Are Marketers Prepared for a Cookieless World?

By 2023, Google will eliminate third-party cookies in its Chrome browser. Apple has already started o make changes to its Identifiers for Advertisers (IDFAs). Third-party cookies for a long time have acted as a catalyst for the advertisers who are heavily invested in digital. The main objective of third-party cookies for the advertisers was to understand the consumer behavior, what are their preferences, where they are located, to target them with precision.

In terms of browsing, Google chrome holds the largest market share, third-party cookies help advertisers to personalize, target, and retarget their customers. Now marketers across the world are looking for new alternatives for targeting and advertising on the internet.

According to an e-Marketer report, around 36 percent of marketing professionals worldwide have said that once the third-party cookies are gone, the customer purchase history will be their most valuable source of data. Meanwhile, 32 percent expect social media profiles as key, and 31 percent reply on website registration for the data source.

This is going to be a challenging scenario for marketers as they are all dependent more on first-party data. One of the sector which is going to be highly affected with the ban on third-party cookie is automobile. For example, Maruti Suzuki has a Customer Data Platform (CDP) in place in which data regarding all interaction with the consumers are collected. It not only consist information on transaction but also interactional data that is obtained while conversing with the customers.

In such a scenario, brands will have to engage in probabilistic audience modelling— Contextual advertising. It is a mechanism where data is generated from a user’s browsing behavior. The data obtained is then compared to deterministic data points, also known as first-party data truth. This can be done with the help of tools like artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Startup brands in India that are ahead of the tech curve highly believe privacy, personalization, and measurement can all be achieved together. For instance, tracking pixels—a 1×1 pixel graphic that identifies users’ behaviour, site conversions, web traffic, and other similar cookie metrics which are hidden in the platforms ranging from banner ads to emails – captures information instead of cookies. Indian advertisers, for now, with investment power, are ready to fight the cookiepocalypse.