'Twas the Day after Xmas and throughout Ad Land
Not a trader was sleeping with deprecation at hand.
A decade of leveraging every scroll, click or cart.
Was about to go kaput because we put science before art.
Privacy, p'shaw. No one cares anymore.
Not when shareholders' needs are truly at the core.
The cookie, so tasty, so yummy and true
Why would anyone care that they're always tracking you?
Then jolly ole Tim Cook played a brilliant hand.
"Let's put privacy at the core of our scaled Apple brand."
And while cynicals say he is no altruist.
To data-driven marketers t'was a significant twist.
No longer good metrics for those on iPhone.
Nor iPad, nor iMac, their behavior unknown.
Well maybe not to Apple, to which it's first party, see.
Hence their ad business boomed, which pissed off the IAB.
At the same time, in Europe, they felt differently by far.
And threw the first shot, the GDPR.
Regulation, shmegulation said the data elite.
Surely in the U.S. cookies they won't delete.
Then, Oh my gawd, like the Californians quote.
CCPA won the popular vote.
A loophole was found by the trade IAB.
But that loophole's last year was two-thousand twenty-three.
Virginia, Connecticut, Colorado soon followed.
In Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana targeters wallowed.
Iowa, Delaware, Indiana and more yet to see.
No Federal Law is destined to be.
"Don't fear!", cried the ad tech, "We'll find a solution."
Plotting in boardrooms their vast retribution
With signals, clean rooms, a Sandbox, and FLoC.
To which many in the industry called a big crock
Like NFTs, Blockchain, and Metaverse Web 3.
All fool's gold inventions that were never meant to be.
So back to the 80s, our planners shall fly.
Mixing deterministic with surveys like good old MRI
See after 30 years of doing this it's clear context is king.
Clear the clutter, drive action, make creative that will sing.
On Trade Desk, on Magnite, on Omnicom and Havas
Go Publicis, dentsu, IPG all's not lost.
WPP, Stagwell there's hope round for all.
When next year's election brings a political windfall
So as the pendulum swings from performance to brand
Fear not, brave C-Levels, you'll still end up in Cannes.
Drink rosé on the Croisette, smoke with Snoop by the sea.
While consumers wait in angst for you to solve frequency.
So yes, 24 is the year cookies die.
It's going to hit many, shrink their share of the pie.
For those who prepared, you are destined to thrive.
But, if you think cookies are bad, wait 'til GPT 5.
But Wait, That's Not All
I wish you all an incredible 2024. May we all know good health, prosperity, peace, and success.
No AI was used in the creation of this poem.
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The opinions expressed here are the author's views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage.org/MyersBizNet.