If you’re someone working in the digital marketing industry, you’ve probably heard that cookies are going away. This pending deprecation of third-party browser cookies is something imminent. And now with the emergence of data protection laws, cookie alerts and elimination of Apple’s IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers), marketers are now seeing a massive shift in the way digital marketing is done and rapidly approaching a world of cookieless marketing.
And if you aren’t 100% sure what that means and how a future of cookieless marketing will look like, this blog is for you.
The Friendship Between Tech and Data-driven Marketing
Technology and data driven marketing goes hand in hand in collecting and using information to drive your marketing decision.
Data-driven marketing is the approach of optimizing brand communications based on trends and customer information. By using a data-driven strategy, marketing teams can significantly raise the chances that their target audience will click on their ad, read a blog post, or perform another action that drives a conversion goal.
The combination of tech and data-driven marketing ensures – better customer experience and the personalization that builds trust between a consumer and brand. For user targeting and marketing measurement, marketers have long depended on cookies, or these little data files containing personal identifiers. However due to rising consumer demands for privacy and data protection many traditional digital marketing tools like cookies are getting outdated.
How Does Cookieless Marketing Affect the User Experience?
Generally, cookies are used to improve users’ web experiences and personalize the content and advertisements according to their interests. The third-party cookies follow you around the web for retargeting, ensure their ads appear on other sites you visit and eventually help businesses draw you back to their sites so you may make a purchase.
Although retargeting advertisements, such as a well-timed, hyper-relevant Facebook ad, can be unsettling at times, but you could get used to the customization and the added reminder to go back and make the purchase you’ve been intending to. However, you won’t have the prompt, personalized user experience you’re accustomed to, once cookieless digital marketing becomes commonplace. Rather your experience will instead totally depend on the site’s owner’s adaptation to a cookie-free world.
How Do Data-driven Marketers Thrive Without Cookies?
Without cookies, it sure will be difficult to collect data outside your own environment. So now, as a modern marketer, you are faced with the challenge of: how you find the right balance between respect for privacy and the collection of meaningful, relevant data.
However, there are ways data-driven marketers can still make do without cookies, such as –
- Prioritizing first-party data collection.
- Stewardship while promoting consent-based marketing transparency.
Basically, marketing will go back to the fundamentals as the creatives and the message reclaim the spotlight. And by gathering their own data, companies will gain insight into their audience and maximize channels with the greatest appeal.
What Does A ‘Cookieless Future’ Mean for Marketers
A cookieless era is more than a series of important choices with far-reaching consequences. It also offers opportunities, for the marketer and for the organization.
And if you do not embrace cookieless marketing, your marketing efforts will be affected. You’ll be in the dark when third-party cookies are disabled. There won’t be any easy way to know what your prospective customers want or what they’ll respond to, and you’ll end up serving the same content to everyone, no matter where they are in the customer journey.
This certain situation, known as – measurement blackout will render you unable to quantify the impact of your marketing efforts. But we all know how important marketing measurement is for marketing ROI and determining which strategies worked best and which campaigns are worth reinvesting in.
How to Prepare for Cookieless Marketing and What Might Replace Cookies in the Future
So now you must be wondering what happens after the disappearance of third-party cookies? As a marketer preparing for a cookieless world, you’ll need to have some processes, procedures, and tools firmly in place to unify and manage your data across the marketing ecosystem. Here’s a list of tools you can expect to come in handy while replacing cookies in a consumer-first future:
- Analytics & conversion tracking: Conversion tracking involves free tools such as Google Analytics that shows you what happens after a customer interacts with your ads – whether they purchased a product, signed up for your newsletter, called your business, or downloaded your app.
- A/B testing & personalization: If first-party cookies are not set-up on your site correctly, they will be affected by the tracking prevention measures. That means users either won’t see their personalized content or multiple A/B test variants will not be visible. The immediate impact of this is that the results from A/B campaigns will be a lot less reliable.
- Advertising & remarketing: Remarketing based on (third-party) cookies is becoming more difficult and will become almost impossible within a couple of years. Only self-identified users can still be targeted with their (hashed) email address on advertising platforms like Facebook and Google.
The landscape of digital advertising will be significantly changed by the elimination of third-party cookies. But the good news is – with a greater emphasis on collecting first-party data, marketers and businesses are more likely to optimize highly relevant and targeted marketing campaigns and provide a high return on investment.
