Google’s decision on third-party cookie deprecation—and what is still at risk for your brand.

Google's latest move doesn't signify a step back in prioritizing consumer privacy. Instead, it emphasizes giving users more individual control over their data. Similar to Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework that rolled out in 2021, consumers will be given a more prominent opt-in/opt-out choice within Chrome. This functionality already exists within the browser’s settings, but will be surfaced in a “new experience” in the future, according to Google.

For brands who have not made significant progress in mitigating the impact of third-party cookie deprecation, this announcement might seem like a lifeline. However, even without a specific cut-off date from a centralized body like Google, there will still be a decline in use by consumers. With a gradual erosion as consumers opt out, the bigger danger is that many brands won’t realize that the third-party cookie pool is getting smaller and smaller, and therefore less useful for their ad strategy.

We expect the majority of third-party cookie signals to shrink, regardless of Google’s decision.

The digital industry has seen this scenario play out in the past, and the data shows the impact will still be huge, if just gradual. When Google switched to a third-party cookie for Google Analytics over ten years ago, Sayf Sharif, SVP Data, says that his analysis showed “some sites were losing over 80% of their traffic, depending on the industry, due to the adoption of ad blockers.”

This trend has repeated itself over the years; based on the impact from Apple’s ATT rollout, we’d expect to see cookies “capture maybe 15% of the available universe,” according to Liz DeAngelis, SVP Digital Strategy. Even if third-party cookies will continue to exist as an option within major browsers like Chrome, consumers have shown time and again that when made aware of their options, the majority will opt out.

Moreover, third-party cookies have proved increasingly ineffective in today’s digital landscape. Sharif points out, “We still face numerous challenges for measurement, activation and attribution (such as a high use of ad blockers, consent rules and fast cookie expiration), which make a focus on a cookieless approach to measurement and attribution a priority.” This shift to consumer choice underscores the reality that brands should continue to avoid over-reliance on third-party cookies.

Regulatory and consumer influences on third-party cookies helped shape Google’s decision.

The journey to Google's latest decision has been shaped by a blend of regulatory pressures and evolving consumer expectations. “Google has been caught in the crosshairs between evolving global privacy regulations and competition laws in a range of markets, most notably Europe,” says Benjamin Combe, Sr. Director, Data Optimization and Personalization. Similar regulations like the Australian Privacy Act have gained steam elsewhere, reinforcing that this is a global trend, not a regional or cultural one.

Meanwhile, consumer behavior has shifted toward greater consent and control over personal data. The move toward giving users the ability to set their preferences in Chrome, then, is well aligned with the experiences consumers seek online—and their changing attitudes and expectations toward digital privacy. Combe adds, “It merely reflects a more gradual end to a long-running, multi-factored trend. Google will no longer be the executioner, but third-party cookies are dying regardless—and their utility as the foundation of digital advertising’s targeting and attribution capabilities will not return.”

Still, cookies haven't been the only source of scrutiny in recent years. Google's Privacy Sandbox, a privacy-safe alternative to third-party cookie tracking, has faced several challenges since its announcement in 2020: the initiative has struggled with lack of adoption, anti-competitive scrutiny, conflicting industry feedback, mixed testing results and regulatory pressure. “Google’s Privacy Sandbox raised anti-competition issues with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), while simultaneously raising privacy concerns with the European Centre for Digital Rights and the UK’s Information Commissioner's Office,” Combe adds.

In short, both the regulatory landscape and consumer demand for greater data control led us here. So, what are brands supposed to do next?

Your brand’s first-party data strategies still need to evolve, or put your visibility and efficacy at risk.

Google's decision to give users control over third-party cookies rather than enforcing a complete deprecation has different implications depending on where brands stand in their preparation journey.

For businesses who may have used previous postponements of third-party deprecation as an excuse to delay action and conserve their resources, Tyler Stewart, Media Solutions Architect Lead, sees challenges down the line: “Smaller businesses may not have had the luxury of being on the front foot. In the longer term, this may only widen the gap between haves and have-nots as larger enterprises find themselves better positioned to compete in the privacy-first future.” Our advice to them: start prioritizing a cookieless approach now by focusing on first-party data and robust measurement strategies. Investing in AI-powered solutions and privacy-preserving technologies remains critical for future-proofing your marketing efforts.

Brands that have already embarked on their third-party cookie deprecation and privacy roadmap initiatives, meanwhile, have no need to pivot. “Strategies like the judicious use of first-party data, consent management, modeled measurement solutions and conversion recovery mechanisms will continue to be future-proofed strategies worth investing in,” says Stewart.

If you’re in this camp, don’t feel as if your efforts were in vain. “Those that have invested in reducing the impact of third-party cookie deprecation should take pride in being ahead of the curve with respect to utilization of first-party data, increasing compliance with global privacy regulations, innovating in measurement capabilities, and respecting their customers’ preferences,” says Combe. Staying the course will help future-proof your business’s data as the industry standards continue to evolve.

Better solutions for measurement will be customized for your business.

As an industry, the fragmentation and complexity we’re seeing across the digital ecosystem indicates we’re unlikely to move back to a uniform standard. “If you want to reach your customers wherever they are digitally, you need to be looking for new solutions for targeting, buying, and measurement. We can no longer rely on a consistent tactic that the entire industry adopts; brands need to move on from awaiting the next cookie alternative, and work on the solutions that are best for your company,” says DeAngelis.

