The Strategic Shift in Analytics: Piwik Pro's Approach to Data and Privacy

The Strategic Shift in Analytics: Piwik Pro’s Approach to Data and Privacy

How Piwik Pro is Challenging Google’s Dominance

The Future of Analytics: How Piwik Pro is Challenging Google’s Dominance

We’re joined by a very special guest, Mateusz Krempa, COO of Piwik Pro. Of course, we are talking about website analytics and tackling the seismic shifts happening in the analytics industry, specifically the challenges and opportunities stemming from Google’s latest “forced” changes and upgrades.

As marketers grapple with the new landscape shaped by Google Analytics 4 and the (sometime, someday) depreciation of third-party cookies, Mateusz brings a fresh perspective from Piwik Pro, a company that’s made significant strides in competing with tech giants and offering privacy-focused analytics solutions. We’ll discuss the complexities of adapting to GA 4, the impact of privacy regulations like HIPAA, and how Piwik Pro’s transition to a proprietary platform and its innovative freemium model are making waves in the industry.

Whether you’re a data specialist, a marketer, or just someone interested in the intersection of technology and privacy, this episode will provide you with insights into navigating these changes strategically and effectively. So grab a cup of coffee, and let’s start the conversation.

Show Outline:

1. Introduction to Digital Marketing Challenges

Impact of Google’s new changes on the need for data specialists.
Difficulty with Google’s GA4 for marketers.
The diversification of the market despite Google’s dominance.

2. The Debate Over Analytics Tools

The transition to GA 4 and its challenges.
Exploring alternatives to Google’s analytics tools.
Independent thinking in choosing analytics solutions.

3. Privacy and Data Processing in Marketing

The impact of third-party cookies’ depreciation.
HIPAA interpretation and its effect on healthcare data.
Privacy regulations in European and US markets.

4. Piwik PRO’s Business Model and Market Strategy

Transition from an open source to a proprietary platform.
Introduction and success of the freemium model.
Competition with Google Analytics and the focus on privacy.
Benefits of the merger with Cookie Information.

5. Analytic Strategies and Industry Trends

Criticism of Google’s premium model and lack of training for marketers.
The rising trend of minimalistic approaches to data.
Creating setups from scratch for better regulation compliance.

6. Geographic Influence on Technology and Innovation

Factors contributing to the rise of tech innovation in Poland and Eastern Europe.
Discussion on capital availability, education levels, and work ethics.

7. Impact of Regulations on Analytics and Data Usage

Discussion on GDPR and internal regulations in sensitive industries.
Companies’ need to rethink data usage due to changing regulations.

8. The Shift Towards Alternative Analytics Solutions

Transition experiences from universal analytics to Piwik PRO and GA 4.
Server-side tracking and AI-powered features as emerging trends.
Strategic thinking in analytics.

Show Notes:

Piwik PRO Core plan (freemium)

Build Your Analytics Strategy (course)

Catching up with Piwik Pro – Transcript

[00:00:00] Mateusz: Well, why do we even need them in the first place? Could we go minimalist with this data? Maybe we could. Maybe we should go to basics and start recreating our setup. Using new vendor or old vendor is irrelevant, because with Sunset you have to read everything for either way. But the recreate word is a problem.

[00:00:25] Mateusz: I feel like we should stop recreating stuff. We should create. This from scratch because it may be, we may end up with much better setup, with much safer setup, which setup that will make all of this bulletproof when it comes to this regulation.

[00:00:43] Voice Over: Welcome to Endless Coffee Cup, a regular discussion of marketing, news, culture, and media for our complex digital lifestyle.

[00:00:51] Voice Over: Join matt bailey as he engages in conversation to find insights beyond the latest headlines and deeper understanding for those involved in marketing Grab a cup of coffee Have a seat and thanks for joining.

[00:01:03] Matt: Well, hello and welcome dear listener to another episode of the endless coffee cup Bringing you the best in digital marketing, education, and hearing from experts all over the world.

[00:01:14] Matt: And to continue that, I am excited because finally we have someone from Piwik Pro and you’ve probably heard me talk about this in previous episodes, especially when it comes to analytics and, you know, Everyone’s asking questions about what they should be doing, what they should be using, especially with the changes going on with Google and everyone knows I’m not a huge Google fan.

[00:01:38] Matt: So it is with great pleasure today that we have Mateusz Krempa from Piwik Pro. He is the COO of Piwik Pro and here to talk to us a little bit about their background, what they’re doing, and I hope that you will find this just as exciting as me, if you’re a data geek as well, Mateusz, how are you doing today?

