There was a time that cookieless advertising would have seemed a laughable prospect. The new paradigm of a "Cookieless Future" has changed the marketing landscape, and now what once seemed a far-fetched idea is a rapidly approaching new standard. Experts predict that this will be the future of advertising because of evolving privacy regulations, consumer ad bloat, and the anything-as-a-service nature of the retail world.
While some businesses see the end of cookie-based advertising as a sort of advertising doomsday, this is far from the case. It is, however, imperative that businesses set in place infrastructure to help them adapt to the changing climate of digital retail advertising, whether by creating their own Retail Media Networks or pivoting to take advantage of valuable first-party data before it becomes a disaster scenario.
Is cookieless advertising truly the dearth of content that businesses fear? The short answer? No, and in many ways, if this is the future of advertising, it affords businesses many new opportunities and exciting potential for increased profit margins, closed-loop processes, and increased customer engagement. Innovative companies can find their own ad spending easier to identify and manage when cost-to-results are more straightforward to interpret.
Will this new future of advertising change things? Absolutely, but we must always be ready for that change in the digital world. The reliance on third-party data may seem to make this transition an insurmountable challenge, but nothing could be further from the truth.
From Revolution to Evolution
Once, the advent of cookies completely transformed the entire digital marketing landscape in a way that few other advances can match. This multifaceted approach allowed retailers to see what their customers were interested in while also making consumer-facing advertisements more relevant. The dual-sided approach changed advertising from a broad, almost brute-force effort to something that could be tailored to individual customers. The results were naturally game-changing.
While cookies have become so ubiquitous and necessary in online markets that it’s hard to even imagine a digital landscape without them, conditions have created the need for another evolution in advertising in a post-cookie world.
What does that landscape look like?
The Creative Approach
Advertisers have several options in the wake of cookies drying up, from relying on first-party data to gated content and more. However, each of these has undesirable qualities and benefits to be explored. As always, more data means a more complete picture, but the truth is that advertisers are still adapting to this new world. A holistic approach may be advisable in some cases, but the potential pitfalls bear consideration when adapting.
First-Party Advertisers
First-party advertisers are one of the most promising options for where to turn in a cookieless world. The potential here is encouraging for businesses able to implement first-party advertising networks. While not quite so freely available as third-party cookies, in this case, the retailer has a more direct line of communication to the customer’s needs and wants, as well as relevant items such as purchase history, direct user feedback, and user-identifiable information.
Several marketing giants such as Facebook (Meta), Walmart, and Amazon already use first-party retail networks to their advantage, generating significant amounts of revenue and usable data from their adverts. However, adapting to this data collection form could be better for many businesses. Some 60% of businesses still need to do more to pivot adequately toward first-party retail media networks or some other appropriate measure to adapt to the oncoming demise of cookie-based advertising.
Google (among others) recommends switching to first-party data, which is helpful. First-party data is gathered in direct contact with the customer, via forms and purchase histories and more, and so has the potential to provide a keen insight into the customer’s journey. Strong retail media networks are more likely to yield a deeper understanding of the customer’s experience from ad impression through to purchase.
Creative Automation
Unfortunately, many businesses feel like the retirement of cookies makes it impossible to tailor ads toward specific audiences quickly. However, it is more to do with insufficient architecture to enable scaling, rather than an inherent fault of the new marketing landscape. Creative Automation, for example, is a cost-effective way of creating advert variations to meet countless different needs in a cookieless world. As an alternative to dynamic display ads, Creative Automation provides a vehicle for machine learning to serve relevant ads based on a user’s current activity.
Privacy Meets Customisation
It is, at times, an exceedingly difficult tightrope to walk customers want more privacy and yet want ad content that is relevant to their interests. This can be difficult to accomplish without first-party content, but the challenges are great even with it. What do you do with the first-party data if your company has relied solely on third-party cookies for thirty years?
The simple answer is: adapt. Privacy regulations are changing, and the fact is that cookies are set to retire from the game entirely. Learning how to interpret first-party content, and interacting directly with the customer’s journey, is essential, even if it feels like consumers want the impossible (privacy with tailored content).
Consent = Content
Innovation should be the goal, not the barrier. Suppose we are relying on customers to engage in order to provide data actively. In that case, retailers are responsible for creating effective first-party content now, something in which the customer will actively want to participate. Relying on old methods won’t work as consumer consent becomes the focus of B2C interactions.
If you want your customers to surrender identifying information you can use in your adverts willingly, you have to create something more enticing than stock-standard surveys and gated content. While this is still possible in the cookieless digital landscape, thriving in this new landscape requires a more innovative approach.
Putting It All Together
“That’s the way it’s always been done” is a poor substitute for proper planning and interoperability. Adjusting to the cookieless advertising future can be challenging but is by no means impossible, and in many ways, it affords opportunities not readily available in current marketing dynamics.
For brands who want a deeper understanding of people and how these changes can mean something exciting for the future, Acxiom has the insights and creative solutions to meet the shifting retail environment. We connect brands with people and businesses with understanding so that the whole retail world can benefit from the ethical implementation of data and technology.
As trends and technologies evolve, marketers must adapt their approach to measurement. The rise of cloud platforms, cookieless tracking, and omnichannel strategies have all transformed the marketing ecosystem. To stay on top of these changes, marketers must change the way they measure the success of their campaigns. By staying current with the latest trends and technologies, you can measure the effectiveness of your campaigns and gain valuable insights.