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A world without cookies? Part 2.
We’ve accepted a world without cookies. Now let’s prepare.
In the first part of this two-part series, our experts shared some predictions for digital marketers as they anticipate a customer journey without cookies, starting in 2022. In this final part, our experts will explore how you can prepare now for then and what bumps to expect along the way.
So now what? Our experts share what’s next and how to prepare for a cookieless future.
Gina Biel, Media Director
With first-party data being king, it’s more important now than ever before that clients get their data in a clean and manageable state.
Clients/agencies should determine a preferred data onboarding platform (i.e., LiveRamp, Signal, etc.) now in order to be able to leverage their first-party data across media/programmatic/social platforms. The legal/security concerns around these offerings can take up to nine months or more to have an agreed-upon MSA in place, so start now.
Clients and their agencies need to determine, and be aligned, around their identity-management platform and attribution approach in order to build the most relevant, frictionless and privacy-safe experience for customers.
Adam Sanders, Director, Analytics
Think ahead to get ahead. Begin to think about how to plan and execute campaigns leveraging first-party data today. Sounds obvious, but if we wait until the last day to change our tactics, it’ll be complete chaos. This means thinking about how to collect this data into our campaigns today.
Start to think about pairing marketing plans with geo-based analysis and classical modeling techniques. We can do this today with some of our more targeted buys. Understanding indexed performance against media spend is something I believe we should be looking into now. This type of thinking and planning happens prior to a campaign being run, not after the fact.
Ask all the hard questions: Are you beginning to look for alternatives for any reporting or audience targeting, such as programmatic retargeting (likely gone, is there a similar approach)? This is for measurement and activation. Does your process workflow for planning have a dependency on third-party data? What about reporting? Do we shift toward hierarchy analysis? It’s important that we think and ask these questions of ourselves and tech partners now before it’s too late.
In short, expect the unexpected.
The only certain thing right now is a lot of unknowns; bumps should be expected along the way. There’s a lack of unity and industry consensus from the different consortiums (Project Rearc, W3C, etc.) and providers (DigiTrust, ID5, etc.) around identity solutions. While there’s lots of discussion, who and what will emerge as the “leader” remains to be seen.
While the post-cookie world is just now dawning, we can look forward to a great deal of innovation in the future. But no one solution will solve everything. We’re actively engaged with and focused on new identity solutions to see how we can best-adapt as advertisers to a future without cookies.
Still have questions? We’re working on the answers.