How to prevent marketing platforms from deleting your data
As a CMO, marketer, or consultant, you analyze data daily to optimize your campaigns. But did you know that many advertising and analytics platforms automatically delete collected data after a certain period? This article explains how you can prevent data loss.
Data loss may not seem like an immediate problem, but it can significantly impact long-term analyses such as year-over-year comparisons and complex methods like marketing mix modeling. How do you solve this? By storing your data in a data warehouse. This article examines the importance of this and guides how to set it up effectively using Google Cloud Platform and BigQuery.
The expiration date of your data
Many marketing platforms have limited retention periods for the data they collect. Here are some examples of how long different platforms retain your data:
- Google Analytics 4 (GA4): Data is available in the interface for 14 months by default. By linking to BigQuery, you can store data indefinitely from the moment of connection. Data from before the connection will be lost.
- Google Search Console: Data is retained for up to 16 months.
- Google Ads: Retains data for up to 11 years, an exception compared to other platforms.
- Facebook Ads: Retains data for 24 to 37 months, depending on the type of data. Some areas have even shorter retention periods.
- Microsoft Ads: Retains data for 1 to 36 months, depending on the report type.
- Snapchat Ads: Aggregated data is available for up to 24 months.
- TikTok Ads: Retains data for only 1 year.
These varying retention periods make it challenging to conduct consistent and accurate multi-year analyses. For complex analyses like marketing mix modeling, which require a minimum of four to five years of data, the short retention periods of many platforms pose a significant challenge.
The problem with limited data retention
The limited time data is accessible directly affects the quality of your analyses. Imagine wanting to perform a year-over-year analysis to identify seasonal trends or forecast performance. If you rely on the limited storage durations of platforms, you may miss critical insights needed for long-term campaign optimization.
Moreover, for advanced techniques like marketing mix modeling, which analyze the impact of various marketing channels on overall business performance, you need at least four to five years of data. Without this historical data, you lose the ability to make effective predictions and develop sound future marketing strategies.
The solution: your data warehouse
The solution is simple: take ownership of your data by storing it in a data warehouse. A great option is the Google Cloud Platform combined with BigQuery. These tools allow you to store, manage, and retain your data indefinitely in one centralized location. You have full control over how long your data is retained and can use it for in-depth analyses and reporting.
For instance, by linking Google Analytics 4 to BigQuery, you can export and store all raw data from that point onward, preventing the loss of valuable historical data. Additionally, you can store data from other platforms like Facebook Ads, TikTok, or Microsoft Ads and integrate it into the same warehouse.
The benefits of a data warehouse
- Long-term retention: No longer bound by the retention limits of individual platforms. You decide how long to keep your data, which is essential for long-term analyses and marketing mix modeling.
- Deeper analyses: By storing raw, unaggregated data, you retain access to all details that would otherwise be lost due to platform limitations. This enables extensive analyses like cohort studies and multi-year customer behavior research.
- Integration and dashboards: Combine data from various sources and visualize it in real-time dashboards, providing a comprehensive view of your marketing performance across all channels.
- Marketing mix modeling: Successful marketing mix modeling requires at least four to five years of data. With your data warehouse, you’re assured of sufficient historical data for thorough analyses and accurate measurements of marketing channel effectiveness.
How to get started with a data warehouse?
Our advice: start by setting up a data warehouse in Google Cloud Platform and connecting your marketing platforms to BigQuery. By taking ownership of your data, you ensure continuity in your analyses and gain the ability to make better-informed strategic decisions. Once your data is in BigQuery, you can combine, analyze, and visualize it without being constrained by the time limits of various platforms.
Our BigQuery experts are happy to assist you.
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