Why cookies disappear and how marketers can attract more new customers without using third-party data.
For the past 25 years, marketers have used third-party cookies to track consumer behavior on the Internet. Almost all advertising technologies and platforms use cookies for targeting, retargeting, advertising and behavioral marketing in general. Now everything is changing.
Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) and Advanced Tracking Protection (ETP) from Firefox are now blocking third-party cookies by default, and even Google’s Chrome will soon receive controls that allow consumers to block cookies. Browser-level blocking, third-party ad-blocking applications, and new rules, such as the GDPR and California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA), quickly transfer an old cookie to the Internet recycle bin.
This is regarded as a fundamental change in online advertising. What does death of a cookie mean to marketers and advertisers like you?
The marketing we know will survive without third-party cookies, and more efficient data sources are ready.
How digital advertising can work without cookies
What can you do to replace cookies for tracking and still attract new customers and keep in touch with your audience? Here are a few tactics that can help you get rid of the habit of using cookies.
Contextual advertising
Contextual advertising returns. The next best option for behavioral targeting based on cookies is advertising based on any keywords. A few years ago, all this was discounted, and we were more and more moving away from targeting by keywords, but now we have to go back to it.
The transition to contextual targeting will also mean a return to the creation and distribution of relevant content.
People orientation
Introduced into the marketing world of Facebook advertising uses a unique identifier that is associated with the user, not the device. This method does not use third-party cookies to track users or collect data, and allows brands to meet with customers in places and at times when they really want to interact with them.
A successful marketing strategy boils down to these three key elements:
• Identification. Brands must identify their customers and connect them correctly to various devices.
• Data. Today brands have a wealth of information about each of their customers; from purchase data to email and device information. The “First Aid Identification” approach for customer data gives brands the ability to effectively target them.
• Automation. Instead of relying on cookie-based data, people-based marketing automation relies on primary side targeting. This helps brands to open a single view of the customer, tying all the data to one source.
The big benefit here is customer identification and data.
Own data from phone calls
Receiving third-party data will be more important than ever, in the absence of third-party cookies. Facebook, Google and Amazon obviously have a huge advantage, but brands often have access to more data than they think. Not to mention the fact that using data from customers who have shown interest in you is usually perceived as something more obvious than buying and selling access to data from third-party consumers.
One of the unused sources of customer data may be hiding in your call center. Phone conversations can be your primary source of data, and they are the holy grail for marketers who work in industries that use phone calls to make sales.
When your customers call you, they literally tell you what they want and how they talk about it. To really classify customer conversations with useful digital data sets, you need an automated system that can understand what has been said and accurately extract the value from it.
Marketing advance
Although it now seems rather frightening, keep in mind that cookies are a 25-year-old technology, and we will definitely find a way to move on. It will be about learning new technologies, innovations and achieving a balance between profit and confidentiality in order to avoid another wave of negative consumer reaction. Using the data you get when people intentionally interact with your brand is the first step to achieving this goal.
