How to address the eventual deprecation of third-party cookies.

There is now another instalment in the saga of third-party cookie deprecation.  Google has announced that the new plan is for cookies to be phased out at some point in 2025. Needless to say, the market was not surprised by the news, with comments ranging all the way from formal (“cookie demise delayed again”) to stand-up comedy inspired (“in other news, water is wet”).

There is a lot of speculation about Google’s reasoning for the new delay since Apple has moved ahead with third-party deprecation back in 2020. A crucial bit of insight gleaned during our “From Cookies to People” webinar was that 55% of participants stated they are yet to start implementing any solution to directly address the deprecation of third-party cookies. This is a strong indicator as to why Google keeps pushing the deadline over and over – the market is not yet fully prepared for the changes, and this is surely going to impact Google’s advertising revenue if it prematurely goes ahead with discontinuing third-party cookies.

However, the day will come when third-party cookies will no longer be available to marketers looking to reach audiences. Until then organisations need to mobilise and lay the foundations to mitigate the impact to their marketing efforts. Certainly, there is no silver bullet that will address 100% of the impact, but organisations can implement a number of tactics to mitigate the impact to a certain extent.

Implement a robust first-party data strategy

First-party data is the new currency across the enterprise, not just for the marketing department. Gathering information to create a holistic view of your customer base (both known and prospects/visitors) is a pivotal step in the process. Investing in the creation of the first-party data asset is the cornerstone of the overall mitigation strategy as this enables organisations to offer customers more personalised experiences, and a better integration with publishers and walled gardens in the media space by utilising target and suppression audiences without relying on cookies.

Data hygiene and enhancement

Data hygiene and enhancement are key for organisations embarking on the process to build their first-party data asset. Data enhancement can help speed up the acquisition process by providing valuable insights for prospects that can help drive them down the conversion funnel whilst a robust hygiene process can ensure the data captured is of high quality before it enters the organisation’s system of record.

Identity graphs

Investing in an identity graph that spans offline and online domains helps create a more holistic view of customer interactions. In addition, an integrated identity graph can be used to enable activations in the publisher ecosystem using common identifiers (e.g. ID5, UID 2.0 etc.)

Deploy a customer data platform

Deploying a customer data platform helps organisations capitalise on their first-party data asset. The capabilities a CDP enables allow companies to offer more personalised experiences and streamline the activation of data and audiences across multiple channels. In addition, the native media connectors most platforms offer can streamline the media activation process directly from the platform without any intermediary.

Cross-domain identity

Emerging technologies in the cross-domain ID space can be effective in media targeting. Using a cross-domain identity provider such as Metarouter can provide insights on the customer’s walled garden IDs at the point of engagement, thus enabling better targeting for activation or suppression use cases.

Work with your media agency

Work with your media agency to devise a cohesive strategy around your media landscape. Prioritise the use of first-party audiences for media purchasing and ensure you maximise the utility of your audiences for suppression, not just for buying. Using suppression audiences is an often-overlooked use case that can drastically reduce media waste whilst enhancing the customer experience. (No one wants to be targeted for a product they’ve just bought.) Finally, prioritise the use of built-in connectors from your platforms (e.g. CDP) to synchronise audiences to the target platforms for activation to realise efficiencies in the overall process and ensure your first-party data is leveraged as soon as it becomes available.

Conclusion

Regardless of the delays, third-party cookies will eventually crumble. The additional time afforded by these delays means organisations can better prepare their strategies to mitigate the impact. In essence, there is no 100% mitigation strategy for the loss of cookies, but Acxiom has devised an extensive portfolio of tactics to address this. The steps outlined above offer an approach on how to mitigate the impact for your organisation in a structured manner. However, building a first-party data asset can take time; as such, the sooner you act the better prepared you will be when the time (eventually) comes.