Retirement Planning for Third-Party Cookies

Have you ever shopped for shoes online and then been targeted with a promotion for the same pair on another site? This is made possible by web cookies, which are small pieces of data stored on your computer. They enable content and promotions to be tailored based on your browsing history.

First-party cookies are created by the website you’re currently visiting. These cookies allow website owners to collect data, remember language settings, and perform other useful functions that provide a good user experience.

Third-party cookies are created by websites other than the one you’re visiting. They track your activity across the websites you visit and serve up marketing based on that.

Privacy Over Personalization: Phasing Out Third-Party Cookies

Safari and Firefox have already blocked third-party cookies in the name of consumer privacy. Google Chrome has announced it will follow suit by 2022. Now, think about the tailored shopping experience we mentioned above. How will eliminating third-party cookies impact the personalization you’ve grown used to?

Since Google Chrome owns 70% of the browser market, their adoption of this policy will essentially remove third-party cookies from the web. It’s a huge part of their advertising business.

This has many implications across every industry that conducts online business, including healthcare. However, the announcement isn’t really surprising. Various recent data breaches, such as Facebook/Cambridge Analytica, have put into question how consent factors into online advertising. As a result, measures have already been put in place to protect consumer data:

• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
• California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)—Check out our POV on CCPA

How Will This Impact Your Brand? What Are Your Options?

You may be wondering how this will impact your marketing — and how you can get ahead of it. The good news is that no changes in your targeting approach need to be made just yet as Google won’t remove cookies until 2022. That being said, here are a few healthcare-related avenues you could explore:

Create relationships directly with patients through first-party data (rather than relying on cookies) in formats such as:

• CRM sign-up
• Co-pay card activation and usage
• Patient call centers where a 1:1 relationship exists between the patient and support specialist

Partner with the likes of Facebook, Google, and Amazon (the big 3) to acquire patient information via third-party cookies (while they still exist) to establish a first-party relationship with your customer

• Use the big 3 as a promotional tool to drive patients to your site where a 1:1 relationship can be built (and you don’t rely on third-party cookies as much). This will allow you to generate first-party data based on patient activity on your site, which can guide future interactions. This will now be your identity backbone

Collect and analyze consumer behaviors to create predictable and/or probable behavior patterns:

• Linking these two together will allow you to create audience quality scores that help guide when a patient is likely to engage with your marketing collateral and why
• One example would be charting a patient’s behaviors prior to downloading a co-pay card. By understanding their predetermined and probable steps leading to that purchase point, we can seed marketing along the way
• Another example would be partnering with companies who specialize in healthcare. For instance, TI Health’s coupon intender program targets patients interested in over-the-counter drug discounts with contextual messaging on Rx co-pay cards

Closing Thoughts

The online experience is going to change. We’re used to getting what we want very quickly through highly targeted advertising that uses cookies to tailor our experience. If you’re on Facebook or Instagram and you start seeing content that isn’t applicable to what you want, you leave. As 2022 approaches, we need to brace ourselves for this new marketing reality. It means accepting a higher bounce rate from sites and lower conversion percentages in the absence of third-party cookies.

However, it is not all doom and gloom. We have the ability to form personal relationships with our patients through first-party data. Please reach out to us to learn more about how you can start building your identity backbone before third-party cookies are retired.

For any questions regarding Google’s third-party cookie policy, please reach out to Todd Weinstein, Director of Digital Strategy at Patients & Purpose.