The right strategy for your brand will depend on the complexity of your digital footprint and the data that’s most valuable for you to capture. To measure efficacy of your marketing activity, an important first step is to establish server-side tracking for your advertising, and take advantage of any event APIs from ad platforms, such as Meta’s Conversions API (CAPI). But in the long run, deterministic (user-level) measurement models will continue to weaken over time. Probabilistic models that assess changes across your entire business and media mix for causal contribution will be a necessity in the future, not an option. Strategies like Market Mix Modeling (MMM), or a Cookieless Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA) model offer viable alternatives to those challenges.

Similarly, identity resolution and user graph technologies are still viable for targeting, but a clear winner has yet to arise across the many providers that brands can choose from. As part of the announcement, Google emphasized that Privacy Sandbox will continue to be supported and developed as brands look ahead toward adapting their strategies beyond third-party cookie reliance—a goal that will remain important should users choose to opt out of third-party tracking en masse.

Move forward with a privacy-first marketing strategy.

No matter where your brand stands on the spectrum of cookie deprecation readiness, the path forward remains clear: continue to prioritize privacy-first strategies and the development of robust first-party data practices.

While third-party cookies have a new lease on life for now, they will never be as functional as they once were. They have already been deprecated in most non-Chrome browsers, and with Chrome indicating it will implement greater user permissions and controls, their availability is likely to continue declining—think of opt-in rates for ATT on iOS as a comparable scenario.

Brands should see this as an opportunity to stay ahead of the curve by continuing to invest in first-party data practices, consent management, and alternative measurement solutions—for teams that need advisory and executional support here, our data experts are ready to talk. The shift towards a privacy-first future is inevitable, and those who adapt proactively will be best positioned to thrive.

CRM is crucial to any first-party data strategy because it sits at the center of every customer interaction: through behavioral and environmental triggers, your customer is feeding inputs that influence future experiences, like product recommendations and personalized messaging. Essentially, data makes personalized experiences possible—and when done right, those experiences in turn generate more data that brands can act on. With the death of the cookie on the horizon, these insights will become even more critical to your marketing strategy.

There’s no better time than now to unify data within a CRM ecosystem to improve the efficiency of teams, inform future business strategies and, of course, enhance customer experiences overall. These efforts involve building data pipelines that help them better learn about their customers and engage with the right message at the right time. With the help of automation, a powerful collaborator that helps teams pull off outcomes that only eluded them before, the sales team can focus on only the most qualified leads. 

Not sure where to get started? No worries; I’ve gathered a couple brands who have successfully transformed their CRM ecosystems to fuel personalized experiences at scale.

Translate behavioral cues to key business insights.

Beyond driving conversion, one of the most impactful results of a strong CRM strategy is being able to leverage behavior data to guide better consumer experiences—of which Australian Community Media (ACM) makes a prime example. ACM is a large media organization that operates over 140 local news mastheads across Australia, serving both free visitors and paying subscribers. That’s a lot of relationships to manage and readers to serve. To those ends, the brand relies on email marketing and onsite personalization via Salesforce Marketing Cloud to reach and continually engage with readers.

ACM wanted to better understand subscriber behavior to create more personalized, relevant experiences in the form of automated content recommendations. Previously, this content was manually selected by editors or determined by publish date. Using Marketing Cloud Personalization, we were able to pull from subscribers’ engagement and platform behavioral data (like affinities toward news categories) to build personalized recommendations—boosting not only relevance but also employee efficiency.

This data did more than simply help serve personalized content to email subscribers. Armed with insights into which topics readers enjoy the most, editors can now easily plan out future content and focus on the kinds of stories their readers care about the most. More broadly, these same insights allow ACM editors to better predict engagement across the user journey—showing how CRM data can extend beyond marketing to unlock critical business insights that ultimately serve audiences. The best part: automated content recommendations free the editors to focus more on these strategic concerns of how to build better impact.

Elicit engagement to personalize at scale.

If you struggle to glean insights from audience behavior, here’s a tip: make it as easy as possible for customers and prospects to tell you more. This simple step was the cornerstone of Woodlea’s CRM refresh. Woodlea is a master-planned community of 7,000 lots located 30km west of Melbourne. With a need to focus on buyers at the right time, their sales representatives wanted to be able to give special attention to novice buyers. But this posed a challenge: how could they personalize communication and experiences at scale?

We began by helping the brand insert forms into email sent to buyers, a move that increased engagement while generating significant user data in the process. The newly interactive emails included simple questions and a prompt for recipients to build out their profile in Woodlea’s customer portal (powered by Salesforce Experience Cloud). The fact that these forms were embedded into the actual email content made it a seamless user experience and increased the percentage of leads who engaged. This first-party data then fed back into Woodlea’s Salesforce CRM, allowing for automated lead nurturing and qualification. These efficiencies freed the sales team to focus on two key buyer personas: those ready to make a purchase and first-time buyers who needed more attention throughout the buyer’s journey.

Enhance CRM to start building your first-party data foundation now.

The best time to transform your customer experience was yesterday, but there’s still time before cookie deprecation to experiment with new ways of generating first-party data—and CRM is at the heart of the process. From eliciting user engagement to gain key insights, to building efficiencies through automation and automation, linking data and inputs across a connected CRM ecosystem goes a long way in serving stronger, more personalized customer experiences and key business goals—so don’t wait.

Need help or don’t know where to start? Reach out to learn more.

