Increase of google/organic traffic
During the past few months, our systems have been undergoing upgrades to support the changes we’ve previously announced regarding Consent Mode. These upgrades may have resulted in changes in attribution, including an increase in Organic traffic, especially when consent type ad_user_data is denied via Consent Mode implementation or when the user visiting the website hasn't enabled their Google ads personalization setting and linking through Google Linked Services remarketing on Google Search and Shopping, Youtube, Google Play and Gmail.
Indeed, when ad_user_data is denied:
Ad measurement and personalization for online advertising is disabled, including use cases supported by user_id and user-provided data (hashed, consented user data).
Click-ID keyed conversion data export to Ads platform is limited, for example, bidding optimization in Google Ads based on GA4 conversions, when ad_user_data=denied.
Note that both ad_user_data and ad_personalization need to be granted to enable personalized advertising in Google advertising platforms. Please refer to this article for more information about tag behavior with consent mode.
As we previously communicated, our engineering teams took action on June 26th to mitigate the attribution impact for all traffic originating from Google Ads or Youtube Ads traffic (traffic originating whether directly from Google Ads or through SA360 and DV360), while respecting end-user consent. As a result of this update, customers may notice an increase in Google Ads traffic (source/medium=google/cpc) and a decrease in Organic traffic.
Although we strive to minimize the impact on attribution while respecting end-user consent, it is not always possible to retrieve attribution data for all channels and dimensions, such as the campaign dimension. This currently results in (organic) or (not set) campaign labels in GA4 for this slice of traffic. This occurs because some dimensions cannot be retrieved from Ads platforms integration due to the consent limitations outlined above. In the future, we expect to update the dimensions of the affected traffic and flag it as (unconsented traffic).
Currently, when consent type ad_user_data is denied via Consent Mode implementation or when the user visiting the website hasn't enabled their Google ads personalization setting and linking through Google Linked Services remarketing on Google Search and Shopping, Youtube, Google Play and Gmail:
With Google Ads linked and auto-tagging enabled, source/medium dimensions are overridden to google/cpc for Google Ads or Youtube Ads traffic (traffic originating whether directly from Google Ads or through SA360 and DV360)
The campaign dimension continues to be populated by the value sent through the utm_campaign parameter even with auto-tagging enabled. Therefore, it’s possible to use manual tagging alongside auto-tagging to override the campaign dimension.
You can share this information with customers who may have questions about it.