Going on a Cookie Diet: The Third-Party Cookie-less Guide to Navigating Digital Marketing

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you have probably heard about Google eliminating third-party cookies. With a change as big as this, what is a digital marketer to do? What is the impact on your current situation?

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Cookies have been helping advertisers store data on potential leads’ web experiences across different sites, but negative consumer feedback to cookies (“creepy” customer experience where they feel like they were being followed all over the place, feels like a violation of their privacy, etc.) have made governments like the EU and the state of California respond with policy reforms such as GDPR and CCPA. Proactively, the big data gatekeepers of Facebook and Google are abandoning cookies that were once foundational to digital advertising.

From what we can tell, the transition has already begun. Apple already rolled out ATT with their most recent 14.5 iOS update with apps actively asking for permission from its users to track their activity across websites and other companies’ apps. Most marketers have “opt-in” as part of their customer journey, also. If you are doing better than 40% opting in, then apparently, you are an expert already. (Please get in touch, I have questions.)

Third-Party Cookie Loss: How Will It Affect Me?

Third-party cookie loss will have a massive impact on your digital marketing — everything from ad spend, campaign attribution, acquisition, and privacy will be affected.

1. CEOs: will notice a top-line revenue drop of 15% over time.
2. CMOs: up to 10% less will be spent on ads as the provable RoAS drops.
3. Marketers: Return-on-Ad-Spend (RoAS) will drop 20% or more as KPIs deteriorate
4. Practitioners: Programmatic advertising that relies on third-party cookie data will see a 70% drop in attribution for ad spend as that data source slowly evaporates.

Without any preventive actions taken to address the third-party cookie loss, this might be a blueprint of how most businesses will suffer in the coming years. It’s not going to be pretty!

CMOs are already seeing budgets diminish as companies spend more conservatively through the uncertainty despite digital advertising being crucial as ever to reach audiences — especially for eCommerce.

So that’s the way the cookie crumbles… but your business doesn’t have to! Here are a few guides to navigate the digital marketing space in this era:

Switch gears to a first-party data strategy using Customer Data Platforms (CDPs).

1. Amp up on your First-Party Data Incrementally and Contextually

With this new way of cookie-less marketing, teams will have a new way to communicate with customers in deeper and more valuable ways. Businesses call this contextual customer journeys where you grow the view of the customer progressively, kind of like you would dating. First, you find the first name, so then you see the people. Then you might get a phone number; then you might get to go out and meet. This will increase their trust in the customer experience. Customer experience will also improve as with every capture of information; there must be a value exchange at the touchpoint.

First-party data will commonly be used to target (rather than retarget) advertising. Having the best possible historical data to work from can help provide insights when it forms your advertising strategy’s new backbone, so it’s not too late to start. As early as now, encourage visitors to sign in and give consent to first-party data collection. This tactic will help your marketing team ensure accurate customer insights to drive more seamless customer experiences and establish that trust with the customer.

2. Revise your attribution reporting because it can be political

It’s time to re-evaluate whether you’re still getting accurate attribution data and whether your attribution model will need an overhaul. The inability to get cross-site data from third-party cookies is probably already affecting your ability to understand your ads’ impact, even if you do not see the full extent of that data loss yet. I have already noticed some changes in Facebook Ad performance. Some common attribution questions to consider include:

· Are they making an impression on viewers who may not take action at the moment?

· Are we launching effective, real-time advertising to the right audience?

· What percentage of my web traffic uses non-Chrome browsers?

· Is Apple’s ITP and other privacy changes limiting my cookie durations? Is this causing me to overestimate traffic and influence?

3. Review your spending and performance in shorter interactions

Suppose your advertising strategy relies on third-party cookies to establish the effectiveness, and you’re not able to measure success. In that case, it may be time to re-evaluate how those marketing dollars are spent. Calculating RoAS may be problematic if you rely on impressions for behavioral ad performance rather than actual conversions. But contextual advertisements (i.e., tied to keywords and content) or ads focused on returning audiences (using first-party data) offer better results that are measurable today. You will probably have to roll up performance to the degree that you might miss the details. So, the quick sprints will keep you going in the right direction.

VIEWN, as forward-thinking technologists, is ready for these changes to the customer experience and related data degradation to your metrics. I see enterprise teams needing to evaluate customer data platform (CDP) technologies for their advanced segmentation capabilities. We are using our CDP and connecting it to artificial intelligence (AI) models that look at the unique factors within the order, customer, and campaign data. Then we draw the key segments that comprise the persona. This layering of AI-enabled target persona adds needed depth you need for interacting with your customers.

The insights from the customer personas, of course, are then amplified throughout the organization (we call it “customer empathy”), which needs to align with marketing and sales, create personalized content, and set better timing within iterations. Afraid that the cookie diet will make you crash? Let us at VIEWN help you.