[00:01:58] Mateusz: Very good. Thank you, Matt. Thank you for having me. I’m really happy to be here.

[00:02:03] Matt: Oh, great. Could you give me just a little bit of background? I know you’ve been at Piwik Pro for a number of years. Give me a little bit about yourself, your role there, and also, what is it that drew you to analytics?

[00:02:17] Mateusz: All right.

[00:02:18] Mateusz: So, as you’ve mentioned, I’m the Chief Operating Officer at Piwik Pro. I’ve been with the company for almost seven years. I’m responsible for all the customer facing teams. And it’s actually interesting part of my journey within the company because I started as a product manager, but I quickly started to create new teams that were responsible for that part of the business.

[00:02:45] Mateusz: So customer experience. Now, everything I’ve built, I’m responsible for. So. Started with the product, but ended in a customer experience. What drew me to the analytics? That was the second question. It wasn’t so much as analytics, which I find now very interesting, but I wasn’t very much aware of at the beginning of my career, what drew me and what I found interesting was the dynamics, the idea behind Piwik Pro a company.

[00:03:19] Mateusz: In Poland, it was quite an innovative. Company facing the giant, the monopolists of the market. And when you hear the story of rather small company from Poland, uh, challenging the giant, like Google, it has

[00:03:37] Matt: to be interesting for the company. Absolutely. I can only imagine the past few years have been just.

[00:03:45] Matt: You know, it’s just a roller coaster ride. I mean, it’s with Google’s, I mean, that created an, a whole new market that what hasn’t been there for many years. So it’s exciting to finally see some competition in the analytics industry. And, you know, I’ll kind of give you my journey a little bit later, but I can only imagine the past few years have just been.

[00:04:06] Matt: Incredibly exciting.

[00:04:07] Mateusz: Yes. Like the market was there. It was mostly monopolized about 83 or 87%, depending on data sources of public websites were tracked with Google analytics for us, the general team and that we faced, but there was still an enterprise. It’s a market of people like yourself who were not that big of a fans of Google Stack, were not that big of fans of being locked into a single vendor and committing all your resources into this one company that, quite frankly, shift if they want that.

[00:04:51] Mateusz: This year as well for Google Analytics 360 users will be the conclusion sunset project for them. So the market was there. We started as a privacy oriented solution that was our key competitive advantage that was built around average to data collection, our approach to hosting as well. Because we started with an on premises solutions and then we’ve added cloud to that.

[00:05:25] Mateusz: So the privacy was always part of our DNA, but over the years. It changed because the market has changed as well, and I think everyone has noticed. The market was always there, only now it’s because of all these black swans that happened unexpectedly, like Universal Analytics sunset, it’s, the opportunity is much, much bigger.

[00:05:49] Mateusz: And I think not only for us, but also for smaller solutions, we’ve seen the rise of this, I call it in the analytics. That’s are very basic, but address a set of needs that is enough for most of the companies. And, you know, we’ve noticed the rise of them. They have some limitations, but it’s interesting to see that

[00:06:16] Matt: used to be.

[00:06:17] Matt: Absolutely. I think it was probably, I want to say probably 2021, 2022, you know, when We started seeing more and more where Google was going to go. I sat down and said, well, I’m going to try as many as I can find. And, you know, I probably slowed my site down to a crawl by putting all these scripts on to track, but I had a list of things that I wanted.

[00:06:41] Matt: You know, these were, you know, four or five things that were absolutes that I want to see this in the reports. This is what I want to track. And as you said, going through, and there were some, they’re just very simple. They’re just reporting mechanisms. Others allowed you to do a little more analysis. The one thing that I absolutely love that I was looking for is I wanted to be able to track revenue per channel.

[00:07:02] Matt: That for me was, you know, I had to have that because it was such an important measurement before, and I absolutely love that. When I’m doing an analysis and when I’m seeing the results of different campaigns. So the privacy aspect though, is one that is very fascinating. And I find that, especially here in the U S I have to explain that a lot more.

[00:07:27] Matt: There is definitely some, you know, I can get the interest of people, but I have to explain why that’s so important. So I’d love to hear from you. Number one. That privacy aspect, you know, Piwik Pro was designed ground up with that privacy and why is that so important? I’d love to hear that from your story.

