appropriate it is for the end user. If your content has dropped in rankings and doesn’t regain positions within the next few weeks, looking at potentially enhancing these pages that have dropped off would be the correct approach moving forward.

Some in the SEO community have noted that the latest core update has not been as powerful as some recent core updates, such as the December 2025 core update, meaning volatile rankings are less likely. Keeping an eye on how your websites perform post-update for any positive or negative bounces is still key.

AsGlen Gabe writes for SERoundtable, “The March 2026 broad core update was a weird one. I’ve been documenting what I’ve been seeing via my “Core Update Notes” on X, and it just didn’t seem as powerful as some previous broad core updates. For example, the December 2025 broad core update was huge. We saw the update land quickly, and it was extremely powerful. The March 2026 broad core update didn’t land quickly and just didn’t seem to be as powerful. Sure, there were definitely sites that saw big surges or drops, but overall, the update seemed less powerful.”

Google didn’t release much information around the latest update, such as any goals the update was hoping to achieve, which can normally be found on their update companion blog. This also leads us to believe that the March Core Update was not as robust as some previous updates.

Google did announce in December that there would be smaller core updates rolling out in the coming year, so the latest March core update is what they were referring to.

Futureproofing against Core Updates

As with any core update, looking ahead into the future to make sure your rankings aren’t affected, there are several steps you can take to combat any large ranking volatility.

Making sure your content is up to date and thorough is one of the most important factors. If your content is thin and new sites are emerging with more robust and informational content, your rankings are likely to slip when a new update rolls around.

Also, make sure you aren’t breaking any of Google’s policies, which can cause extreme damage to Google rankings. Google has several policy guideline documents which take you through how to create good, ethical content. One of the latest policies that has been talked about widely in the SEO community is Google punishing sites that overly rely on AI for content writing, treating it as spam.

Following Google’s policies while creating detailed, accurate content will allow you to future-proof yourself from any core updates coming up.

In the ever-evolving world of paid media, one of the biggest challenges for advertisers has been separating assumption from actual impact. For years, recommendations within Google Ads have promised improved performance but proving their real value has often been unclear. That’s now changing.

With the introduction of the new Results tab in Google Ads, marketers finally have access to tangible, post-implementation performance data. From an agency perspective, this is a meaningful shift toward accountability, smarter optimisation, and better client outcomes.

Moving Beyond Recommendations to Real Results

Historically, Google Ads recommendations, particularly around bids and budgets, have relied heavily on projected outcomes. While useful, these projections didn’t always translate into measurable business gains.

The new Results tab changes that by showing what actually happens after a recommendation is applied. Google evaluates campaign performance roughly one-week post-change and compares it to an estimated baseline of what would have happened without intervention.

This means advertisers can now see incremental improvements, such as additional conversions driven specifically by a budget increase or bidding adjustment, bringing much-needed clarity to decision-making.

A Smarter Way to Evaluate Automation

Automation in Google Ads has grown rapidly, but trust has lagged behind. Many brands remain cautious about blindly applying recommendations, and rightly so.

The Results tab helps bridge this gap by validating, or challenging, Google’s automated suggestions with real data. Instead of relying on optimisation scores or forecasts alone, marketers can now assess whether recommendations genuinely deliver value.

For digital marketing agencies, this creates an opportunity to apply a more strategic lens, using platform insights as a guide rather than a rulebook.

What This Means for Advertisers and Agencies

This update is more than just a feature release. It represents a shift in how performance should be measured and communicated.

Agencies can now demonstrate clearer ROI to clients, backed by platform-level attribution of changes. It also enables more informed testing, allowing teams to double down on what works and quickly discard what doesn’t.

Ultimately, the Results tab reinforces a core principle we stand by data-driven decisions should be based on outcomes, not assumptions. As Google continues to push automation, tools like this will be critical in ensuring transparency remains at the heart of paid media strategy.

A recent development in paid search has raised eyebrows across the digital marketing industry. Reports show that Google Ads is displaying identical website statistics across multiple advertisers, even when those ads link to entirely different businesses.

