Cookieless forecast: the data drought is coming

“Power must never be trusted without a check

” The famous saying from one of America’s Founding Fathers, John Adams, remains true. Over the past years, the advertising industry saw data becoming the most powerful asset across all areas of marketing – and as time passed, new regulations appeared as a way to keep that power in check.

Across the globe, governments passed different laws to tighten data privacy, from GDPR to CCPA. More recently, we saw Apple’s decision to make changes on IDFA privacy and Google’s decision to withdraw third-party cookies from its Chrome browser (which has now been delayed by more than a year).

But the fundamental needs of advertising remain the same: to understand our audiences’ preferences and lifestyles, reach them accurately at the right time and place and measure the ROI of those activities. So, how can we re-imagine programmatic advertising with privacy in mind to build an even more powerful and assertive industry?

Rules may be delayed, but are still coming

In June, Google announced a delay to the final withdrawal of third-party cookies from its market-leading Chrome browser until the second half of 2022. And while this came as welcome news to many digital marketers, it would be a mistake for them to use this delay as an excuse to hold back their plans to deal with the new ‘cookieless’ targeting and measurement reality.

With various contextual, cohort-based and ID solutions being discussed, marketers and media agencies are still struggling to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And the truth is, while no one has the final answer, we also believe that no one should put all their eggs in one basket. While universal IDs, cohorts and contextual targeting data are viable solutions that will have roles to play in privacy-first advertising, they are limited by different factors.

Finding the best solution to the industry’s varying business and advertising needs takes time. And those seeing Google’s delay announcement as an opportunity to prepare will be in a better position to deal with the forecasted data drought.

A measurement challenge

Measuring the efficiency of advertising campaigns and calculating ROI will continue to be crucial for media agencies and marketers, whether personal identifiers are available or not. Measurement is what allows brands and agencies to optimize their campaigns to increase the value of each pound they spend, as well as arming them with the ROI figures to take to their stakeholders.

Attribution is the key component of any measurement solution. And is set to change. The volume of data available will inevitably be reduced further once Google’s data privacy rules come into force starting next year, making the type of granular measurement the industry has become used to more difficult to get.

While CMOs won’t have access to the same level of hyper-detailed attribution data they once had, the loss of third-party data can be a positive move for the marketing industry as it will, necessarily, force everyone to move towards a privacy-first ecosystem with future-proofed solutions in mind – boosting transparency and trust with customers and across the advertising ecosystem as a whole. Where legislators and tech giants have a duty to hold power (including their own power) to account, they are also instrumental in rebuilding public trust.

The right move towards trust

There is no doubt that what underpins the tension between power and regulation in tech is the enormous value of data. That means breaking down the information gap between consumers, legislation and industry.

Data is now a vital part of any advanced economy and, fortunately, tech companies are accepting that legislation in some form can be beneficial for shaping a better data culture. This is a major step in the right direction – and access to other forms of privacy-compliant, anonymized data are available right now.

Finding and working with partners who are putting privacy at the core of their businesses and operations will be even more crucial than before. That goes from finding privacy-first programmatic partners to identifying measurement solutions that begin lessening the reliance on third-party cookies, enabling brands to build up new benchmarks before cookies disappear completely.

Many digital channels, from Safari to Firefox, are already post-identity. Other emerging channels, including CTV and digital OOH, are also privacy-first based. Adopting an identity-resilient strategy for measurement can help marketers to measure more of their activity while being consumer-privacy friendly without the need for further changes on their strategy to adapt to future regulations.

Don’t wait for the data drought to come. Find your oasis and don’t let personalized advertising be a mirage.