In this world, you and your fellow bakers at the market depend on the same type of chocolate. One company controls a huge percentage of that high-quality chocolate supply. Everyone complains that the company is too big and powerful, but they still buy it because the chocolate is good and cheaper than everyone else’s.
Suddenly, with much fanfare and public outcry, the world considers chocolate harmful to public health. It’s not that chocolate won’t exist. People will still produce and consume it. But the biggest chocolate distributors, including that huge supplier, say: “No more chocolate!”
Are you changing your business model and products to adapt to the new world? Or do you become a chocolate outlaw?
Before deciding, the main chocolate supplier says: “Let’s make something that is fair like chocolate but without any of the dangerous things that worry the public. Trust us. And you can only get this new chocolate from us.”
Does that affect your choice of business? Do you think the chocolate supplier could be taking advantage of the situation?
Well, that’s where publishers and advertisers find themselves with third-party cookies today. In response to privacy concerns, Google will stop supporting third-party cookies. But it also has a “new” version that it says you’ll want. However, you still have no idea what that new bite entails.
Who knows what the correct answer is? CMI’s chief strategic advisor, Robert Rose, has some ideas. Watch this video or read on to get his take on it.
The history of third-party cookies
We have covered the idea of privacy and third party cookie output a couple of times on this channel. But recent events may make you say, “I just don’t get it. Are third-party cookies going to disappear? Is something going to change? I have to do something?
The answer is yes.
So as not to let the many buzzwords, technicalities, and doublespeak in the conversation continue to frustrate you, I’ll break it down.
A few weeks ago I talked about Google and the third party cookie status. Define what a cookie means and how it is used in personalized ads for a target audience across digital channels.
As I said, third-party cookies have been a contested feature for years. But now Google has huge market shares for web browsers, publishers/content and search advertising. Google is the hub of the advertising industry.
Then, about two months ago, Apple made a simple but extraordinarily significant change in the way you manage podcasts. Before the change, a subscriber who skipped a week or two of a podcast would return to find that the app had downloaded all the missed episodes.
After its recent system update, Apple is not downloading episodes retroactively, leading many podcasts to lose around 25% of their downloads. Podcasters suffered a collective collapse. It is a big problem for those who monetized their podcasts through advertising, since it is a $2 billion industry.
Now let’s imagine that impact almost 300 times greater. Programmatic advertising is a $546 billion industry. Google accounts for about $230 billion of that amount, so this shift to third-party cookies reaches a level of tectonic scale. When Google removes third-party cookies, all business owners will see how their ad performance will be greatly affected. Publishers, media companies, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), and even technology companies are suffering from toxic attacks.
Google is smart, of course. It is not just about removing the third-party cookie. After all, it also boosts your income. In 2019, Google basically said, “Uh, yeah, hey. We are going to focus on privacy and start working on new solutions that do not involve third-party cookies. We would love to work with you on this. Let’s aim for… I don’t know, 2022?
Around that time, he launched what became known as the Google Privacy Sandbox – an “industry-wide effort to develop new technology that will improve people’s privacy on the web and apps.”
Confusion in possible solutions without cookies
When Google went live in 2019, there were big debates with groups like the IAB, which represent the affected industries, about how to do things. Delays occurred. In 2021, Google said, “Okay, we get it. This is hard. Very good delay removal of third-party cookies until 2023.”
Meanwhile, Google kept doing things. Tried new technologies. Experiment. No one in advertising and media paid attention to it, or if they did, they didn’t like it. Then Google again said, “Okay, we will delay it. But come on, we’re serious: 2024 is the time.”
In 2023, it launched the solution to a cookie-free world: a clean room technology with partner vendors such as Habu and LiveRamp. The concept would allow advertisers to match Google data with the product company’s data. He created a data exchange called “Switzerland,” a neutral place to identify people to target with ads without either party revealing their data identities. Google called this PAIR: Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation.
To further confuse things and stretch the sanity of acronym bingo, Google also FLEDGE announced — First experiment of locally executed decisions on groups. It grouped people into a set of content categories. The test found that Google’s category definitions performed similarly to those using third-party cookies. Fortunately, they changed the name to Protected Audience API and they said, “Hey, this works. So, what do you say?
Disappointed editors and others responded, “Well, I don’t get it.”
And that brings us to today.
A few weeks ago, Google kept its promise. It implemented real changes, limiting third-party cookies to 1% of Chrome browsers, and people were not happy.
Now, the news is that IAB (that industry group that represents advertisers and publishers) issued a report outlining all the wrong aspects of Google’s Privacy Sandbox approach and why it’s not ready for prime time. They shouted: “What?! You’re actually doing what you told us you would do five years ago!
In their outrage, they tried not-so-subtly to make it clear that Google might not be transparent in how it does things. The UK Competition and Markets Authority became aware of the baseless insinuation. It basically said, “Google needs to do more to address the problems with the Privacy Sandbox because, well, because Google may be creating an advantage for Google in the way it’s designing the Sandbox.”
Shocking, right? Google could structure the next generation of targeted advertising to benefit itself over others.
Overcome the third-party debate with your own solution
What does all this mean to you?
You’ll be seeing similar headlines about third-party data fixes for a while. Discussion will continue about standardized ways to target advertising. It is in everyone’s interest to delay, obfuscate and complicate all of this. So, don’t expect this to resolve itself anytime soon.
But don’t use all that as an excuse to delay your company, your team, or yourself in refining your first-party data approach and using that data collected from your customers, site visitors, etc., to manage how to target content. and create value for your desired audiences and customers.
Whatever the outcome of all this beating, it will fundamentally change the way advertising media is bought. It’s not Yeah It will change, but how much and what will change. I guarantee that no matter which solution ends up being the standard, it won’t get any easier to target content.
If you don’t have a first-party data strategy and a way to get a 360-degree view of your audience while traveling Through your content experiences, marketing and advertising will become much more expensive. I know that for sure.
