Should marketers stick or twist on cookie based advertising?

Google’s announcement that it was delaying the phasing out use of third-party cookies until at least 2023 was broadly welcomed by digital marketers and advertisers

The more immediate question for digital advertisers now is - do you delay and keep using cookie based tactics, or do you get ahead of the game and transition before you’re pushed? There is a case to be made for both, which we’ll look at - stick or twist

Why would advertisers stick?

As the old saying goes “if it ain't broke, don’t fix it”. Using cookies is easy and they work. They allow advertisers to personalize ads and to hyper-target their target audience with no direct engagement between the advertiser and customer. Smaller advertisers with limited teams and resources want results that deliver. Cookies deliver.

It’s all well and good for blue chip brands to push boundaries and look to the future, but that isn’t possible for every advertiser. Cookie based targeting, offers most SMEs a level playing field in their geo. It’s the primary reason digital advertising has grown exponentially over the last two decades. They will find it much more advantageous to wait for solutions that specifically help them. That will almost certainly come from Google, as providing a solution for their long-tail client base is a core reason for them delaying the phasing out of cookies.

The other key reason for sticking with cookies is measurement. No tracking equals no measurement. That is beyond scary, and something the digital ad industry needs to resolve. Without measurement, digital budgets will surely start to decrease.

Why would advertisers twist?

The main problem with cookies is they creep people out. A lot. That’s why they’re going. If brands really believe in giving people more control and transparency over their data, not using cookies is the right thing to do.

Despite the delay, cookies are still going. Advertisers need a strategy beyond Google. While it is undoubtedly the dominant player with Chrome accounting for 65% of browsers, advertisers would be remiss to ignore the 35% that don’t use cookies. A recent WARC study showed that only a quarter of Apple iOS 14 users have allowed application tracking when prompted to do so. That’s a huge 76% of Apple users that can’t be targeted using individual identifiers. Tactics without using personal identifiers are needed to target these.

Progressive brands and marketers will move forward with plans regardless of the extension. It makes little sense to wait and be in the same situation come 2023. Waiting to see what Google comes up with next is a high risk strategy, and one that will only partly address the market. With such a large part of the web now not using third-party cookies, a privacy first web is still happening. It is what users want, regardless of what Google does. For advertisers looking to maximise reach the delay does not change much at all.

There is also a financial opportunity presented from cookieless targeting. Bid requests for cookieless inventory offer great value for money. SMEs and Google’s long-tail client base in particular are inevitably bidding on the 75-80% of addressable individual targeting level. This makes that inventory hugely competitive, whereas the 20-25% not coming from third-party cookies offer great value for programmatic brand and reach campaigns. Advertisers are seeing fantastic results in this space, all while putting privacy at the forefront of their strategy and providing a great consumer experience.

The final reason advertiser want to get involved in cookieless solutions early is knowledge of adoption. Not only are early adopter brands able to gain a competitive advantage, they’re generally engaged with the platforms on the solution development process to help achieve their goals. They’re not necessarily waiting for the new rules of a cookieless future. Really progressive advertisers are helping to write them.

There isn’t one alternative solution

Marketers and advertisers need to recognise that there isn’t going to be a single approach to replace the cookie. Digital advertising will be harder. It will involve twisting at times and sticking at others. That doesn’t mean it will be less effective. In the short term, it’s hard to see many advertisers going totally cookieless, while they’re still a thing.

Even when the cookie does finally go, one-to-one relationship marketing will not disappear altogether. Walled gardens where a user is logged in will presumably remain largely unchanged. Arguably they’ll be much less effective without ‘off-platform’ targeting, but the premise remains the same.

Across the board, the relationship a brand has with their customers will become more important than ever. Data sources on which campaigns are built will become increasingly important. If you’re sticking to a hyper-targeted strategy, cookie-based targeting data is still your friend. Just be mindful it won’t be here forever. If you’re an advertiser that is twisting and exploring the benefits of a privacy-first campaign, then cookieless data is available now. It comes from innovative data specialists and it’s generally aggregated and contextual, and ready to activate against. But only if you’re twisting.