To help brands in their transition, our data experts have written a guide that explores how brands should approach personalization going forward—including how to assess new technology providers, frameworks and methodologies to structure your planning—and long-term goals to strive for. Access your copy by filling out the form immediately below.

Need answers at a quick glance? Continue reading on for a quick FAQ that will help you get started.

Will I still be able to use Google Optimize after September 2023?

No, Google plans to sunset the product entirely. This can be taken to mean that the product will no longer be accessible past this date, and experiments running at this date will turn off.

Does this apply to Optimize 360 as well as the free product?

Yes. Google intends to sunset the product entirely, across both the free and 360 tiers. Note that by the sunset date, all organizations should have migrated their GA360 contracts to GA4, meaning that Optimize 360 is provided free of charge.

Should I use Optimize with UA or GA4 up until the sunset date?

This is entirely dependent on your existing UA and GA4 setups. UA 360 will continue to be available until Optimize’s sunset date, so you can continue to use it if you are more comfortable with that dataset. Otherwise, you can use GA4 data to power reporting and audiences. Linking Optimize with UA is available even after renewing GA360 contracts with GA4.

What should I do if I want to continue testing and personalizing my website after Optimize is sunset?

You will need to procure an alternative testing and personalization platform. Our report details the factors that should go into making that decision, and you should note that alternative platforms will have different commercial models than Optimize.

Will I still be able to use Google Analytics with a new third-party Experience Optimization tool?

Google has announced that they are investing in integrations between GA4 and third-party tools, with the intent being that GA4 will act as a centralized measurement hub that can be used to analyze and report on experiments that are delivered via a different platform. Media.Monks can provide more details on these integrations as they are made available by Google.

What will happen to my historical data?

Optimize uses Google Analytics data for reporting, meaning the raw data from past experiments will still be available in GA (and BigQuery if using GA360). Regardless, we recommend our clients collate test results in a central register to build an insights and learnings repository to fuel future decision-making.  Media.Monks can support the creation of a learning repository before the sunset if required.

Key watch-outs:

• An Optimize container can only be linked to UA or GA4 one at a time, not to both. Media.Monks do not recommend running experiments out of dual containers, so you should choose whichever dataset has the most actionable data.
• There are many factors that go into selecting an alternate vendor, and a proper assessment takes time. Organizations should bring this process well ahead of September 30 to ensure the continuity of capabilities.
• Deploying, validating and ramping up a new testing/personalization platform could take a number of months, meaning organizations should start the selection process now.

To get detailed steps on how to prepare for the Optimize sunset and plan your post-Optimize goals, simply fill out the form above to download our report.

In case you need a little refresher, retail media networks are advertising platforms established by retailers on their own digital platforms—it’s sort of like in-store advertising, but in digital format. This creates a new revenue stream for retailers, as RMNs enable them to monetize their first-party data through the launch of ad products. Essentially, it’s all about the data, as ad monetization with RMN allows retailers to gather new information on the behavior and interests of their customers, enhance their first-party data strategy, and engage with new audiences by meeting their specific needs. Ever since third-party cookies have started crumbling, RMNs have emerged as the sweet treat that both retailers and advertisers need—and the demand for this solution is rising at an incredibly fast pace. 

The tried and tested RMN trend will continue to accelerate in the new year. Here are four developments that retailers, advertisers and digital marketing services partners alike need to prepare for.

RMNs go global. In short, every retailer around the globe is going to have a retail media network, if they don’t already—it’s simply becoming pure table stakes. What started in North America, with Amazon leading the charge, has been rubbing off on businesses in every other part of the world. I can guarantee that only a year or two from now, even small-scale regional retailers will have an RMN, whether that’s in Italy, Thailand or Argentina. Why? Because once the flame of a business trend has been ignited and fueled by a new, but proven economic paradigm, the fire simply has to spread. That said, it is important to note that all of this may seem like a scenario with no downsides, but there is a potential one: if RMNs are not executed well, retailers and advertisers run the risk of diminished customer experience. For this reason, many brands choose to team up with a partner that’s specialized in this technology. 

Put creative differentiation at the core. Up until very recently, the game of retail media completely revolved around data and mathematics, with people and technology coming in to better execute what is essentially a quantitative effort. As such, RMNs allowed very little space for creativity. Now, however, we are seeing retailers such as Amazon move up the funnel and into the world where creativity truly matters: branding. When it comes to building brand awareness and bringing in new customers, data definitely counts—but it’s the creative that can make a real difference. So, while you still need the smartest people and the savviest technology to handle quantitative details, retail media is more and more a game of bringing in the right creative. Considering there’s so much more opportunity for creative differentiation, the brands that are best able to bridge data with creativity are the ones that will succeed. 

Tailor unified real-time strategies. So far, most brands (and even some of their partners) have been deploying retail media networks per channel, which means that an advertiser’s budget and approach for Amazon may differ from its budget and approach for Walmart. In other words, they have been working in silos and optimizing within the lengths of each different platform. However, this is all about to change. In the near future, I believe brands will view retail media networks as interconnected advertising channels instead of a handful of unrelated platforms. With that, it will become more and more feasible for brands to build a single retail media strategy, which allows them to be more flexible and seamlessly move between different channels. In the same vein, they will start to use unified real-time optimization tactics to capitalize on arbitrage opportunities between various retail media networks. This essentially means that brands will take more of an active daytrading type of approach. While some parts of this process can be automated, many others will still require manual efforts and human intervention in the form of more centralized retail media teams—both at the side of advertisers and their partners. 

