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COOKIELESS WORLD

Big opportunities for marketers 

Author

Cookies have been the default technology for accountability and planning for marketers for the digital-diverse media landscape.

The clock is ticking for marketers who are not prepared

Apple’s Safari was the first to deprecate cookies and by 2023, Google Chrome will become the last major browser to phase out third-party cookies. Some alternative routes are already known, such as the importance of nurturing first-party data sources. Others are still in development, such as Google’s Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoCs), each with different potentials for scale, levels of investment needed, and infrastructure requirements. Regardless, with the number of potential cookie alternatives, it will have a massive impact advertisers’, publishers’, and agencies’ operations. We need to plan for the disruption tomorrow by rethinking data strategies today. By working together with analytics, agency and ad tech providers, brands can take control of their digital ad investment and measurement.

Looking forward in the future for brands 

We need to prepare and have a transformative mindset when reviewing current processes to fit the future. However, some advertisers still have a limited understanding of what is happening (60% of dentsu’s clients declare they are not familiar or are unsure about the consequences).

For others who understand the issue, there is a lot of uncertainty around the implications towards marketing and how to prepare for the upcoming changes. The end of support for third-party cookies impacts organisations across several dimensions.

  • Increased dominance for wall gardens

  • Reduced visibility of the consumer journey

  • Weaker targeting and retargeting

  • Reach and frequency compromised

  • New paradigms in attribution and performance measurement

4 strategies for the cookie-less world

Strategy 1

Evolving data management and collection

It is imperative to evolve your current tag setup to measure conversions even without third-party cookies, shifting to first-party cookies and identifiers, whether client-side or server-side. In addition, to ensure you can differentiate tracking according to user consent, use a Consent Management Platform can help your organisation process user data on-site in a compliant way. Other applicable technologies depend on your current software.  For instance, Google offers solutions to prevent gaps in measurement such as Enhanced Conversions, which uses hashed first party customer data rather than relying on cookies or IDFAs. We also recommend marketers upgrade to Google Analytics 4 to maximise the full potential of their Google partnership.

Strategy 2

Leverage on closed ecosystems or unique/shared identity solutions (IDs)

Closed ecosystems like Facebook and Amazon stand to benefit from cookies’ demise, where they off accurate and unique user data, and can match advertiser first-party data to enhance personalization and targeting. Alternatively, many advertisers have invested in CRM solutions to secure relevant customer information. To identify users across environments, advertisers have started conversations with publishers about setting up trusted second-party data exchange. This interesting approach could be valuable in the mid/long term, although it is susceptible to the same privacy compliance issues currently encountered using second party.

Strategy 3

Implement a contextual based planning process

With the reduced visibility of the consumer journey, we will need to find alternative ways to determine the placement of ads at the right place and time. A contextual advertising tool can use the information available — such as keywords, page types, phrases, and media channels — to understand the context of the page and provide the most relevant and engaging communications without the use of cookies. These contextualising factors can also include positive connotations (areas to link the advertising to) as well as negative ones to promote brand safety. Contextual targeting has many benefits for advertisers across display and programmatic: message receptiveness, brand suitability, and advanced targeting opportunities. Contextual targeting is particularly critical considering the increasing scale challenge faced by marketers. Moreover, new technical solutions are emerging to enhance relevance within an environment, such as conversational advertising.

Strategy 4

The need for a hybrid model performance measurement

The end of third-party cookies introduces new challenges to marketing performance measurement such as how brands measure performance.

Robust measurement can still be achieved through:

  • In-platform attribution is a good way to apply data-driven attribution models. Through tags deployed on website, many brands already have the building blocks to use in-platform attribution and only need a data audit and some platform configuration to ensure the accuracy of the data collected.

  • Data clean rooms are a necessity especially if we need to build insights from a platform where multiple parties can combine data without revealing user-level information. Use cases include running viewability, frequency capping, and reach custom requests.

  • Incrementality testing to understand the incremental performance of a marketing tactic.

  • Media mix modelling examines the relationship between marketing investment and outcome, whilst accounting for the conversions.

  • A clear KPI framework allows linking of media metrics to customer-centric metrics like lifetime value or retention rate.

Authors:

Hemant Menon

Performance Marketing Lead, Media Group, dentsu Singapore


Jonathan Edwards

Head of Data and Transformation, dentsu APAC


Jeremy Lim

Marketing Effectiveness and Insights Lead, Media Group, dentsu Singapore


Vanessa Woon

Associate Manager Marketing Effectiveness and Insights, Media Group, dentsu Singapore

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