Exploring Successful Marketing Without the Aid of Cookies
Cookies, that well loved snack that seems to disappear very quickly after knowledge of its existence, don’t we all love them? Oh, sorry, we got sidetracked there, didn’t we? No, the cookies we are talking about today are third-party cookies, those of the tracking variety that help websites and apps track your activity from site to site and help provide you with personalized ads based on the websites you have visited and searches you made on Google. They are also one of the contributors to the detailed results we see within analytics. They also, of course, enable your browser to run that bit slower if you don’t clear them out occasionally, the joys. Well, imagine a future without third-party cookies; what would we do? Now, as your typical internet user, you are probably not going to miss them unless you are really fond of personalized ads. However, as a business, it’s a bit of a scary prospect. To conduct marketing campaigns in an efficient manner, we need to track their effectiveness, and how do we do that? That’s right, you guessed it, with Cookies.
“But that would never happen,” I hear you say. “Cookies will always be around, as certain as death and taxes.” I’m afraid you are very wrong. With privacy at the forefront of everyone’s mind lately, it really brings about the idea that things need to change. And who better to change them than one of the biggest companies in our digital world – Google!
Yes, Google wants to phase out third-party cookies entirely by 2025.
That leaves us with the daunting question how do we cope with this change in the marketing world? How do we transition into a cookie-less future? In what new ways would we track our marketing activities and personalize our ads? Well, that is exactly what we are going to cover in this article so read on!
We do sure hope they keep normal cookies, though! Oh, sorry, we are getting sidetracked again. Let’s continue.
Google’s Post Cookie initiative
As Google itself is leaving us bereft of third-party cookies, you would expect them to come up with some alternative solution to data gathering and ad targeting. Well, that is exactly what they are doing. Google is providing the world with a more secure solution in the form of a few different tools coming together to form the Privacy Sandbox. Privacy Sandbox has three main aims.
- Enhance privacy on the web, allowing users to browse without the worry that their personal information is being kept and sold to companies across the spectrum.
- Enabling sites to keep free content free. Many free sites rely on the ability to serve personalized ads. Privacy Sandbox enables them to do just that whilst still being able to preserve the privacy of the user.
- Google wants to use a privacy sandbox to set a new standard of privacy across the internet and Android platforms and aims to collaborate with advertisers, developers and publishers to achieve this goal.
What are the key components of Privacy Sandbox?
Attribution Reporting– Attribution reporting within Privacy Sandbox will allow the tracking of source events leading to conversions within the browser and enable it to share that data without sharing any other unneeded information, thus allowing marketers to still track the success of their marketing ventures.
Sam Dutton from Google explains more about Attribution Reporting in the following video.
Topics API– The Topics API allows a user’s browser to share information about a user’s interest without revealing private information about their browsing history. Topics also blocks sensitive topics and allows a user to turn off topics browser-side and websites to block topics being used on their sites at the same time.
Here’s more from Sam Dutton at Google..
Protected Audience– Protected Audience allows for the sharing of cross-site user data for personalized ads and remarketing campaigns without infringement on privacy. User data is locally stored on your browser, and only the relevant information is shared with ad companies in a privacy-controlled environment to allow for the targeting of ads. This alleviates fears of your data being aggregated and sold to other companies.
Sam Dutton continues his explanation of the key components of Privacy Sandbox.
First-Party Data
Another solution to finding out more about your users is to gain information in a consensual manner. First-party data is collected by the company through their website or marketing platform. Encouraging your users to sign up for an account on your website will give you the opportunity to collect information about your users. However, this isn’t the only way to collect information. It is commonplace to ask for information when a user signs up for an email subscription, downloads free content, fills in a form or takes a survey. Surveys especially can be a great way of defining your audience as they allow for a more detailed gathering of information. To further encourage visitors to take surveys, you can offer a prize draw entry or even a product trial. Initiatives such as this not only help you with data collection but can also lead to reviews of your products.
The Trade Desk’s Unified ID
The Trade Desks Unified ID is an open-source response to the depreciation of third-party cookies. However, unlike Google’s privacy sandbox, it works in a different way. The Trade Desks Unified ID relies on transparency and control over user data. Publisher websites are transparent around the data practises on their websites and ask a user for an email address or other first-party information. Then, the publisher passes on that data to the trading desk, which is encrypted and turned into the form of a token to create a profile for delivering personalized ads. Users can opt out of data collection in this manner at any time. Many companies have already signed up to this initiative.
Key Points
- Open-source industry-wide solution designed to replace third-party cookies
- Aimed at transparency and consent, it collects and encrypts first-party user data to deliver personalized ads
- Users have full control of their data and are able to opt-out at any time
Key Takeaways
- Google is phasing out the use of third-party or tracking cookies entirely by 2025
- Google aims to combat the task of analytics and targeted ad delivery in a post Cookie world with a new set of tools called Privacy Sandbox that can deliver interest-based data that is stored browser-side whilst retaining user privacy.
- In a post-cookie world, marketers should try to focus on collecting more first-party data to track their marketing activities and define their audiences.
- Publishers and marketers alike can take advantage of an open-source initiative, The Trade Desks Unified Id, to deliver personalized ads with the aim of transparency, control, and consent around user data.