{"id":110035,"date":"2020-02-04T18:55:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-04T23:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/digital-advertising-in-a-cookie-less-future\/"},"modified":"2024-12-21T05:50:14","modified_gmt":"2024-12-21T10:50:14","slug":"digital-advertising-in-a-cookie-less-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/en-gb\/insights\/blog\/paid-media\/digital-advertising-in-a-cookie-less-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital advertising in a cookie-less future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cookies enable various experiences we\u2019ve come to expect as users of the internet: remaining logged in to our email accounts; keeping our preferred settings on the sites we visit most; our favourite brands remembering our shipping address for purchases.<\/p>\n

Cookies have also been the primary mechanism that allows marketers to find users based on their online traits and behaviours and deliver advertising to them on the web which, in turn, provides more relevant advertising to individuals. That\u2019s all changing\u2014and rapidly\u2014with many industry trades declaring, finally, the \u201cdeath of the cookie\u201d despite its long reign at the top of the digital marketing tracking hierarchy for 20+ years.<\/p>\n

\"Dialog<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s world, privacy\u2014including being tracked by third-party cookies\u2014has come to the surface as a top priority among internet users. We have written about it following the implementation of GDPR in the EU<\/a>, and more recently after Apple\u2019s ITP2.2<\/a> announcement. Privacy is actually Apple\u2019s key differentiator in a market where its competitors include similar-but-not-the-same companies like Google. It was natural that they would lead the charge on cutting out cookies, as they had far less financial interest in cookie-based advertising than “the other guys”. In fact, they\u2019ve stated that “privacy is a fundamental human right<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

Following the demand from consumers (and Apple\u2019s lead), Google is also getting into the cookie-less conversation with its February 4 Chrome 80 release<\/a>. With this release, Chrome will no longer send third-party cookies across sites unless developers have specifically coded which cookies can work\/are allowed across websites.<\/p>\n

The impact to digital advertising<\/h2>\n

While we, as consumers, love that the tides are turning and we\u2019re gaining more control over our digital privacy, that very same appreciation for privacy is likely going to change the experience we\u2019ve come to expect, as consumers, from brands\u2019 advertising. The problem with granting full, cookie-less privacy is that we, as users want to have our (ahem) cookies and eat them too. Full blocking of all cookies means we\u2019re back in the dark ages, where we\u2019d have to log into everything, all the time, and type our address every single time we buy something online\u2014and all digital ads revert to barely-targeted, not-personally-relevant intrusions in our internet lives. Doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

Well\u2026 not exactly.<\/p>\n

In fact, marketers have been dealing with the crumbling cookie (hah!) for some time already. One study by ad server FlashTalking found that a whopping 64% of cookies were blocked or deleted by browsers<\/a>\u2014in Q4 of 2017<\/em>! We\u2019re two years past that, but the decline of cookies doesn\u2019t seem to be stopping anyone from spending in digital:<\/p>\n

\"Chart<\/p>\n

Agencies, in-house brand marketing teams, publishers, ad tech, and ad platforms have all been thinking through the decline of cookie-based marketing. There are even multi-disciplinary think-tanks<\/a> dedicated to solving how we combine good advertising with good privacy policies.<\/p>\n

Cookies have been the go-to solution, but several other options exist as well. Many are already being utilised\u2014which means digital is still effective\u2014and align well with the growth we\u2019re seeing in digital ad spend.<\/p>\n

So, what are the options and how are marketers proceeding?<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n

    Digital (or device) fingerprinting<\/h3>\n

    Fingerprinting is a methodology for probabilistically identifying a user without cookies by combining a series of signals that, when combined, are likely to identify a unique user and assign that user a hashed user ID. These non-cookie signals are things like device, operating system, browser, IP address, time zone, and language settings.<\/p>\n

    \"Fingerprint<\/p>\n

    Because this tracking isn\u2019t cookie-based, many ad tech companies went all-in on fingerprinting as a solution to cookie death. It\u2019s easy to find ad tech providers that will allow you to target with fingerprinting, and with generally good results compared to cookie-based targeting.<\/p>\n

    However, given the larger trends in privacy, such as GDPR and the forthcoming CCPA, it\u2019s probable that fingerprinting will go the way of the cookie. And probably sooner, rather than later: trends indicate that the number of new companies coming out with these types of targeting models are on the decline. For now, though, it\u2019s not restricted by either law or browsers, so this is one route to consider in the immediate term. A cautious advertiser, however, would look to this as an interim solution while still keeping a future focus on planning for alternate solutions.<\/li>\n

  2. \n

    Native + contextual<\/h3>\n

    Many people (including my grandpa) would tell you “if it ain\u2019t broke, don\u2019t fix it”. And honestly, sometimes a good ol\u2019 contextually targeted and\/or native ad will do well for your campaign goals. Native ads and contextual ads tend to perform well because the user is (usually) actively engaged with the content that the ad appears on\/in. And if the ad content is relevant to the editorial content the user is engaged with, they\u2019re more likely to find it relevant to them at that time than if the ad appeared out of context, on a different property, or inside different content.<\/p>\n

    However, advertisers shouldn\u2019t expect these ads to drive highly efficient direct response goals. Native and contextual are solid options when you\u2019re looking for upper-funnel KPIs such as increased reach and frequency.<\/li>\n

  3. \n

    Ad ops + AI<\/h3>\n

    One of the most effective ways we continue to drive outrageous performance for our clients is through the combination of human and machine. Again, part of this does involve going back to basics, but with different reasons for doing so\u2014and different expected outcomes.<\/p>\n

    Deep rigour in ad ops is the foundational element: you must start with the creation and trafficking of campaigns sliced by geography, publisher, placement, creative, user intent, objective, etc. Then you turn those campaigns over to machine learning, and allow it to find the common patterns that drive performance.<\/p>\n

    \"Man<\/p>\n

    It\u2019s a lot of legwork on the front end, but breaking apart campaigns in this way from the beginning gives the us more information than we\u2019d have otherwise. And this solution provides no intrusion on privacy and no risk of losing out on performance due to the lack of cookies.<\/p>\n

    Many of Google\u2019s advertising releases in the past year have been founded on AI-driven pattern recognition and optimisation<\/a>. However, Google does not recommend the up-front ad ops work, but would rather have you load everything together and let AI sort it out\u2014giving Google more information about what works and what doesn\u2019t, but making that information harder to discern for the advertiser. This is where good agency partners come into play, guiding brands through all the critical changes in the publisher, vendor, and ad tech space that happen constantly.<\/li>\n

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