[00:07:50] Mateusz: Yeah, we started to notice that even before major. Legislations came into a major legislation that impacted the landscape. I mean, GDPR in Europe most of even before that there were some companies that were not so much limited by public regulations, but they were limited by internal regulations. There are internal security departments, privacy departments that existed.

[00:08:20] Mateusz: It was a. novelty of a sort. Now it’s more part of a mainstream, but it used to be a novelty. So these companies had these regulations. They anticipated that this is a risk of PR risk and also existential risk for some companies that are very sensitive data. So if you would like to discuss the privacy aspect with anybody, we start with the healthcare industry and these companies, because HIPAA is now.

[00:08:53] Mateusz: A huge factor, even in our growth dynamics, you see a lot of companies from the United States from sector, and it’s a huge sector discuss it in terms of value health care to the GDP of Germany. So it’s quite a bit of potential. And this industry, this vertical in the United States was disrupted, disrupted And the HIPAA interpretation, and that was published, I think, early 2023 or late 2022.

[00:09:30] Mateusz: Depending where, which data source you, you consider to be the main one. But 20, throughout 2023, we’ve observed like a huge inflow of leads in the healthcare industry. And this is a proof that this. Sort of decisions from the public sector, which I consider good decisions, not only because it impacts our business in a positive way, but it impacts the civility of data processing, the general approach and respect to people, people, freedom.

[00:10:06] Mateusz: And because that’s actually, you know, because most of these things. You are not aware of, and there are these social experiments where people are faced with, you know, some experts from the internet that show them what they can tell them about, you know, their private lives based on the data that they, that is collected online.

[00:10:30] Mateusz: And they are terrified all of a sudden, and I think this level of awareness is necessary, even if general public does not consider it important because it is disrupting, right? All these pop ups, consents, uh, you know, the ads are less specific. You are targeted with things that you are not really interested in.

[00:10:54] Mateusz: So it makes, seemingly it makes all the experience a necessity, because we cannot deal with individuals data like it’s the Wild West. I think we are more civilized than that, at this point.

[00:11:11] Matt: I, I like that description. Absolutely. Yeah. I, we’ve talked numerous times on the podcast, just that trade off of they tell us that the data collection is necessary to give us targeted ads.

[00:11:23] Matt: But I always like to ask people, do you feel like the ads are relevant to you? And the vast majority of time? No, they don’t. They feel the ads. Aren’t relevant, aren’t targeted, and so that trade off doesn’t work, and it’s not necessary for a free and open web, so it’s been very refreshing to be able to bring in Piwik Pro into the conversation and show the difference here, and as you, you know, as you mentioned, getting out of the stack so that one company has access to all of this information, it’s This has been, I think, a wonderful time.

[00:11:59] Matt: I can only think of the time prior to Google analytics when there were a number of solutions out there and you could pick and choose. And now I feel like we’re having a, you know, the market is coming back and really getting some good competition in there. I have to hand it to you. Your PR campaign, I’m going to call it a PR campaign of we are no longer a Google analytics alternative was genius.

[00:12:25] Matt: I absolutely, I love seeing that campaign and everything everywhere. And by the way, uh, I do have to hand it to you, your PR team, I am wearing the. They got it to me just in time for this, uh, recording here. So great work there, but I have to ask, I mean, is there, what’s the feeling there in the company? I can only imagine what it would be to be working there day after day.

[00:12:50] Matt: What’s it feel like to be taking on the giant?

[00:12:53] Mateusz: It’s good response. Well, a little bit of history. The company where we started, so we started as a service company that was associated with an open source solution. It was called P Week. Now it’s called Matom where it has been rebranded. So first we started to contribute to this project.

[00:13:15] Mateusz: Our founder started to contribute and then our developers as well. But at some point we decided that an additional value. It’s needed based on the requests from customers. So we developed an independent manager, basic suite of products. Then after some time, we started to shift fully towards a proprietary platform, mainly because most of our customers had a huge problem, had huge problems with processing data.

[00:13:44] Mateusz: They were collecting large quantities. For the open source solution to process them and serve as reports in the user interface, it took a lot of effort and space to process the report. So, naturally, we started to look for optimal solutions to these problems, and that’s how I As in the company, we were fully proprietary and it’s actually an interesting journey because we had to transition from, um, a portfolio of customers that were using this open source component.

[00:14:22] Mateusz: To the Piwik pro analytics suite. So as a business, this was an amazing journey for us and for our customers as well, because, you know, you face this opposition because with any change comes the opposition and then. Once they moved, once they migrated to the new platform, they were amazed, with simple things at first, with, you know, the processing time, with the user interface that was fresh, the ways they could extract their data, that was amazing.

