The Gist:
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Don’t hold onto the past. Although cookies have been used for the past 30 years, there are better ways to effectively leverage data and market to consumers.
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Embrace first-party data. Abandoning cookies is a good thing — the implementation of first-party data will actually allow for more accurate advertising.
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Pitfalls are normal, but can be avoided. It’s easy to make mistakes during this transitional period, so avoid fixating on addressability and invest in a chief digital officer.
The online cookie jar is almost empty. Netscape invented the cookie in 1992, but 30 years later, it’s beginning to disappear. Apple, Google and Mozilla already initiated plans to completely stop supporting third-party cookies. Google still plans totracking in the second half of 2024. But 1% of users will see it end in Q1 of 2024.
As a result, marketers face formidable challenges moving forward. The death of the cookie inhibits tracking and storing consumer browsing and shopping data, thus making targeted ads less accurate and effective.
So what’s in store for marketers in a cookie-less future? We sat down with two experts to discuss how marketers can survive and thrive during this strange transitional period.
What About Targeted Ads?
For John Busbice, chief decision science officer at Keen Decision Systems, getting rid of cookies is not an end-all-be-all when it comes to targeted advertisements.
“First-party data coupled with a good identity graph, data enrichment and probabilistic scoring models will go a long way to replacing cookies,” he said. “This enables advertisers to prescribe targets, whether or not to the individual level, and ensure they are able to address the right audiences.”
These types of data-gathering strategies will help with the transition from relying on third-party cookies to settling on a first-party data foundation. Ted Sfikas, senior director of digital strategy at Tealium, believes these new strategies will undoubtedly continue to evolve as global privacy laws emerge. However, companies like his have already found consistent success by nurturing partnerships with prominent digital marketing and advertising technology providers.
“Embracing a first-party data strategy will help businesses achieve reliable customer insights,” Sfikas said. “First, your data governance tools that capture initial signals and manage them into your data systems, like a CDP, must work to automate the generation of insights. Second, the engagement tools themselves that personalize, report, and measure the insights, must be active. Investing in both of these areas will ensure that CX professionals and marketers trust the information they are looking at is compliant with privacy regulations, timely, and of the highest fidelity.”
Related Article: What Does Marketing Look Like Without Third-Party Cookies?
Is Cookieless a Golden Age for Marketing?
Although cookies have been a major avenue for acquiring consumer data, leaving them in the past may be a good thing. According to Sfikas, cookies have always been a simple, file-based mechanism for technology systems to securely read and write data while personal experiences are taking place — which is a data-at-rest approach. With first-party data, marketers can address several opportunities at once. This includes privacy compliance, attribution and incrementality, omni-channel to multichannel marketing, and so on.
“For example, [with first-party data] you can measure the impact of an ad for your product that is streaming to a precise set of people on Disney+ while watching Star Wars, then change the creative when they move to a different channel such as Display Out of Home panels, which in turn drives more personalized email marketing to follow up.” Sfikas says. “None of what I just mentioned was possible or even contemplated with the vagaries of information during the third-party cookie’s dominance. We are changing for the better, and marketing is about to go through its golden age.”
To leverage first-party data to make the type of personalized experiences previously aided by cookies, Busbice suggests pairing this data with an identity graph so marketers have a holistic view of the customer across devices, owned media properties and purchases. From that vantage point, marketers can view analytics from the event level to the customer level and up to the brand level. According to Busbice, if marketers can leverage the power of analytics, they can optimize their business and ultimately make better decisions when it comes to targeting consumers.
Related Article: 3 Digital Marketing Tips in a Privacy-First World
Take Agile Marketing Approach
As more and more companies shift away from cookies, it’s likely that they’ll never return. However, since this is a more recent development in the marketing space, it’s important to watch out for potential pitfalls.
Busbice warns marketers not to hyper-fixate on the minutiae of targeting and addressability because they may lose focus when it comes to optimizing marketing investment. As a result, marketers may lose sight of long-term advertising effects. Advertisers can end up eroding their brand, which affects revenue growth. Now more than ever, marketers are waking up to the value of using software to reinvigorate their business and thinking more holistically about their marketing investment.
“It’s possible to get lost in the weeds of addressability, precision targeting and attribution — or the lack of thereof. Cost and complexity have gone up considerably, and so too has conflict in organizations as there have been a rebirth of data sources and ideas about how to measure marketing,” he said. “It’s important to reduce the noise and focus on how the organization can make better decisions, given the resources and information in the moment. With an iterative, agile approach, incremental improvements can be made.”
For Sfikas, the future is all about embracing agnostic platforms. He advises against combining marketing technology investments and data management investments with the same vendor. If marketers can avoid doing that, they will keep their marketing stack free and capable of changing to new processes and new technologies in a reasonable timeframe.
“The worst place you want to find yourself in the next 2-3 years is being stuck in an old contract that causes your company to forgo new investments due to old commitments that no longer make sense.” Sfikas says. “Brands that fall victim to this will not be able to keep up with the dramatic amount of rapid change that is taking place as we speak.”
Empower Agnostic Customer Data Leader
As a final piece of advice, he recommends accelerating the office of the CDO (chief data officer). A CDO’s expertise will lead to better business decisions and improved outcomes for the entire company because of their objectivity — they are not bound to marketing vendor contracts or ideas about how data should enter the company (and under what conditions it should leave). This type of neutral approach is beneficial for the future.
And, perhaps, leaving the cookie jar empty is as well.
