How to navigate a cookie-less world

The abil­i­ty to track cus­tomers as they browse the web could soon become a thing of the past for mar­keters. Google is lay­ing the ground­work for a future with­out third-par­ty cook­ies, while Apple’s attack on app usage track­ing via the unique iden­ti­fi­er for adver­tis­ers (IDFA) assigned to each of its devices is lim­it­ing firms’ capac­i­ty to mon­i­tor cus­tomers’ online activ­i­ties. 

These devel­op­ments are the result of a back­lash against such sur­veil­lance from con­sumers, who are becom­ing ever more aware of how much valu­able data they have been giv­ing away.

Apple’s iOS 14.5 update in April oblig­ed iPhone apps to start seek­ing per­mis­sion from users to track their online move­ments through their devices’ IDFAs. The mobile oper­at­ing system’s default state has, in effect, changed from opt­ed in to opt­ed out of track­ing. Only 13% of iPhone and iPad users had opt­ed in by the end of May, based on fig­ures com­piled by app mar­ket­place Flur­ry. 

Busi­ness­es are hav­ing to adapt to this severe lim­i­ta­tion on their abil­i­ty to fol­low con­sumers’ dig­i­tal foot­prints. Three-quar­ters of mar­keters respond­ing to a poll con­duct­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2020 by the Mobile Mar­ket­ing Asso­ci­a­tion and Apps­Fly­er agreed that both Apple’s and Google’s deci­sions would reduce pub­lish­ers’ adver­tis­ing rev­enues, for instance.

Despite this, the ear­ly indi­ca­tions are that few com­pa­nies are well pre­pared for these changes. Only a third of mar­keters say the brands they work with have made plans for a post-cook­ie future, accord­ing to research con­duct­ed by the World Adver­tis­ing Research Cen­ter (WARC) in 2020. So what should those oth­er two-thirds do?

From third-party to first-party data

Ebay’s gen­er­al man­ag­er of UK adver­tis­ing, Har­mo­ny Mur­phy, acknowl­edges the prob­lem but is see­ing it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty too. While third-par­ty data has been a main­stay of the mar­ket­ing indus­try for more than 20 years, the move to first-par­ty data should be seen as a chance to improve adver­tis­ing, she argues.

“This moves mar­keters from being less sub­jec­tive about that data to being more objec­tive. Using first-par­ty data pro­vides a lot more rel­e­vance because it’s com­ing straight from the source,” Mur­phy says.

Some of the UK’s biggest pub­lish­ers and adver­tis­ers have joined forces in a bid to har­ness the pow­er of first-par­ty data. One such col­lab­o­ra­tion is the Ozone Project, which claims to offer brands the abil­i­ty to reach 99% of the UK’s online adults “with trust and trans­paren­cy” by com­bin­ing the read­er­ships of pub­lish­ers such as Guardian Media Group, Tele­graph Media Group and Bauer Media. (News UK, the par­ent organ­i­sa­tion of the news­pa­pers pub­lish­ing Racon­teur reports, is also a mem­ber of the project.)

Data collection challenges

Yet not all organ­i­sa­tions are able to col­lect reli­able first-par­ty data, because they don’t have the infra­struc­ture in place to gath­er that lev­el of detailed infor­ma­tion on con­sumers or, if they do col­lect it, they can’t then parse it cor­rect­ly. Just over 40% of mar­keters respond­ing to the WARC sur­vey did not agree that their com­pa­nies had a plan for active­ly col­lect­ing first-par­ty data from cus­tomers.

Despite this, some ad indus­try insid­ers are san­guine about the post-cook­ie future. Matt Dai­ley, chief per­for­mance offi­cer at agency net­work Havas Media, is one of them. He says that the upheaval pro­vides “the oppor­tu­ni­ty for those of us who want to be hon­est to stop pre­tend­ing about the all-per­va­sive pow­er of dig­i­tal. We can actu­al­ly get back to some prop­er media-plan­ning prin­ci­ples that have always held true, but have been bas­tardised some­what.”

Dai­ley, who thinks that some brands have become too reliant on cook­ie data that can often be flawed, adds: “From a plan­ning, chan­nel-allo­ca­tion, val­ue and mea­sure­ment point of view, it’s going to help us cor­rect the bal­ance.”

Make do and mend

For brands eager to max­imise their reach, Dai­ley sug­gests that search can be a use­ful replace­ment for third-par­ty cook­ies and app track­ing. “Search has always been under­played, because peo­ple think of intent as: ‘I want to buy a phone on O2.’ But there’s so much gener­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty fur­ther up the fun­nel where peo­ple are demon­strat­ing intent,” he says.

Some high-lev­el data on demo­graph­ics will still be avail­able, Dai­ley points out, mean­ing that it will become more impor­tant to go back to core prin­ci­ples of mar­ket­ing, such as rel­e­van­cy, qual­i­ty and effec­tive sto­ry­telling. Retool­ing cam­paigns to focus less on fre­quen­cy and more on qual­i­ty will reap ben­e­fits, he pre­dicts. 

“There are peo­ple bury­ing their heads in the sand and say­ing: ‘We just need to find anoth­er way of repli­cat­ing cook­ies.’ Those peo­ple are going to strug­gle, because Google has said that it won’t sup­port any tech­nol­o­gy that sim­ply tries to repli­cate cook­ies,” Dai­ley explains.

For those busi­ness­es that want to retain an ele­ment of the dig­i­tal approach they have spent the past decade or more hon­ing, there are oppor­tu­ni­ties. For instance, long before the begin­ning of the end of the cook­ie era, eBay used its first-par­ty data to help sup­port cus­tomers. 

“When tar­get­ing, this means using that first-par­ty data in a real­ly intri­cate way to ensure that you’re enrich­ing that con­sumer jour­ney,” says Mur­phy, who adds that the free­dom from a bom­bard­ment of ads is a boon for cus­tomers. “It keeps them with­in the ecosys­tem to a degree that they want to be with­in it.” 

Ebay is not alone. Adobe’s head of prod­uct mar­ket­ing, Ryan Fleisch, says: “We saw the writ­ing on the wall with some of these changes and the need to evolve to include more durable iden­ti­fiers. There will def­i­nite­ly be short-term pain for a lot of those com­pa­nies that feel they need to reimag­ine dif­fer­ent pieces of their busi­ness.” 

But he adds: “If you’re one of the brands that effec­tive­ly man­ages that over the next 12 months or so, you’ll be leapfrog­ging many of your com­peti­tors that won’t be ready.”