6 Tips to Prepare Yourself for a Cookieless Future |   28 Apr, 2022

Hey Digital Marketer! We know why you’re here and what answers you’re looking for. The cookie has started crumbling and drowning marketers and advertisers into dark waters. It is alarming for all the marketers and advertisers, but don’t you worry because we’ve got the perfect solutions to your problem. But before beginning to discuss the solutions, let us deeply evaluate the situation. 

Keep reading till the end of this blog to get a better idea of making your brand survive the cookieless future.

Google Announced a Cookieless Future

Google had wanted to get rid of third-party cookies toward the beginning of 2022, proclaiming the upcoming ‘cookieless future‘, but now Google’s plan has been postponed. In late June 2021, it decided to extend the time till the end of 2023.  

This news came as a shockwave throughout the ad tech and digital marketing agencies as they spent their whole year preparing for cookieless advertising. So now the question arises what those firms are going to do about this extended time issue.

Also Read: 5 Best Alternatives to Third-Party Cookies 

What will be the Impact of the Suspension of Third-Party Cookies?

With the immediate action upon the lapse of the given two years, marketers could see a massive shrink in the audience gathered through third-party cookies. So, marketers will have to return to the planning phases to track down a new and practical cookie-free strategy to target their customers and develop better ways to collect audience data. 

This move by Google is a welcome move for the users and buyers. It will give data security assurance. The user will get assured that no third-party monitoring is happening on their activities.  

As an advertiser, you undoubtedly have many important priorities – and focusing on each of them must be necessary for quick revenue generation. So you would like to be excused for asking why you should stress over something that’s almost two years away – but this is not the case and you need to reconsider the cookieless issue and get into action quickly.  

The most Effective Ways to Prepare Yourself for a Cookieless Future

Here are our six top recommendations for all the marketers around the world to get themselves ready for this upcoming challenge:

1. Create Your First-party Data Resource

When one sort of data vanishes, the smartest and most obvious thing to do is: get it from elsewhere. For the cookie-free environment, the third-party data will have to be substituted by first-party data.  

What is first-party data? That is the data you gather directly from your current clients or prospects. Simple examples include purchase histories newsletter subscription, and you could also use behavioral data from your website or app itself.

An efficient first-party data asset helps you create accurate segments and resolve customers’ identities across multiple devices and identifiers. It also adds to a more remarkable ability to target customers across your different marketing channels effectively.

2. Ask Customers Who They Are and What They Want

We’ve gotten too trained with secretly following people to learn about them. We need to reignite the skill of asking our customers who they are, what they need, and how they like to communicate. Online feedback and surveys are incredible because it promotes two-way communication.

3. Check for Consent

As you explore the cookie-free environment and start developing a first-party data resource of your own, you want to recall precisely why third-party cookies were being removed: they harmed consumers’ trust. Practically, it implies that in the data you gather and use going further, ensure that you capture and reflect customers’ consent. Although this is comparable to our last point about bringing together first-party data itself – it’s more complex than expected. 

Permission for an individual client can be taken in various forms – for instance, when they subscribe to your newsletter or when they create an account on your site – to be on top of it, you need to assemble these various sources.

4. Make Your Community of Brand Lovers

Create your community of clients and brand lovers to gather rich first-party data and use your actual customers as brand advocates instead of depending on third-party cookies. Influencer marketing can likewise assist with building relevant audiences on social media or retarget customers who have been captivated by influencer content.  

5. Focus on Contextual Advertising and Cookieless Marketing Channels

Focus on cookie-free strategy involving contextual advertising and cookieless marketing channels. Email is an outstanding example. Since it is driven by one of the most valuable client data (their email address), you can still deliver engaging and highly relevant content without depending on cookies for customers’ information.

6. Create Your Data Retention Mechanisms

Create your data retention mechanisms with the goal that you never again need to depend on cookies to serve targeted ads. For instance, you can ask customers their age, gender, and email address to build a fundamental guest profile. After this, you can begin delivering digital marketing campaigns that can be increased according to their response rate. In simpler words, ask consent for their data and use it.

Conclusion

The countdown is running too fast – Keep in mind that third-party cookies have already been banned on Safari and Firefox, so actually, the cookieless future is already here!

For an advertiser, there’s not even a moment to waste in preparing for the new era of cookieless digital marketing campaigns. Not exclusively does this include building up a robust, consented first-party data mechanism. It includes developing a whole set-up of cookieless advertising solutions, when previously there was just one main advertising solution, i.e., third-party cookies.

Keep in mind that it’s ideal to proceed with preparation in earnest. And in case you need any help, you very well know where to find us.