The tracking cookie continues to crumble. Firefox and Safari already block tracking cookies by default, and not only has Google’s Chrome browser joined the third-party-cookie-blocking fray, the search giant has announced that it will not roll out alternative user-level ad identifiers to replace third-party cookies.
The big question on all our minds is what marketers and advertisers will do without third-party cookies?
Google has been characteristically mum over the last year on whether or not it would introduce new individual user tracking to replace third-party cookies. In early March 2021, they provided the long-awaited answer: the replacement for third-party cookies is first-party data. What does this mean for you? It’s time to kick third-party data for good and focus on developing relationships with your customers. First-party, privacy-friendly datasets are richer and more impactful when it comes to improving campaign performance. They also stand the test of time while strengthening the trust between the customer and the business, and who doesn’t want that?
The first logical thing to do when something you like is taken away from you is to justify its loss by saying it sucked anyway. This is actually in some ways true with the ubiquitous tracking cookie. Cookie synching aka cookie matching—which is used by demand-side platforms (DSPs) and data management platforms (DMPs) to sync cookies data so they know when they are dealing with the same user—isn’t exactly perfect. In the world of data-driven marketing, it’s actually pretty awful.
Unifying data is critical to providing personalized experiences to consumers, and it also must be done right to prevent annoying the everloving snot out of everyone. Where this tends to come apart for cookie-based targeting is when you take into consideration the massive amount of data that has to be synched up across the ad ecosystem. When a cookie from one site is not passed to an adtech platform, you miss a part of the puzzle and an appropriate match is not made. This happens often, and because of this, cookie match rates range from only 40 to 60 percent. This is why when you are searching for red Nikes on Zappos you end up getting retargeted with ads for black lingerie—which can cause other unforeseen issues for consumers at home. But, really, bad targeting from fragmented cookies is a big waste of money and annoys people with irrelevant ads. In addition to this, cookies are device-based, so they can’t help you when someone goes from desktop to mobile or switches computers or browsers, further fracturing the customer journey.
Okay, there has been a lot of talk about the future, but cookie blocking is here today. What can you do to replace the tracking cookie and still connect with your audience? Here are a few tactics that can help you break your cookie habit.
Contextual Advertising (and Content) is the New Cookies
Contextual advertising is basically ads that are relevant to the other content on the screen. It’s like beer ads in a bar: go where your customers are. From the average non-marketer consumers’ perspective, contextual ads are more relevant and far less creepy feeling than cookie-based behavioral retargeting. Think of it this way:
With behavioral targeting, someone like you may get ads for martech platforms, ad agencies and the like everywhere you go on the web. But as an everyday consumer, you’re actually more interested in knitting. It doesn’t make much sense for you to get ads for Marketo when you are on Knitterly sharing your latest pattern—which could happen when behavioral targeting is being employed.
With contextual targeting, the ads you see are based on the content you are looking at instead of your overall behavior profile. So when you are looking at your knitting blog, you see ads for knitting needles, and when you’re reading up on how to boost the click-through rate on your email newsletters, you see ads for relevant email automation platforms.
People-Based Targeting
The shift to mobile has been hampering the effectiveness of cross-device remarketing for a while now, since most mobile devices and apps don’t accept cookies. This is not to mention that cookies are device-specific, so when someone goes from their work computer to home or switches from desktop to mobile, or even switches between browsers on the same device, the retargeting trail goes cold. It also causes trouble with suppression, so you also end up wasting money on retargeting people who already converted on their other devices. This is where people-based advertising comes and bridges the gap.
Value, Transparency, and Choice Will Move Marketing Forward
While it seems pretty scary right now, keep in mind that cookies are a 25-year-old technology and we’ll definitely find a way to move on. It will take a combination of tactics, but moving forward, the marketing and advertising industry must not only provide more value to consumers from advertising, they must also strike a balance between profit and privacy.
A balance between personalization and privacy appears to be what people want. A recent Harris Poll survey revealed that 63 percent of consumers expect personalization “as a standard of service.” But they also expect and deserve to have the choice to be tracked or not, to get a personalized experience or not, and to see ads or not.
The days of finding workarounds are over. If marketers focus on making advertising more relevant and less invasive, consumers will likely see the value of it an choose to allow it in their digital lives.
No matter what, the consumer needs to be central—as does privacy—in the latest shift in marketing, or there will just be more backlash, more blockers, and more challenges for the industry as a whole.