Especially in light of our current situation, the year 2022 seems light-years away. But 2022 is rapidly approaching and it’s when Google said it will eliminate third-party cookies from Chrome.
Third-party cookies, or pieces of code dropped on your browser by a data company, collect information on your demographics and interests as you surf the web. This cost-efficient data is anonymized and sold to advertisers who use it to reach the internet users most likely to buy their products or services. This keeps browsing free for consumers, ads personalized, and an estimated $19 billion industry thriving.
Considering Chrome dominates the browser market with an astounding 68% market share, this change will send shockwaves through the advertising ecosystem.
As brand marketers focus on shifting messaging in response to COVID-19 and carefully approach the emotionally appropriate timeline to start “selling” products again, whose responsibility is it to establish a new cookie-less normal before the 2022 deadline?
Agencies. And here’s why:
As a brand, your interaction with a media department likely includes meetings to present elaborate plans, performance reports showcased in gorgeous presentations, and innovative testing ideas. What you may not realize, is your media team also acts as an integrity filter.
In order to find the perfect media mix, agencies sift through countless AdTech companies all touting the latest and greatest offerings, from granular targeting capabilities and scientific optimization techniques to elaborate reporting.
Your agency is probably only showing you 1% of AdTech options. That’s because only a few solutions out there are viable for your business and out-rank the competition. And that’s why, when a big change happens like the one with third-party cookies, it’s important to have a good agency partner.
With the demise of cookies, the task at hand is to make first-party data just as actionable and scalable as third-party data — and still generate the revenue that publishers deserve. Agencies will spend the next two years leveraging our practiced integrity filters to cut through the noise from AdTech companies as they scramble to adjust their core competencies.
That’s why our focus is on finding and developing solutions that can survive the shift and still mold to the unique needs of each business case. One of the most important issues to focus on here is the element of trust. We want to see the integrity filter morph into a trust filter. Agencies by nature are perfectly positioned to develop the coming standards for the cookie-less digital advertising environment. As the liaison between brands and the public, we welcome this responsibility and risk.
If we do our jobs well — and we plan to — brand marketers will feel no negative impact to bottom lines. In fact, in the long run, you should expect ROI to improve due to this shift. Third-party data made personalization scalable but first-party data is more reliable and accurate. Combined with increased trust from consumers, Google is forcing us into an eventual win-win-win scenario.
Consumers will feel their privacy is protected, publishers will display more relevant messaging to users on their sites, and advertisers will see better ROI. We believe agencies should bridge to this progress.
At Look Listen, it is our mission to look further and listen closer, especially in a quickly changing landscape. Stay tuned for updates on our blog as the situation unfolds and the industry shifts in response.
Our next article will focus on what you can expect in the coming years, including consolidation across the AdTech space, further reliance on mobile technology, and changes in attribution modeling.
Want to talk more about this? Like we said, we like to listen. Reach out.
Feature photo by Christina Branco on Unsplash
