Are you prepared to thrive in a cookie less world

Transitioning to cookieless browsing is postponed till May 2023. This means Google gave everyone a time to start thinking and educating their clients about the change they are about to make. This will impact everything we do today in our agency from creative to content, so are you prepared to thrive in a cookieless world?

Introduction

Cookieless describes a way of marketing in which marketers are less reliant on cookies” — bits of data that contain personal consumer identifiers. When we talk about the idea of a cookieless world, it's best understood by examining three different tiers of people involved in this large ecosystem shift. What is a Cookieless future?

What is the cookieless future? The cookieless future is a shift in the digital landscape following Google's planned phasing out of third-party cookies in its Chrome browser, announced in January 2020 (now postponed to 2023) Is Retargeting going away?

Retargeting as we know it today is going away in 2023 because of Google's decision to deprecate the third-party cookie. Online advertising has relied on third-party cookies to retarget, track the history of online behaviours across different websites, collect data, and serve ads for many years. Is Facebook retargeting dead?

As you can see, Facebook Pixel retargeting isn't exactly dead—it's just different. For now, the best approach is to follow their protocol and build in contingencies that will help you adjust your digital marketing approach when needed.

Why is marketing better off without cookies?

When creating paid ad campaigns on browsers and social media platforms, you need customer details to customize the copy. Marketing without cookies means you'd have to rely on first-party data (more on that below) rather than third-party cookies. SEO - unlock massive amounts of SEO traffic. What is Cookieless targeting? Cookieless advertising targets ads based on the environment in which an ad appears. It uses algorithms to target ad placements based on keywords, website content, and other metadata. This way, ads are shown to users based on the content they are consuming at that moment in time. How can I track conversions without cookies? One proposed solution is a server-to-server conversion tracking which allows data to be passed to secure servers without relying on the user's browser. Unique IDs will allow advertisers to bypass the need for cookies by storing a unique ID server-side when a user views or clicks on an ad unit. What three steps should brands make to prepare for the cookie-less world? As third-party cookie data comes to an end, marketing leaders must accept a future of consent-based advertising. No. 1: Prepare for sustained disruption. No. 2: Rethink ad measurement practices. No. 3: Adapt to a walled garden world. Educate yourself and Brand Managers on the following Collect first-party data through a 'value exchange' Get to work providing value to remain relevant. Make it attractive for customers to self-identify. Prioritize consent when collecting consumer data. Create an immediate feedback system. What is the first-party audience? First-party data is defined as data that your company has collected directly from your audience -- made up of customers, site visitors, and social media followers. "First-party" refers to the party that collected the data firsthand to use for re-targeting. Should I use Google Analytics 4? While it might be intimidating and hard to use, it's clear that GA4 is the future of Analytics, and you should be prepared for that. That said, there's no reason you can't run a Universal Analytics property simultaneously to get all the benefits of both. In fact, we recommend running both!