Customer privacy, consent, and trust have been integral to marketers and with the end of third-party cookies, these are an absolute necessity. To understand better, cookies are small bits of information that websites use to collect user data such as browsing history to personalize customer experience.

But, with privacy-first marketing, cookies will soon become a thing of the past. This transition to cookieless marketing represents a significant shift that is reshaping how businesses engage with their audiences online.

While there’s a popular notion that cookieless advertising will negatively impact branding and marketing capabilities, some leaders believe that it is a more authentic approach for advertising solutions.

In this article, we will explore the background, impacts on traditional marketing practices, alternatives, the emerging new world order of cookieless marketing, and the path forward for marketers and advertisers.

Why is there a decline in third-party cookies?

For the last three decades, third-party cookies have been a fundamental tool for digital marketers to track user behavior across websites, personalize ads, and measure ad campaign effectiveness. However, growing concerns about user privacy and regulatory changes, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), have prompted tech giants like Google, Apple, and Mozilla to phase out or block third-party cookies. As much as the demand for personalization, customers now want to have safe interactions with brands which means not sharing their personal information without consent. With first party cookies marketing, brands can ensure authentic collection of data for targeted marketing.

Here is a timeline for sunsetting of third-party cookies:

This shift requires marketers to find new ways to target and engage their audiences while respecting privacy and compliance with evolving regulations. Top names such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Netflix are using first-party data to add value to customer journey.

What does the end of third-party cookies mean for marketing?

Data privacy is a growing concern for 86% of US consumers. Though personalization is an implicit expectation for customers now, they have a bigger concern about the violation of their privacy.

Marketers have relied on third-party data for over three decades now and even today around 81% of businesses depend on it. With the shift to privacy-first advertising and the deprecation of ad IDs, first-party data and user intelligence are becoming the new lifeblood of AdTech.

Let’s look at what this drastic shift means for marketers:

Loss of tracking: Sunsetting third-party cookies means that traditional tracking methods used for retargeting and personalization will become less effective.

Measurement and attribution: Marketers will need to explore alternative methods for measuring ad performance and attributing conversions, moving away from relying solely on cookies.

Data privacy: Marketers must prioritize data privacy and consent, leading to a more transparent and ethical approach to collecting and using consumer data.

User-centric marketing: Cookieless marketing is pushing businesses to adopt user-centric strategies that prioritize creating value and meaningful interactions with customers.

What are the alternatives to third-party cookies?

As marketers embrace marketing in a cookieless world, here are a few top alternatives that will enable marketers to create authentic customer experiences:

Using first-party data: Leveraging first-party data collected directly from customers through website interactions, subscriptions, and loyalty programs will become more crucial for personalization and targeting.

Contextual advertising: Focusing on the content and context of recent user activity to place relevant ads, rather than relying on user behavior, can increase the likelihood of visitors. This is a more personalized and connected way to interact with the audience.

Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC): Proposed by Google as an alternative to third-party cookies, FLoC groups users with similar interests into cohorts, allowing advertisers to target broader audience segments while preserving privacy.

Data clean rooms: Secure environments for data sharing and analysis that ensure privacy compliance while enabling collaboration among marketers and advertisers.

Privacy-centric marketing: Marketers will need to prioritize user consent, transparency, and data protection, building trust with their audiences.

Quality over quantity: Rather than amassing large amounts of data, marketers will focus on high-quality, first-party data to understand customer preferences and deliver relevant content.

Creative content: The emphasis will shift towards creating compelling and contextually relevant content to engage audiences without relying heavily on personalized targeting.

Omnichannel marketing: Marketers will diversify their advertising channels, including social media, email, influencers, and content marketing, to reach their target audience effectively.

What technology is needed for marketing in a cookieless world?

For marketing in 2023 and beyond, marketers are embracing a first-party data strategy to achieve reliable customer insights. Using data management systems such as a Customer Data Platform (CDP) help to build a single, coherent view of each customer and make the data available for targeted marketing campaigns.

Customer Data Platforms enhance the quality of marketing with first-party data in the following ways:

• Automating parts of marketing: A CDP aggregates and organizes customer data across channels, sources, and systems to create unified customer profiles, enabling marketers to set automated next-best moves to align with customer behavior.


• Creating unified customer profiles- As a result of unifying customer data from all online and offline touchpoints, a CDP enables marketers to create highly targeted customer journeys for specific audience segments.


• Effectively turning customer data into actionable- With a 360-degree view of data, marketers get better contextual targeting capabilities, without spending efforts in first collecting data and then making sense from it.


• Increasing data privacy and compliance- A CDP can be utilized by organizations as a means to establish data governance protocols. Any unusual or potentially harmful actions can be detected by utilizing a CDP, enabling organizations to identify and address suspicious activity promptly.


• Eliminating data silos- With a centralized hub for maintaining all data related to user behavior, a CDP ensures that effective data management.

 

Digital strategy experts are recommending marketers add CDPs to their martech to better understand the needs of their customers and build a more truthful relationship. We have experts who can connect with you one-on-one and suggest the roadmap to CDP and the power of activated data.




Conclusion

Transition to a cookieless future presents both challenges and opportunities for marketers. By adapting to this new paradigm with a focus on user privacy, ethical data practices, and creative content, businesses can thrive in the evolving digital marketing landscape while building stronger, trust-based relationships with their customers. The key to success lies in embracing change, staying informed, and prioritizing customer-centric strategies in the post-cookie era.

To kickstart your journey to cookieless attribution, write to us at marketing@altudo.co and we can discuss the possibilities of building privacy-first marketing strategies that will future-proof your business.