Deliver dynamic in-real-life placements. As retail media networks—which are currently completely digital—expand, retailers will start to move ads from their online platforms to their offline spaces. For example, Amazon has announced that it will install more digital signage in its Whole Foods stores across the US and connect their DSP to their in-store screens. This will enable the retailer to use first-party data to dynamically serve ads in a previously analog framework and programmatically target consumers, thereby transforming the century-old concept of paid POS into an extension of digital advertising. 

In short, dynamic IRL placements can help retailers and advertisers enhance their targeting. However, one issue with this approach is that it’s still based on backward-looking data. Simply put, ad placements are currently based on average demographic numbers. This means that a retailer doesn’t actually know who is in its store in real time. However, with Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology, where cameras and sensors follow customers throughout their entire in-store journey, retailers and advertisers will be able to gather aggregated data of everyone who’s in a particular store in real time. This technology may already be in use in Amazon Go stores, but I believe it will take a few more years before it can scale, especially considering its significant privacy concerns—so I’ll save this prediction for another time.

Teamwork to make the RMN dream work. 

Over the last year, retail media networks have blown up and blown our minds. The impact of this technology is far-reaching and will only continue to expand in the coming years. Now, it’s up to retailers and advertisers to dive in and start monetizing their first-party data. As for my final piece of advice, make sure to team up with an experienced partner that can help you along the way—this will benefit every party involved. 

Curious to learn more about retail media networks? Get in touch with our team via sales-ecommerce@mediamonks.com.

What are the core capabilities of this technology? First up, CDPs support data aggregation, giving you a better and more unified view of your (prospective) customers. Second, they help you unify multiple data sources through a single ID manager, thereby facilitating ID resolution and management. Third, CDPs help you understand how customers act on different channels and thus enable you to predict consumer behavior. Finally, CDPs support customer activation. They’re first-party data tools that focus on making sense of different data sources, while executing effortless activation. 

Essentially, CDPs can help you diversify your brand’s targeting strategies and reach audiences at scale, all by leveraging your first-party data. If you ask our Associate Director of Customer Data Elia Niboldi, first-party data is your most valuable asset, not only because it’s durable and exclusive to your company, but also because it will be central to any future targeting strategy—and Customer Data Platforms are here to help you leverage this data. Niboldi sat down with Ian Curd, Global Consumer Data Director at Diageo, Martin Kihn, SVP Strategy, Marketing Cloud at Salesforce, Jackie Rousseau-Anderson, Chief Customer Officer at BlueConic, and Chris Thomson, Account Director, Strategic Finance Accounts at Treasure Data, to talk all things CDPs and why now is the time to dive into this complex technology.

These are not off-the-cuff suggestions, as the impact of ignoring or misinterpreting these recommendations is plainly visible. With privacy currently being the fastest moving field in our industry, we’re reaching the point where most—if not all—professional discussions have a privacy angle. While that’s great in terms of profile, it’s not really good in terms of quality.  

If you ask me, most cookie banners are subprime usability blockers that annoy users and turn them away. At worst, they’re dark patterns obscuring malice. When the most common denominator is so prevalent—that being lousy banners—we get what is called banner blindness, a phenomenon where web users (un)consciously ignore any banner-like information. When that symptom kicks in, it’s a downhill race to the bottom.

A likely sequence of events then plays out: marketers settle on a nice and easy bottom feeding tactic, the whack-a-mole game of privacy merry-go-round spins through another orbit as either tech, public opinion or regulators (or all of the above) make a new move to counter it. Recently, for example, it was Brave’s turn in the game of ignoring the privacy elephant in the room. The company announced it was going to block cookies by default and roll out a cookie pop-up blocking feature to Android and desktop users, which is arguably a step backwards. Rather than adding any clarity around what data is collected and why, the browser actually acts on behalf of consumers and removes choice from the user. It’s important to highlight that regulation is not anti-business, but it’s pro-consumer. Privacy-enhancing technology needs to respect this narrative. 

My former colleague (and still just as wise) Myles Younger powers his crystal ball with some nostalgia to suggest consent pop-ups are dead. “Someday soon we’ll look back on cookie consent pop-ups the same way we look back on “300 hours of free AOL” CD-ROMs littering our sidewalks. The farcical dying gasp of a dying way of transacting a digital thing,” Myles argues—and he is not wrong. It’s been seen before, as observed by the analytics supremo Simo Ahava, who argues that Do Not Track was a failure from the start. Diving into the implications of Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention, better known as ITP 2.1, on web analytics, Ahava says that “Funnily enough, ITP 2.1 removes support for the Do Not Track signal in Safari, denoting the end to this miserable experiment in WebKit. Had more sites respected DNT when determining should visitors be tracked or not, perhaps we wouldn’t have seen ITP 2.1 in its current shape.” 

Consent management is anti-user.

Why are these well-meaning initiatives failing? Google surveyed over 7000 people across Europe in 2021 and found that users want to have control of their data. Recent follow-up research quantified the degree to which the feeling of control influenced customer confidence in brands. The conclusion? A positive privacy experience on a site has a measurable positive impact on a brand.  