These statistics, typically used as trust signals, are designed to help users quickly evaluate credibility and choose between competing ads. However, when the same numbers appear across multiple listings, that sense of differentiation disappears. For marketers, this introduces a new layer of uncertainty in an already competitive environment.

Why This Matters for Marketers

Trust signals play a subtle but powerful role in influencing click behaviour. Users often rely on quick cues like ratings, site data, or performance indicators to decide which ad feels most credible. When those signals appear duplicated, they risk becoming meaningless or worse, misleading.

This has direct implications for performance. If users begin to question the reliability of what they see, click-through rates could decline, and brands may struggle to stand out. In a space where split-second decisions matter, even small inconsistencies can erode confidence and reduce campaign effectiveness.

What’s Causing the Issue?

At this stage, there’s no official explanation from Google. The anomaly could be the result of a temporary bug, a testing phase, or a change in how automated ad assets are generated and displayed.

Another possibility is that automation, now deeply embedded in Google Ads is pulling or standardising data in ways that unintentionally create duplication. Regardless of the cause, the lack of clarity leaves advertisers in a difficult position, forced to interpret platform behaviour without clear guidance.

What Advertisers Should Do Next

While there’s no immediate fix, marketers should focus on what they can control. Regularly reviewing live search results, not just dashboard data, is now essential. Monitoring how ads appear in the wild can help identify inconsistencies early.

More importantly, brands should double down on strong messaging, clear value propositions, and high-quality landing pages. If platform-generated trust signals become unreliable, your core marketing fundamentals need to carry more weight.

The takeaway is clear: as automation increases, so does the need for oversight. In today’s search landscape, success isn’t just about optimising campaigns – it’s about validating what users see.

Google Analytics 4 is the most dominant analytics platform for website users, with over 32 million live websites currently using the platform and over 78% of websites that report using traffic analysis tools. Over the years, as cookie restrictions and privacy consent have become more stringent, GA4 has faced serious issues with data collection, namely from data being withheld due to a lack of user consent. Having access to accurate data is crucial for website users to be able to make informed decisions on how to improve their site. In this article, we’ll discuss how GA4 have tried to combat incomplete data to improve user data and alternative platforms you can use.

How have GA4 Handled Missing Data?

Google has started to use AI to model how users likely behave on your site with data such as user counts, conversions, and more, all being projected based on similar data from users who have given cookie consent. Estimates suggest this can recover a significant portion of lost data, but there is no way to know how accurate current datasets are. When reporting on conversions, user counts and sessions to clients, data needs to be accurate.

For large data sets, GA4 also uses data sampling. This is where GA4 takes only a small sample of the data before extrapolating it to gain results. This is problematic because even though it makes data more scalable, once again, precision is being lost in data reporting.

Why is Precision so Important in Data Reporting

While it may not seem completely detrimental for GA4 ot be estimating data, if the data still gives you a fairly accurate picture of how your business is performing, there are still limitations to how you can improve performance with estimated as opposed to accurate data.

• Small Margins. If you’re working with tight margins and your data only changes incrementally, estimates may wipe out these margins altogether, or you may not feel you can rely on them enough as solid data to make decisions that can positively impact your business.
• Budget Allocation. There are different ways in which to spend the budget to maximise performance. If you’re relying on imprecise data to determine which channels are your strongest performing, then you could be allocating budget to the wrong areas of your site.
• Forecasting Implication: In understanding how your site is going to perform in the future, you can often use your historical data as a benchmark, for example, understanding peak times of the year when your site is busy and not. If the data is projected, then these forecasts can often be misguided, leading to disappointment.

What alternatives are available?

Here at Intelligency, we have been using Matomo as an alternative to GA4 to report on client data. Matomo describes itself as “a web & app analytics for teams who demand accuracy.” Matomo is still GDPR compliant, but puts data ownership in your hands as opposed to giving it to Google. Matomo allows for increased accuracy in data reporting by only reporting on data that it directly observes and using minimal modelling compared to Google’s model-heavy product, leading to better insights and outcomes.