[00:14:57] Mateusz: Not available for them before. So, uh, that itself was a hugely interesting factor, uh, to the business. And so then in 2022, we’ve released the freemium model. So we didn’t want to limit ourselves only to the enterprise, medium enterprises and medium level customers. We wanted to go broader because for companies like us, brand recognition means a lot.

[00:15:27] Mateusz: So we had finally product that we felt was on par with Google analytics. When it comes to features, obviously there were some differences, but when it comes to the key components and key use cases, we felt that we are ready to say that we are on par with Google, with the universal analytics. And because Google Analytics 4 is a kind of different story.

[00:15:54] Mateusz: So with release of freemium, we gain thousands of customers that are not paying us anything, but they are spreading good word. Some of the companies are testing our solution for freemium and then coming to us to purchase enterprise version. What’s interesting to state is that the freemium version is equivalent to the enterprise with the exception of data retention.

[00:16:21] Mateusz: It’s the same product, so we don’t have any limitations like, you know, you can click on the one report per day and then, you know, then you have to go enterprise. That’s not a gimmick. That’s a truly free product simply because we make quite a bit of money, quite a bit of money from the enterprise. So that premium part is for us to build rep awareness and it did amazing.

[00:16:47] Mateusz: All right. We have over 10, 000 users right now, and less than 10 percent of that is, uh, we can say that over 90 percent of our customers are not paying us the time.

[00:17:07] Matt: That is kind of a refreshing view on on enterprise software and software as a service, you know, many times that, you know, when I talk to companies, the goal is always to, you know, to maximize revenue to grow to all that. That is a very different take and refreshing view. I really am surprised to hear that.

[00:17:26] Matt: And it’s wonderful.

[00:17:28] Mateusz: I mean, it’s. Not that uncommon. What’s different here is I think many people realize that Google’s approach to the premium model was only partially true. It was free, but you were paying with your data for a long time. They were using the advertising ecosystem. And at some point it first of all became unrelevant.

[00:17:56] Mateusz: It became too expensive for them. So they had cut it off. At least that’s my theory.

[00:18:03] Matt: Yeah, I was hearing a lot of that as well. I think a lot of people, they were sold on one thing, but I was absolutely amazed when I would get into some of the larger paid accounts, they’re only seeing a fraction of the data being processed.

[00:18:17] Matt: You know, and it, I think even being paid, maybe it was still sampling a great deal of the data rather than the whole data. So a lot of times I think what was promised wasn’t delivered and people just had just as much difficult of a time. But one of the things I run into and I, Teach a lot of courses on analytics to marketers.

[00:18:40] Matt: And one of, I think the biggest obstacles that we’re running into in the analytics industry is that marketers simply have never been trained on how to use analytics. I think so many times people log in and they expect the problems to just You know, being a big red pop up window to tell me where to go.

[00:18:58] Matt: But that’s something that I see consistently in different companies is that they’re asking the same questions. What data is the most important? How do I turn the data into an insight? And how do I know what to do? Those three basic questions are being asked at companies. How are you managing that? How are you handling the education side?

[00:19:25] Matt: And well, first I should ask, do you see that as well with marketers just being completely unprepared with data? And then how are you handling the education side?

[00:19:33] Mateusz: Sadly, I don’t see it. Um, I’m saying sadly, because I think those questions are super relevant. And if people are, and even like experienced marketers.

[00:19:44] Mateusz: Even if they ask them, that’s a good sign because that means that they are ready to challenge their old ways of doing stuff and are prepared to reconsider, restructure their strategy and adjust to the changing circumstances. What we observe a lot, maybe not in our portfolio, but in general in industry, is that people are preoccupied with things.

[00:20:13] Mateusz: That don’t matter. They want to collect a lot. They want to, you know, sidestep ad blockers. They want to go server side because somehow they won’t need to ask for consent then, which obviously is not true, but it makes things less transparent. So we are back to where we are, where we were, right? Without any regulations, there is this trend of, you know, we need to collect a lot of data.

[00:20:45] Mateusz: The problem is that there are no questions or thoughts about what we are going to do with all this data. What, why do we even need them in the first place? Could we go minimalist with this data? Maybe we could. Maybe we should go to basics and start recreating our setup. Using new vendor or old vendor, it’s irrelevant because with Sunset you have to recreate everything for either way.

