Why Cookieless Continues to be the Right Strategy

Keep in mind that Safari and Firefox have not supported cookies since 2019 and some Chrome users had already chosen to block cookies leading to 51 of internet traffic already being cookieless by defaultAdditionally more money continues to flow to natively cookieless environments like CTV and OOH The number of consumers who are primarily reachable through cookieless targeting will continue to grow Clearly no advertiser should write off more than 50 of consumers so they need to make cookieless a major component of existing and future strategyThe Cookieless Infrastructure is HereWhile Googleamp8217s aboutface may not be completely surprising many advertisers and publishers proceeded as if it was definitely going to happen At last count over 50 alternative identity solutions are available in Prebid aloneGoing cookieless doesnamp8217t mean advertisers canamp8217t target anymore they just have to do it differently Consumers and advertisers alike have no interest in returning to the days of untargeted ads luckily there are plenty of options to choose fromAdtech partners have the opportunity to step in to enable strong targeting and measurement in a cookieless environmentFirstParty Data Only Goes so FarWhile thirdparty cookies are going away firstparty cookies remain an important part of modern advertising Publishers request data from visitors when they subscribe to newsletters or access content They can use them to target consumers better and provide measurement to advertisersFirstparty data is why one of the hottest trends in advertising is the retail media network Retailers are sitting on an incredible amount of customer data such as purchase history location preferences and other requested identifying customer information The first iteration of retail media networks involved retailers offering real estate to advertisers on their website to target potential customers but it has quickly expanded to extended networks where retail media data can power ads on thirdparty sites While this is still only a percentage of the overall digital ad spend we need solutions for targeting elsewhereThe Key to the Future is Alternative IdentifiersThe Trade Desk has created a global identity standard for the advertising industry with Unified ID 20 UID2 an opensource authenticated framework that uses encrypted email and phone number data But this alone wonamp8217t solve the cookieless targeting issue As a standalone solution it lacks the scale to reach the larger population of nonloggedin trafficIn addition to authenticated solutions there are a couple of ways to bring successful targeting to cookieless through alternative identifiersFirstparty Cookies and Data Data collected directly from a marketeramp8217s audience helps them identify and target their audiences Retailers particularly benefit since they sit on a significant amount of customer informationProbabilistic Authenticated solutions will act as amp8220seedsamp8221 for modeled expansion for nonauthenticated users Probabilistic targeting uses soft signals to build a user profile such as browser type device type and other nonidentifiable characteristicsContextual Advertising Contextual targeting infers and delivers ads based on consumed content For example a visitor reading an article about a fashion designer on a news site is likely either a fan of that fashion house or fashion in general The information surrounding the ad creates signals that programmatic systems can use to place the right adsThe disappearance of the thirdparty cookie may not come as quickly as anticipated but itamp8217s safe to assume more and more consumers will opt out of tracking There is an obvious firstmover advantage in embracing the future and focusing on todayamp8217s cookieless environmentItamp8217s essential to evaluate key factors that ensure both effectiveness and privacy Prioritizing transparency in how identifiers are used between buyers and sellers is crucial whether through deterministic probabilistic or contextual methods

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Why Cookieless Continues to be the Right Strategy

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Paul Bell

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Why Cookieless Continues to be the Right Strategy

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