Google is yet another browser that will withdraw its support for 3rd party cookies in the coming months. The company follows the footsteps of other browsers like Safari, Firefox, and Edge, which have already stopped using cookies for retargeting ads. However, Google joining them creates the biggest change in the marketing environment. After all, Chrome owns over 60% market share! So how will this affect retargeting, which is currently one of the most popular ways of advertising?
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What’s happening with 3rd party cookies?
3rd party cookies have been widely popular in the advertising industry. Internet users used them for many years in order to tailor their online experience to their needs, including their advertising preferences. But what are cookies? They are tiny text files each website sends to the user’s browser. Cookies collect information about the user’s behaviour, and the next time this person visits the same website, it’s much better suited to their preferences making their online experience much more enjoyable.
Of course, 3rd party cookies have been beneficial not only to internet users but to marketers as well. They could employ this data for their own needs and deliver highly personalized marketing content that boosted engagement and conversion rates. One of the best ways of implementing 3rd party cookies is retargeting. This particular technique uses the user’s browsing history and shows them products and/or services they already have been interested in. For example, if a user views the leather jackets in your store, they will see ads for those products on different websites. And with Deep Learning, advertisers can show them other items they may be interested in, of course, based on their online history. Will this be possible when 3rd party cookies are gone?
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1st party data to the rescue
Luckily, there is 1st party data as well! After all, 3rd party cookies have been basing their targeting and retargeting efforts on them this whole time. How will that affect the creation of ads in the future? One approach to this issue has been officially endorsed by several popular browsers, including Chrome and Edge. It uses privacy-preserving marketing APIs that allow advertising but, at the same time, guarantee privacy to internet users.
How does it work? It employs 1st party data, and allows technology vendors to use it as a base to develop groups that include users with similar characteristics. That means identification will be assigned to the whole group of users, not individual ones. When creating your advertising campaign, you will be able to select interest groups, and based on that recommendation engine will tailor the ads.
What will be the most challenging part of new reality?
Even though this system sounds good, there are some issues in need of solving. They focus on the ways of estimating the correct value of users in the groups and the whole process of creating ads tailored for a group of users.
