Everything you require to learn about audience targeting without depending on third-party cookies

Following the passage of landmark customer personal privacy laws, Google officially announced its objective to phase out third-party cookies on Chrome internet browsers by next year. This is certainly a victory for the conscious consumer wary of selling information to advertisers, however it’s likewise one that may leave services scrambling when the cookie jar vanishes. These companies must be more thrilled than alarmed. While the death of third-party cookies is a challenge, it’s likewise an opportunity: As options to third-party cookies emerge, marketers may find themselves better-equipped audience targeting and acquirement techniques.

Third-party cookies have not always been perfect right out of the oven, and their quality was mostly depending on aspects such as the information supplier’s approaches, the latency and recency of that information, and any related acquisition costs. Sometimes stagnant, these prebuilt audiences enabled marketers to quickly scale their audiences. The upcoming phaseout will put pressure on online marketers to reassess their strategies for properly targeting audiences.

What are the alternatives to third-party cookies?

Publisher walled gardens (in which publishers trade complimentary content for first-party data) are a strong beginning point for marketers seeking options to third-party cookies. These audiences won’t come cheap, but it will be possible to find publishers with audiences that strongly line up with your own customer base. And since these sources of data are normally confirmed, they’re also a precise source of modeling information to use as you construct your own user databases.

Lots of purchases nowadays begin with online research study, so smart marketers are also checking out contextual marketing as a third-party cookie option. Mapping out the sales funnel for your service or product will help you identify opportunities for targeted advertising as your audience performs research, but it’s essential to be precise at the very same time. Make certain to use unfavorable search terms and semantic recognition to avoid your brand name or item from appearing in risky or potentially awkward placements. (Just consider the word “shot,” which in this day and age might relate to anything from COVID-19 or health and health to disputes surrounding the Second Amendment.)

There’s still time for a smooth transition away from your dependence on cookies, however you should not wait a lot longer to begin. As you explore new ways to get your message out to precise audiences, these techniques are a terrific place to start:

1. Lean on second-party information

Second-party information (such as the kind offered on publisher walled gardens) can provide accurate audience targeting for advertisers in a hurry to replace third-party cookies. This kind of data can inform people- or account-based marketing strategies, helping you determine individuals in a particular industry or those with a particular appropriate job title. Integrating second-party data with your more comprehensive digital marketing strategy can develop usage cases for lookalike modeling or offer a strong foundation for consecutive messaging.

Since second-party data will come at a possibly high expense, however, try to partner with publishers and service providers for the long term to keep rates as low as possible. As an included benefit, this will provide you time to experiment and usage different kinds of data in different methods.

2. Carry out mobile ad ID (or MAID) targeting

HOUSEMAID targeting is based upon a confidential identifier related to a user’s mobile device operating system. MAIDs have actually constantly been the go-to for application targeting since they’re privacy-compliant and serve as a fantastic way to segment audiences based upon behaviors and interests. Everybody expected MAIDs to grow as mobile and in-app use has actually accelerated. In the U.S., for instance, mobile users invest simply over an hour more on those gadgets than their computers every day, and they spend 87 percent of the time on their smartphones in-app. The death of third-party cookies will certainly speed up the use of these audiences across channels even more.

Among the most powerful insights provided by MAIDs is the ability to track a user’s area data. If a gadget is frequenting an NFL arena, for instance, you can infer that the user is a football fan, which enables a host of other reasonings to form. You can also enhance MAIDs with offline deterministic data, allowing you to construct a more total image of the user, their market info, and their appropriate interests.

Keep in mind that recent modifications to Apple’s iOS 14 platform might limit this kind of targeting on the business’s devices. This, it’s also important to validate the precision and precision of the service provider offering you place information.

3. Build custom designs and indexes

Algorithmic targeting or lookalike modeling caught a bad rap from marketers who fretted the designed audiences would expand targeting too far. As the quality of your audience input boosts, the quality of your modeling output increases. Simply put, issues are justified just if you’re modeling audiences after modeled data.

On the other hand, models can be an outstanding source of extra insight if you’re utilizing deterministic information. This details originates from all kinds of sources, including social media platforms, surveys and surveys, and e-commerce sites that know on user purchase history. In other words, it’s information you can trust– implying it can inform the creation of precise audience sections and designs that capture real customer intent. With deterministic information at the helm, you can create your own designs and indexes to aid in your targeting efforts.

First-party information from consumers and active social media followers usually provides the very best source for models. Understand outliers when it pertains to audience insights, though; signals should be strong enough to imply the target audience’s actual habits.

4. Usage Unified ID solutions

The death of third-party cookies doesn’t suggest the death of all your strategies, and you can expect to see a range of sophisticated options emerge in the coming years that use audience segmentation with increased control for marketers and enhanced personal privacy protections for customers. Some business are already working collaboratively to create Unified ID services that modernize audience targeting and measurement.

The solutions they’re creating goal to collect user info (such as e-mail addresses) in exchange for totally free content. Those addresses will then be appointed encrypted IDs that are transferred along the quote stream to advertisers. If publishers commonly embrace unified identity products, they’ll offer an exceptional option to an overreliance on walled gardens.

Nevertheless, among the most significant hurdles for a combined ID solution will be scalability: It will likely not be an option that can base on its own for a long time.

The death of third-party cookies will definitely shake up the marketing world, but that’s probably a good idea. Cookies were never created to be the foundation of digital advertising, and their disappearance makes room for options to third-party cookies that in fact provide a better experience for marketers and the audiences they’re seeking to target. As advertisers get more granular control over who hears their messaging (and when) and customer data is ensconced behind modern-day encryption and personal privacy defense tools, it’s not tough to argue that everyone wins when we put away the cookie container.

Sean Cotton is the president and co-founder of Coegi.