Topic

Measurement: what you can count, and what consent costs you

The consent rules come first here, because they decide what you can measure before a visitor agrees.

Ad platforms can report fewer sales than a business really makes. The gap has two causes, and only one of them can be fixed technically. Knowing which is which tells you whether a piece of work is worth paying for.

These articles put a number on the gap and say which part of it you can get back.

Free checkBreak-even ad calculatorYour order value and margin in; the return on ad spend you need to break even, and the most you can pay per sale and per click, out.
Free checkUTM link builderTags a page address with utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign, encoded correctly, and says which GA4 default channel group the visits land in, by Google's rules.

6 articles on this

Reporting
Power BI or Looker Studio, now Data Studio: what each costs a small business, and who needs a licence
Both turn your figures into reports and dashboards. Data Studio, the name Google gave Looker Studio back in April 2026, costs nothing to build in or to view. Power BI is free for reports you keep to yourself, and sharing one needs a paid licence for the person who shares it and for each person who opens it, unless the reports sit in one of Microsoft's larger capacity plans.6 minute read · 21 sources
Measurement
Conversion rate on a service business's website: what to count, and how Google Analytics works it out
A conversion rate is the share of visits, or of visitors, that did the thing you count. For a business that sells a service, that thing is an enquiry sent, a call or a booking, and the rate is only as good as the count behind it.6 minute read · 18 sources
Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager for a small business: what it is, when the Google tag is enough, and who should own it
Tag Manager is Google's free tool for adding measurement and marketing tags to a website, and deciding when each one runs, without editing the site's code each time. Google calls it the first choice wherever a site's platform allows it, and says a site tagging one Google product with few changes can start with the Google tag alone.8 minute read · 17 sources
Advertising
What Google Ads costs in Ireland: clicks for sixty local searches, and the rest of the bill
There is no price for Google Ads: you set a budget and pay for clicks at whatever the auction makes them. What advertisers have been paying is published, though, in Google's own Keyword Planner, and for Irish searches it runs from under a euro to over twenty.3 minute read · 3 sources
Measurement
What you are allowed to measure before anybody clicks accept
Some measurement needs no consent at all. This sets out what, and what the consent rule does cover.8 minute read · 3 sources
Measurement
What server-side conversion tracking does, and what it does not
It does not get around consent. It fixes the losses that have nothing to do with consent: blockers, tracking prevention, failed scripts and closed tabs.11 minute read · 7 sources

What we do about this

Connect and automateBuildWe join up the systems you already use and automate the jobs that repeat.
We run itSupportWe keep what we built or secured for you working.
FourWinds Reporting, connectedCustom dashboardsYour ad spend, enquiries, sales and invoices on one screen in your portal, taken from your own accounts.
Cardinal, the platformClient portalProgress on your work, reports, invoices and support in one account, beside the automation, reporting and compliance work we run for you.

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Measurement: what you can count, and what consent costs you

6 articles on this

Power BI or Looker Studio, now Data Studio: what each costs a small business, and who needs a licence

Conversion rate on a service business's website: what to count, and how Google Analytics works it out

Google Tag Manager for a small business: what it is, when the Google tag is enough, and who should own it

What Google Ads costs in Ireland: clicks for sixty local searches, and the rest of the bill

What you are allowed to measure before anybody clicks accept

What server-side conversion tracking does, and what it does not

What we do about this

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