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Focus on measurement before targeting to succeed in the post-cookie era
Marketers are increasingly faced with the challenge to identify and target audiences without third-party cookies, but it’s important to bear in mind that the deprecation of the first-party cookie will also significantly impact their ability to measure campaign success.
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Marketers must get used to life without third-party cookies and should ensure they are prepared for the new challenges in measurement, not just targeting, to ensure their online advertising continues to deliver.
This was the message from the Festival of Marketing session ‘Consumer first, Consent first: Measurement and addressability in the future’ sponsored by Quantcast. Brands were also called upon to put an emphasis on user experience and consent.
Third-party cookies have linked publishers’ audiences with brands’ target consumers for years, but the introduction of GDPR and ePrivacy regulations has changed the landscape and created a presumption towards privacy. Browsers including Safari and Firefox are already blocking third-party cookies, and Google’s Chrome is moving in the same direction.
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She accepted that most brands’ online advertising strategies will have to change, however. “It has to be about measurement first because if we do not know how a publisher is performing for us, how can we optimise our plans?” she said.
Woodward explained that DFS has a three-pronged approach to its own future advertising strategy. Firstly, it is setting up a consent management platform; secondly, it is improving its customer data platform to ensure it has the best quality first-party data; and thirdly it has formed an internal working group, made up of internal stakeholders and agency and tech partners.
She added that the value DFS gets from measuring its digital activity affects other areas of its marketing.
“For example, we use data and insight from digital to fuel our TV buying and we feedback into our commercial teams.”
She cited one example where the target audience with whom DFS believed a particular product would resonate ended up being different from the audience that actually engaged with the advertising. “The changes coming for marketers will have a knock-on effect on other business functions. For example, such data will help to progress our new product development strategy.”
DFS is working closely with Quantcast to ensure it uses privacy-based identifiers of individual consumers. Quantcast was involved at an early stage in the IAB’s transparency and consent framework and is now working with the World Wide Web Consortium, through which internet browser companies make their key decisions.
“Any identity solution will be dependent on explicit consent of the user,” said Tinkler. He added: “If we want the open, trusted internet to continue to work and thrive with great environments for advertisers, we must find a long-term solution that allows an ID with consent to work across all browsers.”
Tinkler described the importance of probabilistic identity, where marketers know with high confidence they are ‘probably’ reaching the right user based on reliable data and sophisticated modelling. He outlined how this can be more accurate if a brand also uses complementary ‘deterministic’ solutions, where the consumer’s identity is ‘determined with very high confidence’.
He said that ultimately advertisers had to find a solution because they are currently fighting over a smaller fraction of the online audience (where third-party cookies exist), and without a new privacy-safe identifier the trusted, open web will become a watered-down version of what marketers expect today for their digital advertising.
“And if we do not solve this issue in the open web, more marketing spend is going to navigate to the walled gardens of Facebook, Google, Amazon and TikTok,” he added, or even be redirected towards other channels such as TV, outdoor or audio.■
Click here to watch the session on demand at the Festival of Marketing
Allan Tinkler, privacy and identity lead for EMEA at Quantcast, said marketers must take a measurement-first approach because there is no value in targeting unless you can measure a campaign’s ROI. He said that third-party cookies have been insufficient for effective measurement for a while now, but with the full removal of third-party cookies now under way, advertisers will need to change focus if they want to access addressable audiences to deliver relevant and tailored messages.
One of the most effective ways of identifying consumers and creating addressable audiences is by using matched first-party data. However, this will continue to rely on consumer consent and ‘probabilistic’ identifiers to achieve the needed scale.
DFS’s senior digital marketing manager, Catherine Woodward, explained why the furniture retailer is in a good position regarding first-party data and obtaining permission to market to people, and what steps DFS has taken to ensure they stay abreast of the upcoming changes. She said data helps the brand drive an emotional connection with consumers.
DFS's Catherine Woodward on the brand's response to phasing out third-party cookies
THE HIGHLIGHTS
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