So, how can you create such a positive privacy experience and avoid the pitfalls that we’ve seen with Do Not Track (DNT) and the current crop of Consent Management Platforms (CMP)? If it’s up to Google, brands should make the experience:

• Meaningful by showing people what they get in return for sharing their data
• Memorable by reminding people what data they shared and when
• Manageable by providing tools for people to manage their privacy

The demise of third-party cookies means the future of first-party cookies. 

For many, applying this mnemonic to first-party cookies is a work in progress. Cookie consent banners are still relatively new, even though third-party cookies have been under threat for many years. We know which browsers restrict their use and we expect these restrictions to extend to Chromium browsers in 2023.

If digital marketing can’t function without third-party cookies, this has the potential to hit big tech in the coffers, and we cannot allow this to happen. There’s a clear motivation to solve existing use cases by utilizing privacy-enhancing technology—this is where The Privacy Sandbox comes in. According to a Google statement, “Privacy Sandbox for the Web will phase out third-party cookies and limit covert tracking. By creating new web standards, it will provide publishers with safer alternatives to existing technology, so they can continue building digital businesses while your data stays private.”

We’ll see the next phase of testing kick off in 2023 when the Privacy Sandbox API is publicly available for testing on Android. Right now, this is API testing, which means that they’re testing for developers rather than users. The user testing phase is where it gets real for real people. This is the opportunity to succeed, think of Google’s mnemonic, instead of failing like DNT and CMPs.  

Cookie management sitrep.

Right now, you can open the settings in your browser on each device and scroll through the list of cookies for each site, and decide to delete them. You can then visit the site and repeat the exercise in the “manage cookies” section of the CMP.  However, this current process doesn’t fit in terms of being manageable. In fact, the term laborious doesn’t even begin to describe it.

When it comes to qualifying as meaningful, cookie management has a low score because it’s so opaque—how can you tell who else is getting access to the cookies and for what purposes? As for memorability, most users only remember the frustration and tedium, but little else regarding their choices.

So, considering the future of cookie management, how might the Privacy Sandbox address the choices users have to make with regards to “tracking” and their privacy? While this section is entirely speculation and therefore not an official roadmap, it’s aspirational with the aim to be realistic and pragmatic. My thoughts are as follows. 

• Users get to decide what topics they are interested in and willing to share with third parties.  
• Users allow the browser to build a list of topics, but the user reviews and controls the list periodically asking to be reminded on a set schedule.
• Users can choose to set their topics to apply across all sites they visit. Any advertising they see on any site they visit will use and respect these settings.
• Users can choose to review their topics preferences on a per site basis. Users get to curate (and review) their own whitelist/blacklist for sites or types of sites.
• Users ask to be reminded to check their preferences every so many days, weeks or months.
• Users can choose to reset all data in the browser automatically every so many days, weeks or months.

Now, let’s apply similar controls to first-party cookies:

• Users will be able to tell the browser what type of cookies they will accept, and whether they want to be measured—anonymously or otherwise.
• Users can specify this applies to all sites, some sites (whitelist) or types of sites.
• These settings are reviewed on a scheduled basis.

What are the right default values to apply on first use? The good news is, there are no default values. On first use, and on a frequent basis, the user must explicitly set their own first use values. In other words, no values are suggested or automatically preselected.

How is this different from a CMP banner? Set it once, and make a conscious set of decisions with no intrusive user experience on every site or app you use. This could actually be set at a “profile” level across all devices and all browsers. This requires less mark-up and coding to be done by site owners. In short, there’s less to maintain, less to go wrong, less to slow down and less to cause friction.

How is this different from DNT or Brave? A more granular approach and a genuine user-controlled choice are the fundamental differences that make this approach manageable and meaningful. The range of choice is meaningful and the act of making a choice is manageable as it is made as friction-free as possible. Moreover, having to make a choice is memorable, as well as the ability to set reminders to review these choices at your convenience.

Now is the time to apply these lessons for the future.

The challenge for The Privacy Sandbox is to reduce friction, increase transparency and enhance authority. The privacy improvements will cater for existing use cases as well as provide a manageable, meaningful and memorable privacy experience for users.

That said, what’s the takeaway for digital marketers? Google said that “The Privacy Sandbox on Android will be a multi-year effort,” so what to do right now? Circling back to the start of this article, it’s important to:

• Take control of your data
• Embrace the regulatory spirit
• Go beyond the bare minimum
• Make it meaningful, memorable and manageable

Though we accept the looming end of the third-party cookie, this doesn’t mean we have to stop digital marketing. New privacy-enhancing tech changes the methodology, as the same use cases are catered for with new tech to enable better ad serving. Having learned from the success of these technologies applied to the end of third-party cookies, we can confidently focus the lessons on our first-party data collection. What works across sites and apps must also have the same utility on individual sites and apps. Keeping that in mind, the end goals remain:

• Build a relationship with your customers
• Be transparent
• Be useful
• Be responsible with data

All in all, achieving these goals and aiming to provide a better experience has immense value for your customers and your business.

We all know the age-old adage that content is king, but when all marketers use the same strategy by leveraging content to promote their product or service, the question remains: does this strategy still work? With millions of options available and thousands of alternatives in place, what can make your brand stand out as the most memorable? The answer to both questions lie in context marketing, a crucial strategy for helping your content resonate with audiences—and one that has enjoyed renewed interest and attention due to recent conversations about privacy and cookieless marketing.

Cut through the noise and drive memorability for your brand.