[00:21:18] Mateusz: But the recreate word is a problem. I feel like we should not, we should stop recreating stuff. We should create this from scratch. Because it may be, we may end up with much better setup, with much safer setup, which setup that will make all of this bulletproof when it comes to these regulations.

[00:21:43] Matt: That is great.

[00:21:44] Matt: I love that idea of not recreating, let’s create something new. And that’s, you know, that’s really the education that I work people through is, you know, what are the objectives? What are we doing and how will you track that? And just figuring out that strategic view first. Of how analytics supports what you’re doing and how you can use it.

[00:22:06] Matt: But I see that as well, just that, that gathering of data and we’ll figure it out later. And unfortunately that never leads to it leads. I think a lot of expense, better

[00:22:17] Mateusz: to have it just in case we figure out what we want to do with it later on.

[00:22:22] Matt: Exactly. Exactly. What are some of the other, let me, what are some of the other misconceptions?

[00:22:29] Matt: Yeah. About analytics that you hear or that you run into with different people or companies. When we look at

[00:22:36] Mateusz: trends is that the server side tracking will save us all from all this regulations and roadblocks that were created in recent years. It’s not a solution to this kind of problems. It creates a lot of overhead.

[00:22:55] Mateusz: I don’t think people realize. What kind of costs the management of this solutions is coming with. So I feel like it’s our tendency to look for quick solutions. It’s the same with AI, right? We think that somehow AI powered features will make our easier and free our time to, to do creative stuff. Where in fact, if we.

[00:23:30] Mateusz: I don’t know what we want to ask ChatGPT or any other AI there is. We won’t be able to ask the right questions without our own analysis, without idea, without some sort of a tracking plan that says, okay, we need this tracking points, data points, and here is why we need them. That’s actually a key question.

[00:23:56] Mateusz: Difference that our customers notice when they work with us is we offer this sort of consulting services within our company. We offer implementation packages for customer can work along with our implementation solution architects that will go with you through your tracking funnel, help you create one so that the implementation plan.

[00:24:23] Mateusz: It’s an actual plan, which is deployed step by step, stage by stage with, you know, milestones in mind and with objectives against which you will.

[00:24:36] Matt: I saw a demo of a AI analytics. And it was very interesting because they were asking questions, and then the data would appear. But, to your point, what was in the back of my mind is, well, you have to know what questions to ask first.

[00:24:53] Matt: Because, as part of the demo, some of the questions, like, well, that’s in a data table somewhere. That’s easily accessible. You’re not really showing anything there. But that’s one of the keys that I found, and a great tool. In companies that have a great analytics basis, they’re good at asking questions. And because when you ask the question, when you ask the right question, it leads you to how do we get that answer?

[00:25:20] Matt: And that leads to your tracking. That leads to your reporting and your action that you take with that. So I love that, you know, you focus on the questions because it’s more of that. That human skill of curiosity of analysis that leads you to a better installation of an analytic solution.

[00:25:41] Mateusz: Yeah, and just to be clear, AI is a fantastic thing that can improve the way we work with data.

[00:25:49] Mateusz: Just not frustrated, but tired with observing the analytics. products that try to position themselves as, you know, AI powered because they released metric is growing. Look, it’s amazing. That’s something that you wouldn’t be able to tell yourself if you look at this graph. So there is a difference. Between what we can actually achieve AI and how we can improve the work of marketers and where we are at the moment.

[00:26:23] Mateusz: We are working ourselves on AI features, but this journey itself shows that.

[00:26:29] Matt: What’s been some of the feedback from your new customers, from people that have made the transition? What’s been some of the feedback that you’ve been getting?

[00:26:38] Mateusz: The transition from free to PV.

[00:26:41] Matt: Yeah, absolutely. Or, or anyone who has tried GA for maybe transition.

[00:26:49] Mateusz: The general, um, feedback that we get is that it’s easier to switch from universal analytics to Piwik pro than it is from universal analytics to GFR four. And because our product much, it says, you know, session oriented tracking. This is the product typically, this is the product typically for a design for marketers.

[00:27:14] Mateusz: Whereas G4, we feel that it’s a little bit more for product analytics. And that’s the way our customers are looking at this as well. But if you think about it, it’s, it’s amazing transition. Like for some people and the decision to sunset universal analytics, not very smart from Google because they had the entire market, right?

[00:27:36] Mateusz: But then they cut all this costs. They switched to G4. They have, you know, all this army of agencies that now have a huge incentive to work with GA4 because this product is very difficult to implement. So if you ask an agency, what should I use? You should use GA4, obviously, because first of all, it’s Google.

