By Geoffroy Martin, CEO of Ogury
Although Google has reversed its decision to remove its third-party cookies, the need for businesses to reduce their reliance on advertising identifiers remains a fact, particularly in a context where nearly 90% of web traffic in the United States is driven to become cookieless in the more or less long term. In the meantime, or rather “at the same time”, access to identifiers remains a possibility to which many advertisers continue to resort, and many are turning to proprietary data.
Faced with the challenges posed by an increasingly fragmented digital landscape, the future relies on a plural strategy, based on the diversification of approaches and the collaboration of stakeholders. The crucial question remains: how can companies effectively address this revolution in an environment saturated with new concepts and emerging technologies?
The fallback towards first-party data, a panacea?
According to a study carried out among marketing decision-makers from CAC 40 companies by Epsilon, the data marketing entity of Publicis Groupe, 63% of advertisers today believe that their company is dependent on third-party cookies. A dependence whose questioning raises concerns and uncertainties: 61% of advertisers believe that the disappearance of cookies will have a major impact on their media activations on the open web, while 72% identify the loss of reach as their main concern.
Faced with this new situation, many are turning to first-party data, a real asset in the face of the decline in third-party data. However, limited in volume and diversity, they offer a partial view of the consumer journey, generally limited to pre-existing interactions, which limits the ability to acquire and engage with new audiences. Furthermore, effective use of this data requires significant technological investments, efforts that many companies do not feel ready to undertake.
Unlike first-party data, zero-party data is shared proactively and voluntarily by consumers with a company, on their purchasing intentions, their situation, or even their opinions on products or brands. This data is generally collected via surveys, quizzes or competitions, in a transparent manner.
Different data sources therefore replace the (soon obsolete) third-party data. But you still need to be able to analyze them… and activate them.
Capitalize on a diversified technological approach
Many alternative technological solutions to cookies are emerging but they do not all benefit from the same level of awareness and adoption. The study reveals that only 7% of advertisers surveyed currently use Data Clean Rooms, 50% use contextual targeting and 9% use universal identifiers. A large portion of decision-makers (37%) are unaware of the latter, and 26% are aware of them but do not plan to use them.
These figures are partly explained by the multitude of suppliers and approaches which hinders standardization and slows the widespread adoption of these solutions. Added to this are also the issues of sovereignty and respect for private life. However, here again, none of these solutions used individually can claim to resolve all the use cases previously covered by advertising identifiers.
For media agencies and brands that have built solid foundations by investing heavily in data collection and management strategies, it is now a matter of building new technological bricks on this foundation through the integration of third-party solutions . No winning strategy will rely 100% on contextual data or universal identifiers: the future lies in data models that will be able to take advantage of different data sources. Such a hybrid approach is the only way to achieve significant targeting scales and to resolve the scalability issues that so worry professionals in the sector. And why not, to be able to offer stronger targeting power than good old cookies?
This collaborative approach is also required for adtech companies themselves, who must continue their testing of the Privacy Sandbox APIs instead of taking advantage of Google’s latest announcement to remove this tool from their roadmap.
Take back control of your data
Once the time of uncertainty has passed, an opportunity opens up for advertisers to invest in strategies built on sustainability and resilience. Another study conducted by Epsilon, this time in the United States, questioned advertisers about the impact of the end of cookies on their advertising investments. 61% of them declare that they will maintain the same digital budgets but will invest more in tactics independent of third-party cookies.
To take full advantage of this new era, brands must therefore concentrate their efforts on several essential areas. First, strengthen the quality of their proprietary data by carrying out an audit (data assessment) of their value, relevance and usefulness. At the same time, establish technology partnerships to expand their scalability and the reach of audiences they can reach and engage. Here we touch on the key concept of data sharing, which aims to understand how a data architecture can evolve and to identify what data can be shared, with whom, while paying particular attention to respecting the privacy of users, obviously.
Once these crucial steps have been taken, testing and comparing alternative technologies on different use cases then becomes truly possible and relevant. And finally, ongoing training for marketing and IT teams appears essential given the emergence of these new technologies.
The future of digital advertising no longer relies on a single tool. By combining varied data sources, diversified technologies and a detailed understanding of their data and their audiences, brands will be able to equip themselves with essential digital resilience in a sector in the midst of an overhaul, but full of opportunities.
The Media Leader was not involved in the development of this content.
