I played it at camp as a child. A bunch of kids sit in a circle. One person starts by whispering a sentence in the next person’s ear, and that person passes what he or she heard to the next person, and on and on until it gets back to the original person. It’s always comical because somewhere in that process the message loses most, if not all, of its meaning. It gets “lost in translation.” In this game, no one wins or loses, but the fun is in the silly humour found between the original message and the final message.
But when that same issue occurs in an industry where the spend is expected to reach $90 billion, no one is laughing.
Advertising works because there is an even value exchange between people, brands, and publishers. That is the case whether you are talking about newspaper, TV, or display advertising.
- People have access to mostly free content, websites, and social platforms
- Advertisers can reach their desired audiences
- Publishers monetise their content
Within digital advertising, disruptions to that value exchange are occurring. Whether it’s Safari and Firefox blocking cookies, Apple’s intelligent tracking prevention, Google’s changes to third-party cookies, or Google’s changes to ad serving technology, these disruptions are changing the media landscape as many of us know it.
Change can be hard, but with change comes innovation, and we believe the change is long overdue.
Reliance on third-party cookies and the multiple cookie syncing processes required to support the mechanics of programmatic media are like the telephone game and the message gets “lost in translation.”
Third-party cookies have always been messy from a targeting and measurement perspective. They are set on the browser of a device and are not individual identifiers.
The cookie syncing processes that make it work today are not transparent. Ask anyone who has tried to solve an issue during a campaign.
When the cookie was created in 1994, Lou Montullyi’s intention was “to create websites that had ‘memory’ for individual users.” Cookies were not intended to be a mechanism for cross-site tracking. Ad tracking via cookies has been a hot topic since 1996, so we shouldn’t be surprised that 25 years later it’s finally coming to an end.
It’s also important to note that although Chrome has more than half the share of the desktop user market, Safari has more than 60% of the mobile browser share. Safari has been out of the third- party cookie business for years as 60% of mobile users are not reachable using third-party cookies.
While we could hear a collective sigh of relief across the industry when Google delayed the deprecation of third- party cookies, it creates a false sense of security as marketing and advertising solutions have already been impacted for several years. Relevant personalisation, accurate measurement, and great customer experience are getting harder to execute effectively.
As we look across the capabilities that are emerging to support the next generation of advertising, the common denominator is that a brand’s first-party, consented data will become the language we all speak. First-party data will be the new currency that runs the emerging media landscape.
2021 and 2022 will be test and learn years, but I would warn marketers to avoid creating new third-party dependencies rather than focusing on a first-party solution that benefits from interoperability and scale across partners. Many third-party solutions may not survive in a more consent-based ecosystem, and first-party solutions put marketers in control. It’s your data, one of the most important assets for your business.
Brands that invest now in a robust first-party identity solution will be more resilient and ready to deliver the consented, personalised experiences people expect. Brands must:
- Ensure an excellent experience across all channels to minimise opt-outs and unsubscribes.
- Ensure no data leakage across all interactions with customers and prospects.
- Honour people’s desire to be in better control of their privacy.
- Focus on compelling offers and interesting content that create incentives for people to make them want to interact, engage and share their personally identifiable information (PII). It’s critical to create a value exchange with customers and prospects.
Conclusion
Acxiom has been helping brands build and manage privacy-compliant, first-party identity solutions for decades. Our financial services clients spend years perfecting their matching rules for offline marketing. As the new media landscape emerges, we have expanded our solution to ensure a future-proof approach that delivers an enterprise-wide offline and online view of customers and prospects without third-party cookies. Our clients can now connect their complex individual, household, account, and line-of- business relationships with all the rich digital signals across owned and paid media.
