At this year’s ROMI conference, Alex Aychew, Head of Paid Marketing at AUTODOC, shared his experience working in different markets and discussed key differences between e-commerce marketing in the EU and Ukraine.

Strict GDPR rules in the EU are forcing businesses to reconsider their approaches to online marketing. Mandatory cookie banners and data collection restrictions lead to decreased advertising targeting effectiveness and complicate user behavior analysis. This, in turn, can negatively impact conversion and revenue. However, GDPR compliance has its advantages. By building trust in their brand through transparency in data collection and usage, companies can attract loyal customers and gain a competitive advantage in the market.

With the emergence of the Digital Markets Act, regulatory requirements for digital platforms are significantly increasing, limiting tracking capabilities. Marketers face a complex challenge:

• How to maintain advertising campaign effectiveness?
• How to ensure quality retargeting while complying with new rules?

The answer lies in transitioning to more advanced marketing technologies that allow data collection and analysis while complying with all GDPR requirements. Let’s consider two main approaches to conversion tracking.

The first approach, back-end tracking, involves transmitting user data directly from the server, bypassing the browser where data might be blocked by the user. This method is used to avoid ad-blocker impact and ensure more accurate analytics. Examples include Facebook’s Conversion API and Offline Conversions in Google and Bing. The method’s essence is that after a target action, the system automatically sends conversion data (such as click ID, email, phone number) to advertising accounts. This allows not only increasing data accuracy but also transmitting only confirmed conversions. Previously, this method was primarily used by large companies.

The importance of data for remarketing and email marketing is steadily growing. Declining effectiveness of traditional remarketing methods pushes companies to collect primary data and transition to more flexible attribution models, reminiscent of effectiveness evaluation approaches used before modern tracking tools emerged.

MMM is at peak popularity today, similar to how everyone strived to create perfect attribution models a few years ago. Although both approaches aim to evaluate marketing channel effectiveness, MMM differs in using aggregated data and doesn’t depend on individual user tracking, which is particularly relevant given increasing privacy requirements. However, implementing quality MMM is a complex and expensive process requiring deep knowledge of statistics and computational analytics. The market offers both commercial solutions costing over $100,000 per year and open alternatives that also require significant expertise.

Another indispensable tool of modern marketing. Their essence lies in comparing results between a test group exposed to certain marketing influences (such as advertising or promotions) with a control group that doesn’t experience such influence. This allows evaluating the additional effect of marketing activities, isolating it from overall sales dynamics. Before building complex MMM models, it’s recommended to start with such isolated tests. It’s worth noting that many advertising and measurement platforms (like AppsFlyer, Adjust, Singular) already offer tools for measuring incrementality. However, interpreting their results requires caution as these platforms may pursue their own interests.

This is a type of incremental test where part of the audience is completely excluded from advertising campaign influence. Conducting such tests across different geographic markets, for example in EU countries, is particularly valuable. Isolating separate geographic regions from advertising activity allows comparing metric dynamics and precisely determining marketing impact. Additionally, modern advertising platforms (Google, Meta, Bing) offer tools for modeling conversions, helping compensate for lost data due to tracking limitations. This not only improves data quality but also expands opportunities for advertising campaign optimization.

The Omnibus Directive, adopted in 2022, significantly changed market rules. This document, supplementing current European consumer protection legislation, introduces strict limitations on price and promotion manipulation. Companies can no longer create artificial discounts, hide additional costs, or use fake reviews or false guarantees. Violations of these rules carry penalties similar to GDPR, which can reach 4% of company turnover.

Currently, new regulatory requirements significantly impact companies’ marketing strategies. Now it’s necessary not only to ensure review authenticity but also to abandon geographic price discrimination. Companies must prove that all prices are correctly stated and discounts are real – specifically, they must indicate the exact final cost of goods or services, including all taxes and fees. Information about the initial price and lowest price over the last 30 days is mandatory. This requires companies to maintain detailed price change history, which can be challenging for those without appropriate infrastructure.

Practices such as using promo codes to hide real discounts, indicating artificial product scarcity, or manipulating recommended retail prices can lead to significant fines and reputational losses for businesses. Moreover, some countries (Belgium and France) have additional pricing restrictions, such as prohibiting selling products below cost, further complicating aggressive marketing campaigns.

“European consumers are very sensitive to marketing ethics issues. We encountered this when we received a complaint letter from the Swedish advertising ombudsman due to product image inconsistency in advertising. This case confirmed that consumers expect companies to take a responsible approach to advertising and are ready to defend their rights,” emphasizes Alex Aychew.

Analysis of brand query share in the auto parts category shows that in many countries, companies with developed offline store networks are leaders. This is explained by customers often finding it more convenient to purchase items like tires or batteries in offline stores where they can immediately receive the product or installation service. This trend affects online store sales structure and requires detailed analysis to understand why certain product groups show different results in different countries. This allows adjusting marketing strategy and optimizing sales structure.

The diversity of European economies creates significant differences in consumer behavior. Although Austria’s per capita income is higher than Spain’s, consumption volume in Spain can be significantly higher. These differences, along with other factors such as competition, market share, and delivery conditions, significantly impact average order value – in one country it can be three times higher than in another. Moreover, the wealthiest countries don’t always have the highest average order value. Consumers in lower-income countries might increase order size to qualify for free delivery.

When planning marketing campaigns in the European market, it’s necessary to consider the significant diversity of holidays in different countries. Unlike Ukraine, where the holiday calendar is more established, European countries have their unique traditions. This calendar, containing both official holidays and regional celebrations, requires careful analysis. That’s why planning promotions and advertising campaigns must be quite flexible.

Besides national holidays, intra-month seasonality significantly affects consumer activity. Analyzing data by ten-day periods within months shows significant differences in user activity and sales volumes between different countries. These differences are often related to salary payment dates. For example, in Scandinavia, peak consumer activity occurs at month-end, while in Germany and Spain, it’s at the beginning of the next month. Understanding these patterns allows optimizing advertising campaigns and promotions, directing resources to periods of highest consumer activity.

Multilingualism is also a characteristic feature of the European market. On one hand, it complicates marketing campaigns as it requires content adaptation for each language group. On the other hand, it opens new opportunities for audience expansion. Analysis of search queries in Switzerland and Scandinavian countries shows that ignoring languages other than the official one can lead to losing a significant portion of potential clients. Therefore, multilingualism is an important factor that must be considered when developing marketing strategies.

Success in the European market requires digital marketers to be highly flexible, adaptive, and deeply understanding of its characteristics. It’s important not only to comply with local legislation but also to create high-quality and relevant content, as well as use data for continuous optimization of marketing campaigns. This is not just a challenge but also a great opportunity for differentiation and creating competitive advantage.