[00:28:03] Mateusz: So it’s a go to product, but then on the other hand, you will also need to pay us. It’s a sort of genius plan. If you ask me, I think it’s good for customers. Uh, I appreciate maturity organizations that looked through this plan and started to consider alternative solutions. I’m not saying that, you know, I consider people who went with people or any alternative a smart and people who went with G4 as not so smart, but that’s not what I’m saying.

[00:28:38] Mateusz: I’m just saying that the analysis process. The decision making process that these organizations went through, whether they ended up with GA4 or PivotPro or Amplitude or whatever, they just simply had to go for it. Otherwise, it’s a naive way of thinking.

[00:29:00] Matt: Yes, absolutely. And it’s, yeah, it’s created its own ecosystem by making that move.

[00:29:09] Matt: Hey everyone, this is Matt and thanks for listening. Just a quick break in the middle of the podcast here to let you know, there’s a couple of ways that you can connect with us. The first is learn. sitelogic. com. That’s the learning site where you can see courses on analytics, courses on digital marketing across Paid search, SEO, multiple disciplines.

[00:29:32] Matt: And then also you can connect with us on Slack. Go to Slack if you’re there and look for us at endlesscoffeecup. slack. com. Connect with us. I’d love to hear from you, hear what ails you in the realm of digital marketing. Are there courses you need information that you’d like to hear, or maybe some past guests at you’d like to hear more from, thanks again for being a listener of the endless coffee cup and I look forward to hearing from you.

[00:30:05] Matt: Well, it seems like Google certainly made their own ecosystem in this new change. It’s raised the need for programmers, more specialists in data science. As you said, it’s. You know, not really made for marketers. So marketers either have to learn data or they have to rely more on agencies who understand how to work with GA4, the data, and even to create understandable reports.

[00:30:32] Matt: I think, you know, you alluded to it, that Google’s created a whole new and more complex industry. In analytics. And I love your approach that it doesn’t have to be that way.

[00:30:46] Mateusz: No, it doesn’t. But if you think about what Google did, it seems counterintuitive, right? Because there were monopolies on the market with about 85, 7 percent of the total market share, at least looking at the public websites that, you know, we are able to verify what.

[00:31:06] Mateusz: tracking web, and it seems counterintuitive to get rid of all of that and create a new tool without data migration and so on and so forth. But having their position, their brand recognition and the structure of partners. It’s a beautiful move because even though GA4 as a tool is suboptimal to say the least, it’s a completely different model.

[00:31:35] Mateusz: Marketers have to relearn everything. If they want to recreate their setup, it’s It’s extremely difficult. So they have to go to agencies and agencies will suggest the tool that gives them the most revenue. And that is the tool that comes with the most implementation package and meditation hours. So I know.

[00:32:03] Mateusz: G four because it’s the best business for them. Of course, not all of them, but, uh, I think it, it’s a no-brainer for an agency to recommend G four. It’s a great business to implement it first and then maintain it, uh, throughout the process. So, uh, all in all, even though, uh, the transition seems to be very hard because of the network of the partners they have, they’ve built over the years.

[00:32:31] Mateusz: It didn’t take that big of a toll on Google’s position, although certainly the market is now more diversified than it used to be.

[00:32:42] Matt: It is. And it’s interesting to see more people posting about the quirks that they’re there and not just quirks. One of the things that has always bothered me about Google analytics is one day they decide to change the name of something.

[00:32:59] Matt: And it changes everything. It changes the way we’ve referred to, you know, an example is conversions are now, you know, like an engagement event or something. And in doing so, they’ve removed all meaning out of the word. And when you change vocabulary like that, you’re, it’s like, you’re imposing upon an industry that’s already been established.

[00:33:22] Matt: And I’m not sure whether this is like, You know, someone coming, someone from PR coming up with this, or someone from data coming up with this saying, we’re just going to change the name and it’ll be okay.

[00:33:32] Mateusz: I have no idea, but it’s an interesting discussion, actually, whether Google will, this transition is creating something new.

[00:33:43] Mateusz: Do they know that marketing analytics should go in that particular direction? And, you know, it’s for us to decide whether we believe that Google is, you know, the ultimate decision maker and we should follow everything they do, or perhaps we should introduce some of our, some of independent thinking of our, of our own and make our own decisions.

