We’ve been anticipating the death of the third-party tracking cookie for quite some time now. And whether we want to admit it, the cookie has definitely outlived its usefulness.
Increasingly, traffic is moving towards environments outside the browser, making the need for other types of identifiers all the more imperative. So perhaps folks shouldn’t be so alarmed over Google’s announcement to not replace third-party tracking cookies with alternative identifiers. Instead, maybe it’s time to welcome the challenge and start getting more creative about how we all plan for the future of digital advertising.
Along those lines, four ad tech CEOs shared their takes on what the cookieless future will mean for advertising strategies and which tactics professionals can use to avoid disruption and increase ROI with more effective datasets.
Paul Roberts, Founder and CEO, Kubient: Right now, we’re at the mercy of Big Tech, and unfortunately, Google is choosing to flex its muscles after we’ve already started to understand how to thrive in the cookieless world. Kubient recently conducted a survey that uncovered 1 in 3 respondents stated a lack of cookies is their major concern.
But they should fear not as this only creates more opportunities for creativity and to hone in on the potential of direct buys. Advertising professionals will need to audit their current tech stack and weed out unnecessary partnerships that will no longer provide immense value to continue to engage with potential customers, companies. I foresee more direct partnerships starting to form between SSPs, DSPs, and overall more supply path optimization strategies, so advertisers are working with approved first-party data and insights.
Frank Maggio, CEO and Founder, React: Cookies evolved in a world where media platforms served ads to anonymous consumers, and this anonymity led to a depersonalization that made it okay to track consumers.
It’s time to step back and rethink HOW we advertise and explore what we can do to incentivize consumers to share more about who they are, what they like, and how they feel. Let’s protect, respect, and reward consumer data and attention — that’s how relationships are built!
Alon Leibovoch, CEO and co-founder, BrandTotal: Roughly 90% of an advertiser’s budget is spent on programmatic advertising. With the end of the third-party cookie and Google’s plans of not creating an alternative, this will hinder programmatic advertising measurement and performance, making it harder to reach audiences, and result in a painful loss of transparency for advertisers. Now, it’s on advertisers to make the industry relevant again, put hyper-targeting in the past and leverage the data earned through direct customer consent.
Nadav Shoval, CEO and co-Founder, OpenWeb: As Google’s news indicates, publishers and content providers have to establish deeply autonomous and private relationships with their audiences, so they will be able to create valuable first-party datasets in a privacy compliance way. Now more than ever is there a need for platforms, such as OpenWeb, that provide the ability to create an identifiable audience through registration, while simultaneously building and retaining first-party data and maintaining the utmost privacy.