Hey everyone, Scott Austin here. And this week's topic is going to be about cookies and how the changes in cookies coming in the future are going to affect us in our Shopify stores. Now, I'm not a technical expert about cookies and advertising attribution,

So I brought in an expert to talk about this topic. And his name is Jake Levin from Inflection Growth. Welcome, Jake.

So tell us a little bit about inflection growth and your background in,

in marketing and digital advertising.

Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. As you're seeing that, I'm laughing in my head because I have a client who, expects 100% accuracy across all systems when reporting. So the fact that Shopify and Google Analytics and Klaviyo and Google Ads all have slightly different numbers drives him absolutely nuts. And I'm like, it's not a perfect world. You know, you have to understand these systems are doing the best they can, but it's not like we're just counting, you know, pebbles on a beach where it's a finite, you know, discrete thing.

It it varies a little bit. So it's always a challenge when doing that attribution stuff. So let's take a step back here as we start talking about this cookie topic. And let's explain. For the people who don't understand what cookies are, what they are, and how websites use them. First party cookies, third party cookies, and those kind of things so that they have that foundational understanding.

Well, Crikey! If I'm wrong. But, the third party cookies are the ones that crack you, track you between sites and the first party cookies when the tracking you on your sites like your customers, adding to the cart that stored in a first party cookie. But the fact that, you know, Google or Pixel or Facebook has a pixel, and it's, you know, got information about your customer from other sites, it's a third party cookies that is that accurate?

in this world of attribution, it's a very dynamic and fluid situation because the technology and the rules are changing, right? So here in 2025, what are the changes that are happening and and what best practices do people do in the past that may not work in the future?

Yeah. I think in marking world like, 100 years ago, there was an old saying that said, you know, only half your marketing works, but nobody knows which half. And, you know, the promise of the internet was, oh, we're going to know everything infinitesimal, you know, level of detail. And we're getting back, it seems like, to it's more directional than actual, you know, decimal point accuracy.

You know.

Yeah. So you had mentioned a multi-platform strategy for attribution. Can you explain what that looks like? And what should Shopify store owners be thinking about as their toolbox for attribution measurement? What should they have in that toolbox? And, you know, a little checklist or whatever, so they can add things that they don't have to it. And how do they, you know, trade off between one another?

Now, you didn't mention GA in there. Do you factor that into the toolset? Or do you just not use Gina at all?

Wow. Well, it's. It's disappointing since I love my, Google Analytics cards that I built for my client, but, you know, that is what it is. So what I hear you saying is Shopify is the most accurate, although it's not 100% accurate, and you use Shopify as the foundation to in your head or, you know, on a on a pad of paper, if you need to have a ratio, a number like Facebook is 80% accurate or 20% accurate or whatever.

And then you just use that when you're looking at your ROI numbers or something like that. What sort of sort of variance can I expect to see? Like you mentioned, I think two and a half times Facebook being off by like, what's the range of inaccuracies or variances between the data that people can see? Because what a lot of store owners that I talked to, they look at it like they think something must be wrong, right?

What I want to know is like, what's the normal variance you're going to see? So it's not you, it's them. And then like, what's the sign that maybe you've got something set up wrong.

Yeah. Go for it.

Yeah. Totally makes sense. Totally

makes sense.

So the. The whole goal here is to make good business decisions on data. In a world where data is muddy. And I can totally see. As you're saying, that's where the art comes in, because everything is fluid and dynamic. So it's changing, and you got to just wrap your head around it on an ongoing basis. How does one become an artist in that world, or at least an amateur artist?

Yeah. And the challenge in this space for. You know, because, you know, most Shopify stores are really, really small, and there's really big ones out there, right? So most of them, you know, are, you know, struggling to keep their head around everything that's going on. What I hear you saying is ads. There's no set it and forget it in ads.

Is that accurate?

Yeah. I'm, I totally understand your. Your answer. It it personally drives me nuts. Not that that's your answer, but the. That's the truth, right? Is it's so dynamic. It's always moving. It's sort of like, you know, on my side where, you know, I help my clients build Shopify stores. Things I used to worry about four years ago.

I never think about anymore. And I think about a whole different set of problems now as the platform is solve the old problems and introduce new problems that I have to solve for my clients. And it's like just because I learned it before doesn't mean it's going to be good tomorrow. And I got to learn new things tomorrow.

So I totally get it. Just it's so frustrating in this world of technology that that's the truth. But that is unfortunately the truth. And that's what you know, we in this space have to realize is, you know, we're we're only as good as our mastery of the tools. And that mastery is an evergreen, ongoing process that you have to stay on top of.

