Google Chrome Announces an End to 3rd Party Cookies
What
- Google officially announces plan to phase out 3rd-party cookies by 2022.
- Most people knew this was coming, but Google Chrome accounts for over half of all downloaded web browser Investing time and energy into maintaining an ad-supported web.
Why
- Data privacy has been at the forefront of consumers’ minds for years now.
- Aiming to protect consumer data from data leaks.
- Response in part to lack of transparency in where personal data streams go across advertisers, networks, and other touchpoints
Implications
- First-party data becomes incredibly valuable for targeting, but are companies willing to give up?
- Log-ins, newsletter sign-ups, etc.
- Addressable user volume continuously drops
- Contextual targeting is increasingly relied upon
- Companies like comScore
- Potential bottom line impact
- In Germany, a similar action by Firefox blocked third-party cookies by default, causing a 23% decline in CPM alongside a 45% decline in revenue.
Why are cookies so important?
Legal Environment Snapshot
Campaign Planning
- Plan budgets accounting for upcoming changes in media cost throughout the year
- Consider your audience, stay on top of available capabilities in order to reach strong leads
- Keep the momentum going! While there will be changes in how media is run, testing will not disappear, leverage new strategies to continue growth and awareness
- Allow for flexible audience planning taking into account the potential for reduced inventory
Live Media Monitoring and Optimizations
- Hands-on daily optimizations & close monitoring to ensure campaigns goals are being met & audiences are being reached.
- Test & Learn media strategy implemented
- A|B Creative Testing with closely monitored results
- Continued research & detailed definition of ideal lead/audience
Reporting
- Transparency! Changes will impact the way media is planned & run, making comprehensive reporting essential
- Metrics such as viewability, clickthrough rates, completed form fill-outs/ downloads etc. will still be available
- Creating custom dashboards to share a better understanding of media performance across teams is more important than ever
Impact on Digital
Targeting
- IMPACTED
- 3rd Party Data (Data Exchange Platforms and Data Providers) Advertiser 1st Party Data outside of the advertiser own website requiring DMP to DSP match
- NOT IMPACTED
- Geo-Location Targeting
- Device Targeting
- Contextual Targeting
- WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
- Audience targeting volumes will decrease
- Precision marketing will be challenged
- The ability to use 1st party data (CRM/DMP) will be limited
Campaign Delivery
- IMPACTED
- Campaign optimization based on users’ data like websites visited or previous exposure to a given campaign Frequency Capping which requires 3rd party cookies to understand number of exposures.
- NOT IMPACTED
- Campaign optimization not based on the users:
- Using the delivery context of a current ad opportunity such as data about the website, the placement, the device of the user
- Using the ad itself such as industry of the advertiser, length of video, size of image, etc.
- Campaign optimization not based on the users:
- WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
- Campaign performance will decrease. Guaranteed outcomes are key!
Programmatic Flows
- IMPACTED
- Without cookies – DSPs cannot run targeted ads
- DSPs cannot provide frequency capping capabilities
- NOT IMPACTED
- DSPs can still run contextual ads, geolocation, etc
- WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
- Inventory that does allow cookies will be saturated and more expensive.
- Figures: Globally, this reflects 25% lower bid prices and 3x less bidding from DSPs
Measurement
- IMPACTED
- Multi-Touch Attribution: the 3rd-party cookie maintains an aggregated view of the user history and events for MTA
- Cross-Channel Reporting: Without cookies, each of the channels used to track a user will provide different reports in a silo
- NOT IMPACTED
- Single Touch Attribution: Only single action (e.g.: last-click) is possible since no user history is used
- Media Reporting: Metrics such as viewabilty, clicks, completed views, etc. at time of ad delivery
- Audience Accuracy: Measurement of audience accuracy like DAR or VCE via panelist/profile data with a percentage remaining cookiebased
- WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
- Following the customer journey will be more challenging, inhibiting attribution or proper reporting
The Next 12 Months: Trends & Predictions
Publishers are likely to
- Provide incentives for users to create accounts
- Require users to turn on cookies to visit their websites
- Spend time in trying unique ID solutions in vain
Data providers are likely to
- See a drop in their revenues, proportional to the cookie-rate
- Start investing in new solutions: Contextual targeting, InApp data, Signed-on data
Programmatic
- The cookie-based inventory will become more expensive & competitive
- DSPs will be increasingly challenged to deliver cookie-targeted campaigns
- Programmatic is likely to flatten and benefit actors having logged-in traffic (e.g.: Facebook) or end-to-end solutions (supply to buy side – like Teads)
Ad managers and DSPs
- Will propose new targeting solutions (e.g: welcome back contextual targeting)
- Lower-funnel/perf will be more & more challenging – especially re-targeting & attribution (less
- volumes). Upper-funnel / branding will be a strong focus.
- InApp & logged-in traffic will be heavily used
Alternatives to cookies
- Fingerprinting techniques will develop
- IAB is likely to propose a new standard
- Browsers will lead the way to new changes (e.g.: Chrome)
Brands and DMPs
- Advertisers 1st-party data will be mostly used for prospecting (lookalike) rather than to directly target the customers/site-visitors
References
https://www.adweek.com/programmatic/google-chrome-will-phase-out-third-party-cookies-by-2022/