Context marketing provides the right meaning and insights to maximize relevance between people and your brand. Too often, brands focus fully on the content of their creative and not enough on the context in which people view them—the channels, cultural trends and other variables that shape their behavior online. But modern marketers know that there’s often a need to strategically balance content and context depending on their marketing goals. When building a content or context marketing strategy, there are a few factors that brands and marketers can consider. 

Frequency. How frequently will users see the ads? Too high a frequency can lead to ad fatigue. But if the ad frequency is low due to your budget or if your audience pool is smaller, there will only be a few chances to make an impact at speed. When users decide within a matter of seconds where to devote their attention, context can at times take priority over content. In Uni’s rebrand, focusing on enriching lives by inspiring creativity and connection, our paid media team worked closely with the creative team to ensure the media strategy was in line with the campaign’s creative vision. This approach enabled us to capture audience attention quickly through creative.

Shifts in preferences and trends. Over time, trends and shifts in consumer attitude will ebb and flow. For example, a particular skincare product is not useful for me in summer due to my skin type, but I did find it to be good for winter. Unfortunately for the brand, they never targeted me in the off season, which makes me wonder how things would have turned out differently had they re-evaluated audience targeting over time. Because trends and needs change, it’s wise to continually test audience targeting and exclusions over time. This will help you strategically adapt your marketing plan, its content and its context to meet changing tastes and preferences throughout the year.

Channel and vertical. The channel determines the format of creative and the content that will be delivered to the audience. For example, some channels favor video content while others are focused on images. Some are good for longform content, while content on others is more snackable. Some might even be interactive. Keep in mind how the channel may influence audience expectations, and also consider how your vertical may guide the approach to content. 

This is a strategy we used in helping Hatch, a fast-growing wellness and health brand, win over the hearts of countless people hoping to improve their sleep. We built a constant flow of fit-for-format content bespoke for each channel, each with narrative arcs that told the deeper story of Hatch Restore, the brand’s latest sleep assistant. The focus on format returned a 220% increase in click-through rate and 120% increase in view-to-completion rates.

Target audience. When it comes to your audience, it’s important to achieve the desired sentiment. This starts by selecting the right audience. For Hill House, a lifestyle direct-to-consumer brand, we analyzed audience signals from previous buyers to identify current and would-be customers. These insights allowed us to build data-driven creative we could optimize for this audience. These efforts not only drive performance—Hill House saw 80% higher ad engagement—but also enhance brand recall.

Maximize your marketing efforts with context marketing.

The above factors, while not all inclusive, offer a way to begin tapping into audiences more effectively through context marketing. Context marketing lets you deliver the right ad, at the right time, with the right message and format. By testing your creative relative to the variables above—frequency, trends, channel and audience—you enhance personalization and boost the strength of your marketing. This is especially useful as brands seek new strategies to adapt to a cookieless, more privacy-focused marketing landscape.

Ad fatigue is real: with so much content out there demanding our attention, it’s all too easy for audiences to tune things out. When it comes to building memorable creative, a strategic mix of content and context is key. That said, how will you build your next marketing strategy?

When it comes to the reason why Google has chosen to deprecate third-party cookies to begin with, an increase in users’ demand for more control of their data is only the start.

Google must also comply with a long list of regulations surrounding privacy, the most notable being the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). These regulations ensure that there are certain standards for what constitutes valid consent when collecting personal data, as well as giving consumers more control over the personal information that businesses collect about them.

The phaseout of third-party cookies will support these legislations and ensure the success of the privacy-first era. From an overall perspective, the deprecation of third-party cookies will impact how campaigns are implemented and managed by brands and their partners. Previously, brands relied on third-party cookies to learn about a target audience and their online behaviors. Without this information, we can expect significant impacts on remarketing, frequency management, personalization, attribution and measurement. 

New ways to identify are on the horizon.

Third-party cookies facilitate cross-site audience identification, which essentially allows marketers to “follow” users across the web, collecting data about their interests and online behavior. Each of the tactics above rely on this form of cross-site audience identification, and without third-party cookies, marketers will be unable to access this information about their target market so easily. 

But that doesn’t mean marketers will no longer be able to conduct successful remarketing campaigns, control the amount of times a user views an ad, deliver highly personalized ads, or identify a user’s touchpoints along the customer journey—provided they prepare for the cookie-less future now and minimize its impacts on their digital media activities. 

Since the announcement of the deprecation of third-party cookies, Google has been working on a range of solutions to continue to show relevant content and ads. FLEDGE and Topics are two examples of current Privacy Sandbox solutions for showing relevant content to audiences.  

FLEDGE’s purpose is to serve remarketing and custom audience use cases, without using third-party cookies. It enables interest-group-based advertising by asking the browser to choose which ads users see based on the sites they’ve previously visited. To keep this data secure, the browser conducts an on-device action to select relevant ads. 

Topics is a proposal that enables interest-based advertising without tracking the sites a user visits. It provides topics that a user may currently be interested in, based on their recent browsing history. These topics can supplement contextual information to help select appropriate advertisements. 

However, trials for FLEDGE and Topics are still a work in progress and the solutions are continuously changing, so we must focus on what we can do now to be able to navigate in a world without third-party cookies. Don’t take a “wait-and-see” approach. Those who look to prepare now will increase their chances of success and advancement in the privacy-first era. Here are some strategies to help you on your way to post-cookie marketing success.

Prioritize and invest in a first-party data collection strategy.