[00:34:09] Mateusz: And, you know, if something doesn’t work for us, for our organization, maybe we should seek alternatives. I honestly don’t know. I have my opinion, obviously. But I’m not sure what is the strategy that Google has here. Obviously they have some really smart people, but I think the market in general consists of some really smart and experienced people as well that do not work for Google, that don’t receive paychecks from, from Google and they should think on their own.

[00:34:46] Matt: Oh, absolutely. I, my linkedin feed is made up of a lot of great data people that I’ve known for, you know, a decade or two. And when I see their comments, you know, these are people that are very well respected in the data and analytics industry. And it always Surprises me that no one’s called them to ask about, you know, their opinion or what should something look like, or, you know, what have you seen over the years that would make a good product and to see, and I’m surprised more people don’t listen to what they have to say or their views about what’s happening.

[00:35:27] Matt: So I, I, I hope more are listening. I hope more is coming out of this, but it surprises me that it’s some of the smartest people in the industry. Just, you know, Google’s never called them. No one’s brought that up. Yeah.

[00:35:40] Mateusz: I also think that there is a general trend of people complaining on G4. What I’m missing, not always, but in great majority of cases, what I’m missing is people actually coming up with solutions.

[00:35:57] Mateusz: What can be done? Where can you look for to address your concerns? That’s what missing. And I think it’s easy to complain, but if solutions are not coming along with this criticism, then you know, it’s just half of a story and we need to have a discussion from experts who are able to actually assess.

[00:36:23] Mateusz: Types of options for people that are less experienced. And there has to be some starting point for that, because, you know, if you think about this and you are a director of marketing in any organization, it’s, you know, people don’t usually get fired over going with Google stack, right. But when they go with some alternative that is relatively unknown, it’s easy to make this Element of strategy, a scapegoat.

[00:36:52] Mateusz: I’m not saying that, you know, all the alternative solutions are perfect. I’m just saying that it’s very important to be or to build awareness that world is more than just Google. Yes.

[00:37:07] Matt: Yes. And yes, I’ve got a, I’ve got a story. I tell people about that where. Yeah, it back years ago when I was in software sales, you know, I lost a deal to, you know, as they said, no one ever got fired staying with a IBM.

[00:37:21] Matt: And, you know, that was a hard lesson to learn, but, you know, when, but we’re more agile, we’re better and it’s safety and security went out every time.

[00:37:34] Matt: One of the things that, Oh, I’m sorry. Go ahead.

[00:37:37] Mateusz: Even if you check all the boxes, then at the end of the road, there is always a brand. If it’s unknown, then it can kill the deal that would be perfect for both sides.

[00:37:50] Matt: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, similar to this topic, you know, we’ve seen now the depreciation of cookies and this was a warning and then it turned into an extension and a lot of people have been, you know, really catching their breath over this, that third party cookies are going away.

[00:38:10] Matt: I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding out there about third party cookies and what’s really happening. And again, you know how this comes back to Google is. You know, a lot of the smart money says this is Google consolidating into their own ecosystem by removing third party cookies. If you could explain a little more about the EU market and about privacy regulations, how third party cookies going away is not that big a deal because you have a different.

[00:38:42] Matt: Approach to privacy and maybe more for a Western, especially American audience. Why is this so important and what makes this unique?

[00:38:50] Mateusz: In general, our solution was always relying on the first party cookie. The Sunset, the third party cookie that is a team that has been going on for quite a bit, I think. Most people are still in denial before that this deadline is going to be extended yet again.

[00:39:09] Mateusz: And they are surprised the same story with, um, uh, analytics free sunset, but all in all, well, I don’t think this will impact solution like ours a lot. However, I feel like one of the tendency that they see in analytics market is Turn to server side tagging and tracking as a remedy for this, they, you know, it’s another buzzword that people consider as, you know, some magic solution, magic peel that will result all their problems, or in fact, it generates.

[00:39:51] Mateusz: Another portion of problems that are associated with management of this data, with management of and maintenance of this entire infrastructure. I think it pushes us away from the real problem. That was always lack of transparency and lack of understanding, lack of transparency. For the end users of what’s going on with this, with their data, what’s been collected.

[00:40:18] Mateusz: So all, you know, I think the market in general is in panic, but once this actually happens, not that much will change all the solutions that rely on the third party cookies to reconsider their business models. Even for analytics vendors, you know, there are different technologies and techniques that already existed.

[00:40:43] Mateusz: Before these decisions, like cookie list tracking, fingerprinting, and so on and so forth, this, all of that still needs to be considered along with the privacy regulations that are in place.

