Today’s consumers expect personalized experiences—but marketers have increasingly relied on big platforms and cookies-based targeting to deliver. Faced with the loss of intent data, brands that don’t have adequate first-party insights will find it increasingly difficult to deliver the experiences their customers demand.
If you rely significantly on programmatic ad targeting or third-party intent data in your marketing strategy, the transition may prove to be challenging—but we offer up a few insights to ensure you’re ready for the change.
Ethan Hays, GM PathIQ: Marketers are facing a really significant challenge with the loss of third-party cookies because the entire advertising ecosystem, as it currently exists, has really been built around third party cookies. And so the fact that they are about to disappear in a year or so is going to bring some really significant challenges to global brands.
Where Do Marketers Go From Here?
Jonathan Berthold, PathIQ’s VP Customer Acquisition: Third-party cookies have made marketers too reliant on tracking platforms, analytics, and some of the things that don’t really uncover the true narrative of a marketing campaign.
Manuel Pena, PathIQ’s Senior Manager of Paid Media: So not only will marketers have to adjust to this huge change, but also the companies that we work with—Facebook, Google, etc. They all have to rethink the way that they’re going to allow us to use them to reach the segments that we want.
Daniel Sendecki, PathIQ’s VP Content: The death of the third party cookie, ultimately portends greater authenticity in the relationships that we have with one another, as brands and consumers. It decommodifies our interactions and marks a return to form of [marketers] providing something of explicit value to [our customers]. You give me your data and I will provide something usable in return that is of equal or greater value. We can help one another—it becomes much more collaborative and a much more authentic relationship than it was previously.
How Can Marketers Drive Success Without Third-Party Cookies?
Jonathan Berthold: Marketers need to focus on developing better creative assets, writing more informative content and developing programs that can accurately track the full path of a user from the interest stage all the way down to the purchase intent area of the customer conversion funnel.
Ashutosh Kar, PathIQ’s Former VP Analytics: There will be increased reliance on statistical methods to link outcomes with the campaigns, with the creatives and with the channels of marketing. And that is a good thing because people will get accurate information, marketers will learn what actually works and what doesn’t, and how to move money out from what doesn’t to what does.
Daniel Sendecki: It truly is a return to the way we approached content even five, 10 years ago—in the sense that we can no longer take for granted and skip to the conversion point of a relationship.
Ashutosh Kar: The other benefit of not having third party cookies is that it levels the playing field for all marketeers. I like the way it has reset the clock on how marketeers measure success and measure attribution. And it is good for data-driven people like me because we will then get an opportunity to use our statistical methods and economic models to be able to link outcomes to spends. And we’ll be less reliant on platforms to do so.
How Will The Death Of Third-Party Cookies Impact The Digital Landscape?
Ethan Hays: I think the exciting thing about all the changes that we’re seeing in the digital marketing landscape is that it’s really bringing a lot of focus back to fundamentals. And the very most fundamental aspect is your relationship with your customer. As an individual, you can have mountains and mountains of data, but if you aren’t using that data to understand who your customers are, what they care about and how you can best deliver value to them across their entire customer lifetime, you’re really missing the boat.