To prepare for the deprecation of third-party cookies, marketers should focus on growing quality customer data that informs both strategy and tactics. Utilizing the data from customers who have shown interest in your brand is more reliable and powerful than buying and selling access to third-party data. 

First-party data gathered from your websites, apps, physical stores (including offline transaction data), or other places where customers interact with your business, are all examples of first-party data that you passively—but directly—collect from consumers. Earning this data relies on building a fair value exchange, so that consumer data is understood to contribute to a better experience. Customer trust is built on transparency, hence it's always important to explain how you’re going to collect and use the data in your cookie consent banner or consent management platform. When collecting data about your customers, you must also make certain that you are compliant with regulations such as the GDPR, ensuring you are getting valid consent when collecting personal data and not collecting personally identifiable information (PII). 

With first-party data, brands can evaluate local touch points and preferred paths, while customizing interactions for a superior customer experience. Now is an excellent time to look inward and begin to build the foundations of your data strategy—one that will power your marketing with clean, unified and actionable data. Collecting first-party data and linking it together allows you to have a persistent, cross-device recognition for a single view of your customer, and an overall understanding of your audience. Mondelēz, for example, understood that digital marketing is most effective when you know how to play to consumers’ personalized taste. After helping them along the road to clean data, we achieved a +70% global return on investment.

Focus on collecting information and data you have access to.

As a marketer, you have access to a plethora of data about your customers, whether it be purchase data, device information or email engagement. Having an identification-first approach to customer data will give you an upper-hand to targeting effectively without third-party cookies. With data from third-party cookies being cut off, the priority should lay with first and second-party data, audience partners such as walled gardens, prominent publishers and media platforms, retailers and strategic partners. 

After prioritizing your first-party data and collection strategy, you should focus on building experience with reputable, trustworthy second-party data partners. Second-party data is essentially someone else’s first party data that you purchase access to from partners like Google, Amazon, or large publishers. You should focus not only on historical data, but real-time behavioral data such as users’ devices, interactions with your website, their carts, purchase history, media consumption, as well as the categories and products they visited while browsing on your website. By leveraging second-party data from trustworthy partners, you will have more data transparency and access to more precise and niche audiences which are crucial after the deprecation of third-party cookies.

Conduct a measurement audit. 

Conducting a measurement audit will consist of analyzing everything you’re currently tracking and identifying if it is necessary to be measuring it. It will help you to identify potential gaps and develop a roadmap to achieve measurement excellence that drives business results in a world without third-party cookies. A measurement audit includes the evaluation of current measurement tools and systems, as well as the alignment of key goals to further develop the practice. When conducting the audit, you’ll want to identify the necessary data, reporting and analysis methodology to improve measuring marketing effectiveness going forward to help with planning and forecasting.

Key considerations when conducting the audit are to understand the need and whether you can drive more value from your analysis and analysis partners. You want to develop a robust framework that will be effective and efficient to leverage in your decision making. You also want to ensure the roadmap provides added value, and is adaptive and not difficult to implement. By conducting a measurement audit, you hope to identify opportunities for maximizing the value of your measurement, strengthening your analytic capabilities and performance, and understanding how to holistically link together different techniques for marketing effectiveness in a world without third-party cookies. 

Evaluate your ad tech stack and partnerships. 

It’s important for you to evaluate your ad tech stack and partnerships to identify technologies and practices at risk of deprecation in the near future. Having a strong, well-engineered ad tech stack will create seamless, relevant, and meaningful experiences for consumers and give you a deeper insight into those interactions. When evaluating your tech stack, you must analyze how much control you have over fee transparency, brand safety, streamlined operations, data ownership, targeting and ad serving. Your tech stack should also be able to enable current operations and be able to incorporate future ones. 

A partner risk assessment should be undertaken to evaluate how reliant partners are on non-compliant tactics, data and technology; what their new publisher and media partner offerings are, and opportunities beyond basic ad units. Those partners who rely on non-compliant tactics, data and technology should be making it clear what they are doing to prepare for the third-party cookie deprecation. Marketers should carefully consider their platform partners and ad tech stack and focus on those that can deliver results without third-party cookies.

Consider a dedicated testing budget. 

Marketers should allocate a dedicated testing budget for first-party data practices, audiences and strategies across thousands of variables. These areas should be tested and leveraged, becoming an integral part of the targeting strategy where successful. One way to do this is by  testing and targeting customer experiences to improve digital performance using optimization and personalization. You’ll want to design net new campaigns and tests running without cookies, leveraging experimental design. 

As the data agency of record for Molson-Coors, we’ve spent the last year helping the brand undergo a data transformation that ranges from data acquisition, data activation and optimization. With hands-on-keyboard talent and an in-house team, Molson-Coors is able to use that data to better understand creative and media performance, then make tweaks to drive long-term growth.

By testing audiences and strategies across thousands of variables to build detailed customer profiles and to increase ad performance, scaled experimentation is the best alternative to third-party cookies when it comes to personalized customer experiences, and the performance benefits have consistently been shown to outweigh the costs of investment. 

Don’t wait to get your digital house in order.

