How about a world with no cookies in it?
Many businesses are concerned that deprecation of the single notion of a cookie altogether, might spell armageddon for their marketing budgets, and therefore their companies abilities to track, convert and retain those visitors over time.
And, they might be right!
For a while now, we’ve been exploring a world where even first party domain cookies, from vendors, are dropped. A world where your Google Ads cookie, blocked; Facebook cookies, blocked; TMS cookies, blocked; even personalisation cookies, blocked.
Many will be worrying about how they can track, measure and attribute marketing budgets/spend to the many campaigns across the many channels. And this could be a reality, sooner than we think. Google has been procrastinating for years about deprecating its third party cookie; many other web browser vendors cut the third party cookie loose some time ago and of course other ‘solutions’ like ITP from Apple, CNAME cloning recognition within Firefox to name just a couple… Many businesses are concerned that deprecation of the single notion of a cookie altogether, might spell armageddon for their marketing budgets, and therefore their companies abilities to track, convert and retain those visitors over time. And they might be right!
Are there options for an alternative, if cookies are doomed?
However, fear not. At IMCG HQ we have been experimenting with different server-side solutions to help mitigate some of the signal resilliance loss should such a move happen (and we predict it could, maybe by as soon 2027…). What businesses need and want to know today is whatever infrastructure is in place, can still function and work in the years to come. Seems like a sensible and logical need to us, but it does require some investment up front - both in money, and time!
Technology now exists to allow businesses to essentially serve EVERYTHING to their mobile apps, web sites (mobile and desktop), VOD (video on demand) platforms, display Ad networks and more via their own domain, in their own cloud-based setup. We’re moving away from ‘events’ per se, to ‘calls’ instead. Indeed, whether on AWS (Amazon Web Services), Microsoft’s Azure or GCP (Google Cloud Platform), you can run all of the above via a platform that runs inside your own domain, on your own web site. Literally, right next door! No need to use third parties and no need to worry about data encryption across your digital estate. With the ability to encrypt the payload on your own domain/site at source, own the encryption keys to then share with a third party who you trust, you can now encrypt EVERYTHING across your entire digital media platform in just a few clicks.
Better still, you can use data collected at the highest point possible in the infrastructure (i.e. your site) and share all the data with downstream systems, all the way down to external API calls (GET or POST) with response payloads which you might use to stream to analytics for reporting, cdp for activation, which in turn then might enhance already configured audiences to enrich them even further for even better targeted personalisation. Indeed by using this method, we can now confidently do same page personalisation for our customers! This is huge, as most other solutions still prefer today ‘next page’; not us, we like same page! We can send the data to an end point and get a response with enriched ‘audiences/segments’ within a few hundred milliseconds. Some web site JavaScript libraries can take that long to even load in the first place, let alone have everything executed and returned ready for display well within that time.
How are businesses using this today?
We met with a bank recently and are now helping them to target specific individuals who fit a specific requirement. This requirement can be as detailed or as broad as desired. In this instance, serving creatives in Facebook and Instagram for people who have a current account and credit card, but not a loan or mortgage but have engaged with the calculator within the last fourteen days - who happen to likely live in a wealthy area, who are likely to have a car, a small family, live away from mainline railway or airports, with average broadband speeds, a higher propensity to use mobile as next channel to engage than web and so on, allows the bank to serve a creative that is not only relevant and targeted, but to the right device, to the right person and at the right/best time!
Yes, the CPM was higher - you would expect that, BUT the audience participation level was signifcantly higher too; a higher significance audience, who are perfectly matched to the creative, messaging and marketing channel meant the clickthrough rate SMASHED expectations, as did the overall conversion rates (and yes, our champions were able to secure their quarterly bonus as a result). This, was a huge success and one they are now replicating in other global markets, so a win-win for everyone!
What’s coming next from IMCG?
Now, we working with a VOD company to help them tailor the adverts to individuals from their online sports streaming set-top box and smart-connected devices. This is one, we’re truly excited about! More to come as we continue to share our enthusiasm and passion to help make a difference and play our part.
Still unsure of what a cookieless world might look like for your business and unsure about how you might be able to get started? If so, we'd love to discuss the options further with you!
