I was recently invited to sit on a BWG roundtable about how to advertise in a cookieless world. The event highlighted challenges and approaches to navigating Google’s latest announcement that they will be removing third-party cookies. Cookies are the little trackers that log viewer’s activities on websites, which, of course, help advertisers to better understand customers’ interests and intent. Without them, many brands are losing a lot of their targeting power.
This topic is no doubt on a lot of brands’ minds – our industry now has a lot of pressure to make sure their data is intact and in order. These changes will make it challenging for advertisers to track impressions outside of the Google environment. And while the environment will probably allow for some measurement, like attribution, advertisers will need to get a lot savvier to personalize ads for viewers.
So what can brands do to prepare?
- Get your internal first-party data in order. Make sure you are making the best use of the data you already have at your fingertips.
- Plan now. Have a strategy in place for when Google’s changes hit. Get the most out of your ads now by running tests and optimizing your ads and taking note of lessons learned.
- Lean heavily on loyalty programs. It’s easy to personalize and target customers, if you know first-hand how they are behaving. Loyalty programs not only help you to collect data, but they help increase retention rates. According to Accenture, brands’ loyalty program members generate 12 to 18% more revenue per year than non-members.
- Leverage location targeting. While cookies are going away, the ability to detect a customer’s location is not and is now more important as a way to deliver relevant ads as a localized form of contextual advertising. If you’re in retail then leverage proximity to your stores, if you’re eccom only, then leverage geographical parameters like regional best sellers or weather triggers to get the right product in front of the right customer at the right time.
- Lastly, working with a partner like StitcherAds will help ensure that you are in the best position to personalize content across social platforms and stay relevant. Having a team of data-centric minds and technology that makes it easy to leverage data will ensure you’re hitting customers with the right messaging across ads that are targeted in new ways.
My team is eager to help brands reverse the curve when it comes to all the upcoming changes in cookies. We’d love to help you prepare, just request a demo.