Third-party cookies have played an instrumental role in the immense growth in online advertising. Yet their often-intrusive nature is misaligned with current attitudes toward privacy and transparency—so moving beyond our reliance on cookies, while maybe painful in the short term, is a net positive in building stronger brand-consumer relationships. That said, we can expect more changes to data collection and privacy on both the platform and legislative level in the long term; the only thing that’s certain about privacy is that there will continue to be uncertainty. A privacy partner can help you navigate the always evolving world of data privacy with ease, and our Data Foundations offering is designed to help brands build data maturity to meet the demands of a new era, including increased privacy scrutiny.

In a broad sense, laying the foundation of a first-party data strategy will enable a clearer understanding of your audience. Meanwhile, new solutions on the horizon like Topics and FLEDGE will help brands mitigate risk and continue to deliver relevant content to their audiences. But marketers shouldn’t wait for tech giants to implement new solutions before they act. Those who build and enhance the core components and practices of a customer-centric marketing strategy will be better positioned for a world without third-party cookies and thrive in the privacy-first era.

For brands, a benefit of the move to digital was that wide swaths of consumers were now sharing their purchase intent—valuable data used to surface up precise results. Consumers expect relevance in the products and content that’s recommended to them, and this expectation will only grow; imagine having to search for what you’re looking for in the 8th page of Google Search results!

On the flip side, companies face increased ethical scrutiny in how they use customer data. Business strategies designed to covertly collect personal data and monetize it are myopic; they may have implications on the customer relationships in the long-term. It’s important that companies instead look at responsible, privacy-focused strategies to earn consumer trust, even more so as we move to a post-cookie future.

Privacy is the fulcrum to the future of marketing.

With many consumers increasingly becoming aware and wary of the use of their data, and with regulatory bodies coming forward with laws and legislations, now is the time for brands to give their audiences a seat at the negotiation table when it comes to their privacy. At the recent Google Marketing Live event for the Leadership Circle in Hyderabad, India, privacy was the key theme, including how it is the fulcrum to building the future of marketing. Some key interesting stats that were shared:

• 48% of people globally have stopped buying or using a service from a company due to privacy concerns.
• Four out of the top five countries that searched for online privacy (in English) were from APAC.
• Three out of five companies globally report benefits of deeper loyalty and improved agility and efficiency with being privacy mature. 

Essentially, modern brands use data to serve customers and provide a meaningful value exchange—more relevant, personalized experiences that enhance the brand-consumer relationship—rather than treat audiences as another product to auction off and sell. So while examples of data privacy misconduct often make the news, it’s instructive to acknowledge and learn from those who are handling data with utmost care. Walmart embraces privacy in the design of its organizational processes and structures, products and services by constantly monitoring the technological landscape for potential threats, for example. This way they are self-reliant on the collection and protection of data and hence subject to lesser data vulnerability. Likewise, brands can focus on privacy not as an inhibitor, but rather the key to unlocking better customer experiences through more ethical and sustainable use of data.

Focus on consent and value.

Given the fact that data security and management require a significant investment of resources by digitally mature companies, it’s important to use those tools to serve customers better, because that’s where the return on investment lies.

Two ways that brands create value is by offering transparency about data collection and control in how it is used. Ultimately it is about delivering value to end users. Consented first-party data and insights from privacy-safe technologies like Topics API provide incremental value to marketers while keeping online content and services free. Data-driven marketing focused on transparency and control can transform marketing strategies, enhance customer relationships, and yield useful content to people or even inform the product design.

A greater focus on first-party data is important because over reliance on third-party cookies, a tactic brands have taken for granted, is increasingly unwelcome by consumers and increasingly unsustainable given future plans to phase them out. Expanding beyond third-party cookies is key to building a long-term marketing strategy of the future.

Our work for Ace Hardware illustrates this philosophy. Through revamping its rewards program, Ace Hardware was able to improve the customer experience and deliver on its reputation of being “The Helpful Place” for those wanting to improve their homes. The app rewards customers for their loyalty while enriching Ace’s trove of first-party data. By unlocking insights into customer interest and intent—without the use of third-party cookies or targeted ads—the brand was able to deliver a meaningful value exchange in return for data.

Zero in on the data you need.

Another benefit of shielding consumer privacy is preventing data bloat by collecting only the data necessary to drive value for your marketing—not gobbling all your customers’ data. This enhances data hygiene, yields cleaner analytics and helps minimize risks posed by data breaches.

Software giant SAP estimates that nearly 73% of data collected by companies is never used. When data minimization efforts are put into practice, there are limited opportunities for collecting information, thereby condensing the depth of detail and timeframe in which data is possessed. This forms the nucleus of GDPR regulations, helps weed out the excess data and focus on obtaining only relevant information with focused questions and being intentional in data collection efforts.

Activate insights through continual testing.

When companies build a customer-learning and serving culture, they determine the purpose of data before asking for consent and a clear explanation is provided to customers on what they stand to gain in parting with their data.

With a focus on learning about and serving customers, brands are able to build a “test and learn” culture to inspire increasingly valuable experiences reinforced by data. Amex has been able to do this successfully with initiatives such as the small business lending program, which they piloted after having a deeper understanding of their customer data signals. Incidentally the brand also ranks high in customer privacy in the Fortune 500 companies list. Likewise, brands who are agile in responding to imminent privacy changes are breaking down the privacy era.

The right approach to data privacy can create a ripple effect of positive outcomes: deterring churn to competitors, strengthening perception, overcoming privacy obstacles and ultimately earning consumer trust. With these benefits in mind, keeping privacy the focus of your data strategy can do more than keep a brand agile amidst new regulations—it’s also a key component to future-proof growth.