You know, just like SEO marketing, they have to think about it every time, you know, Google rolls out a new update, they've got to change all their best practices and all their strategies.

Yeah, absolutely. Like every time Shopify solves a problem I used to solve like that, does it put me out of work? Because they just introduce new things that I've become an expert in. And like you say, you're always staying ahead of the curve. And it is it is frustrating, but it is, you know, like you're saying, if you're going to be an e-commerce space or anything in the digital space, that is the world we live in today, it is constantly fluid and dynamic, and we have to stay fluid and dynamic and respond to that.

So is there anything about this attribution, especially for Shopify stores, that stores should be thinking about that we haven't talked about yet?

You're painting a bleak picture here, Jake. Which is just, you know, reality. When I. When I think about e-commerce stores, right. As you're talking about the way that people think. And I love what you said, where a lot of time stores think it's them. And I do the same thing, like, no, it's not you, it's it's the platform's doing this to you right now.

Everybody's having the same kind of problems here. The way I think about it is a successful ecommerce brand has to be their core company, has to be marketing. They have to be experts in how to talk to their customers, find their customers, acquire their customers. And too many of them, in my mind, focus on their product too much and not their customer acquisition enough.

Which, you know, means in my mind that the store owner should be thinking about these problems. It's not the kind of thing that they can off hand to somebody else to solve for them. They may absolutely bring in an agency to do that work, but they have to understand these things in these dynamics so that when you know your agency's telling you X, Y, and Z, you know, technical detail, blah, blah, blah, you understand those things because that understanding of your business is essential to your being successful and differentiating from your competition, because it's the marketing that that makes the big e-commerce brands, the big ecommerce brands like Gymshark didn't become Gymshark because they

had the best clothing for the gym. They became Gymshark because it's the best marketing for clothing for the gym.

To the way I think about this evolution that you're talking about, where what used to be easy is now hard. It's true in every single step, every single year. Right? When you know, the four hour workweek was written, basically the whole premise of the book is if you spend all the effort to create a server to create an e-commerce store, you're going to be rich not to think about anything.

And that was totally true in 2007, because nobody had a server and it cost a ton of money to get one set off, and you had to create software and all that kind of stuff. And then, you know, all the the SAS companies came around like Shopify and BigCommerce and the rest of them, and now you didn't have to set up a server anymore.

So that wasn't your strategic differentiator. Now you had to like, design a website and connect a certain things. And then so to be competitive was less hard, or to be in the game was less hard. And it made the competition more. So more and more people came on board. What I saw happen in 2020, like you saw in Covid, it was all the online or the all the offline only stores came online for the first time in Covid because their offline store was closed down.

So let's just say there were X number of online stores pre-COVID, during Covid and after Covid. That number was one and a half, two times whatever. So all of a sudden you're hearing the competition out. There was exponentially larger, and it meant you had to be that much smarter, more sophisticated to stand out and differentiate, you know, so things that used to be a differentiator in 2019 are table stakes in 2025.

And now you've got to figure out your 2025 differentiator. And the second you do or the second, anybody knows and publishes it on the internet, it goes from being differentiator to being table stakes really, really quickly. So you're always evolving, always learning, always being scrappy, always doing things differently.

Yeah. So, what I like about this conversation is you're just reminding me of my personal beliefs. And I think I said it earlier is that, you know, the strategic differentiator for an e-commerce store needs to be their customer acquisition strategy. And, you know, it's not just marketing. It's the whole customer acquisition side of it. And and this is just another explanation of why brands need to think about that and focus their energy on that and give it the right weight against all the other, you know, things they have to do.

Yep. Yep. It's amazing to me how well sophisticated brands know their customers. And it's also amazing to me how

many mediocre brands don't understand their customers at all. So

the discourse.

Absolutely. And that comes back to the attribution we're talking about, like, not knowing what's working, what's not, and having the data that drives that. So I appreciate your time today. And this was actually insightful for me. Is there anything in any last wisdom you want to leave with people before we sign off?

Excellent, excellent. I like that. Now, if people need some help, you know, figuring out that puzzle, how do they reach out and find you?

Yeah. Absolute. Absolute.

Whatever you give me, I'm going to put in your show notes right? Yep. So if you if you say find me on LinkedIn, email me website, I'll put that in the show notes.

Yep. That's a that's a nice touch. I liked it. Yeah. And I always keep that simple by the way. I'm always like JP McCombe and I don't need to tell you my Instagram, my Facebook and all that kind of crap, but that's my personal way of doing things. So we'll go ahead, answer that question again, which is how can people find you?

Excellent, excellent. I'll include those in the show notes for anybody that wants to reach out. Jake, thanks for sharing your time with us today.