Cookies, first introduced on Netscape in 1994, have been used to help several organizations improve and customize the user experience on the internet. Authenticating logins or remembering language preferences- the cookies do it all. It has drastically changed the method of integrating customers’ web engagement as an insight for driving business decisions. Marketers have also relied on third-party cookies to track customer activity online for more than two decades, employing cookies for targeting, retargeting, display advertising, and behavioral marketing.
After Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple’s Safari, Google announced that it would stop supporting third-party cookies by 2023, sending shockwaves across the digital marketing industry. Reasons such as increased demand for privacy, increased awareness of the consumer and the terror of data breaches and hacking are the main reasons for developing a cookie-free future.
The increasing need for privacy
While third-party tracking cookies can help improve your online experience, there is rising concern about how consumer data is gathered, retained, and shared. Customers are frequently unaware that their actions are being watched and utilized to promote their businesses. As a result, such tracking is regarded as a violation of consumer privacy and trust, as they may not have given explicit agreement to use their personal data.
Additionally, customers are only aware of the websites they visit and control that data’s processing. Cookie consent mechanisms are provided under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR); however, consumers have limited insight into which businesses are collecting their data after approval.
Google disabled cookies in response to consumer demands for increased privacy and less open data sharing. With Chrome making up 65% of all browser usage, Google’s proposal would spell the end for third-party cookies.
Digital marketing implications
Cookie-based data is utilized for behavioral targeting, remarketing and site retargeting, CRM, frequency monitoring, conversion tracking, targeting, and segmentation.
Site retargeting relies on third-party cookies to determine the appropriate anonymized individuals to target, whereas behavioral segments are mostly cookie-based. The absence of third-party cookies makes giving relevant offers more challenging since algorithms will be less efficient in delivering tailored adverts to consumers, perhaps exposing them to ads for things they are not interested in.
You will only be able to monitor people who clicked on your ad if third-party cookies are used, not those who viewed the ad but did not click. It won’t be easy to justify the performance of digital efforts if multi-touch attribution cannot be tracked without third-party cookies.
Once the cookie ban is in place, most third-party audiences – those whose data is obtained via third-party cookies – will decline rapidly owing to cookie expiration until they are no longer adequately scalable for most media-buying operations. Advertisers must devise alternative prospecting tactics that do not rely on third-party cookies.
Preparing for a cookie-free future
These changes can be overwhelming. However, in this article, we share some practical actions you can take right now to ensure that you are well-positioned when Google’s cookie limits take effect. New technologies and solutions are also available to assist you in navigating a post-cookie world.
1. Make the most of first-party data
- Obtaining first-party data is more critical than ever without third-party cookies. Brands frequently have access to more data than they realize. When a customer takes an action that creates an ongoing relationship with your company, such as signing up for a loyalty program or completing a purchase, you acquire first-party data from that customer.
- Any information on client demographics, behaviors, activities, or interests may be obtained through owned channels, which can be online (websites, applications, CRM, and social media channels) or offline (paper-based surveys, customer surveys, feedback forms, and call centers). And, because the data is acquired from consumers who have previously expressed an interest in communicating with you, it is often regarded as more acceptable than purchasing access to third-party consumer data.
- However, data is only as helpful as how it is used. Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered solutions may assist you in entirely using your first-party data. For instance, you may use machine learning to analyze data and reveal hidden information about your consumers, allowing you to establish exact client segmentation.
- You may tailor your website and marketing messages to make them more appealing to your clients after segmenting them based on their interests and how they engage with you. For example, if they frequently visit your website or app’s “sale” area, display sale products on their homepage or give them push alerts when there is a new offer.
2. Reintroduce contextual targeting
- Contextual targeting, which entails placing the most relevant ad in the proper context based on keywords, subjects, and taxonomy, is the next best choice to cookies-based behavioral targeting.
- With behavioral targeting, a teacher who enjoys gardening may see adverts for teaching supplies while displaying his latest orchid on a hydroponics website. However, with contextual targeting, where advertisements are displayed depending on the content you are seeing, the teacher would see ads for fertilizers while browsing gardening sites and ads for educational technology products while researching ways to improve home-based learning.
- While contextual targeting is beneficial to privacy and can minimize ad fatigue, targeting based just on surface-level keywords and phrases might result in poor ad placement.
- Contextual content such as text, speech, imagery, metadata, and geolocation can be analyzed in real-time and at scale using natural language processing and deep learning algorithms to determine whether the content is positively or negatively linked to your keywords and whether the ad placement is timely and relevant. These AI-enabled devices can grasp nuances of meaning just as well as humans can.
3. Customize your communications based on current client intent
- To increase conversion rates, display the product the consumer is interested in. While particular acts they have taken in the past can provide insight into his aim, they only tell you what they have done and not what they will do in the future.
- However, real-time intent targeting enables you to correctly forecast the complex and often erratic client intent by analyzing billions of consumer data points in real-time across owned channels and external websites using advanced algorithms such as deep learning.
- Deep learning may then uncover trends in product preferences and conversion likelihood based on the recency and frequency of online consumer behaviors, allowing you to personalize messaging for improved engagement and conversions.
- Customers with high intent to convert: For example, Joe has browsed your web page for a soccer ball three times in the last week and added it to his basket yesterday. To encourage him to buy, create a sense of urgency by giving him notifications like “Buy now and receive 20% off!”
Conclusion
Despite the uproar about the potential elimination of third-party cookies, now is an excellent opportunity to reconsider your marketing methods. As customers want to recover their data privacy, the unique approach to bridge the gap between consumer trust and data is to build an intense value exchange based on relevant content and experiences. These tips from AdMedia.com can help you upgrade the user experience and gain consumers in a cookie-free future.