[00:41:01] Matt: Well, I’d like to change a little bit here, and I want to ask you about the tech scene in Poland. I’ve dealt with more and more software providers out of Poland, out of Eastern Europe, and the quality of programming, of design, of products are outstanding. More and more of my You know, my digital marketing products, I find the stack is coming out, you know, of that region.

[00:41:28] Matt: There’s so much innovation coming out of your country that there seems to be this tech renaissance happening in Eastern Europe. Can you give me a little bit of an insight of what’s causing that? What’s happening? What is About the tech scene in Poland and the, and that region there that is really starting to make an impact worldwide.

[00:41:48] Matt: Yeah,

[00:41:48] Mateusz: I think this is something that has been going on for quite a while. It’s not a revolution. It’s rather an evolution. It’s closely associated with the economy of that region, not on one. Entire Central and Eastern Europe. Uh, I think now in that region, we have more capital. So talent that exists here along with very high level education with work ethics that people in this region have and hunger for success.

[00:42:26] Mateusz: Because, you know, without capital, it was, you know, we had a glass ceiling of some sort, right? We couldn’t go and build our own brands, our own value. We usually were used as, uh, sort of a software house for the rest of the world. Now, with capital that is present here, with entrepreneurs, That I’ve learned over the years on their other businesses.

[00:42:55] Mateusz: And now they are ready to create our own unit of that simply because creating a business here in Poland, I cannot really speak about specifics in other central European countries, but in Poland specifically, we have amazing programmers. That, you know, because of cost of living, uh, general level of salaries are able to hire amazing talent, lower rates.

[00:43:22] Mateusz: We, this talent is available. It’s a huge capital at the beginning of, you know, people, it’s almost a given now that everyone speaks English. So, you know, this along with the experience that we’ve accumulated over years, I think this creates an amazing environment for growth. And even though Poland does not have too many unicorns, I think there are two or three, we are going to have.

[00:43:51] Matt: Wonderful. I’m looking forward to see what else comes out of the region, but also, you know, a piece of news about Piwik Pro. You, you’re also making acquisitions. You’ve recently acquired another company.

[00:44:03] Mateusz: Not so much acquired, but we are, we’ve merged. Well, information, and that’s actually another interesting approach that companies in Europe are taking to still grow.

[00:44:15] Mateusz: So smaller companies are merging with each other in order to take advantage of synergies that they have for us, a merger with cookie information, which is leading consent management platform provider in Nordics. It’s created a huge opportunity of, you know, upselling their customers and upselling our customers with their products, because this are complimentary bought a lot of traction in the Nordics.

[00:44:44] Mateusz: They, they have a very strong position in the Nordic market. So all in all, it was a perfect fit for everyone. And now the entire group, it’s a huge job. Um,

[00:45:00] Matt: Wonderful. That is so good to hear. So good to hear. Midtails. This has been such a wonderful conversation, you know, learning more about your company, your history.

[00:45:09] Matt: This has been amazing. And dear listener, if you want to check out Piwik Pro, let me leave. If you’re watching on YouTube, you can see my new sweatshirt. Go to Piwik P I W I K and you can check out their freemium version. You’ve got nothing to lose except overcomplication, because I will tell you it’s very simple.

[00:45:30] Matt: It’s easy. The support. Mateos, I have to tell you, I love the support. The videos, the, the forum, the chat room there, or the, you know, online support where you can ask questions. It’s very active. You never feel like you’re alone. Uh, when you’re there and setting up. So it’s a wonderful experience of setup, of asking questions, of getting the information you need.

[00:45:54] Matt: And so I, I heartily recommend it. The link will also be in the show notes. If you are looking for it there. Mateus, thank you so much for your time today. Anything you’d like to say before we sign off on the episode?

[00:46:08] Mateusz: Other than thank you for having me and maybe last thought you mentioned that with Piwik Pro, you feel like you, you are never alone.

[00:46:16] Matt: That’s good to hear. Good to hear because I know for other options, there’s not a lot of documentation to help you through some problems here. So Mateusz, thank you again for a great conversation. And thank you, dear listener, for joining us on our conversation at the Endless Coffee Cup. I hope. You had a good cup of coffee with us and I look forward to our next cup on the endless coffee cup podcast.

[00:46:44] Matt: You’ve been listening to the endless coffee cup. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with somebody else. And of course, please take just a moment and rate or review us at your favorite podcast service. If you need more information. Contact me at SightLogicMarketing. com. Thanks again for being such a great listener.