3 minute read
Opinion: Generation Media
Felix Lewis associate director of digital - Generation Media
How will the Cookie Crumble?
As businesses prepare themselves for the end of 3rd party cookies, Felix highlights the need for media planning to adapt and looks at what a cookieless future might mean.
In January 2020, Google announced a plan to phase out and block 3rd party cookies by the end of 2022. From the start of that year, Chrome, Safari and Firefox will not be supporting cookies and this function of data collection. Media owners and businesses alike have been slowly gearing up for this and this behaviour will undoubtedly accelerate towards the end of the year. Unlike when we stepped into the unchartered waters of the introduction of GDPR with a degree of apprehension, companies are taking steps to prepare themselves for the cookieless world, and the industry is not viewing a cookieless future as a block to effective digital advertising.
Google is introducing Federated Learning of Cohorts or FLoCs to replace the use of 3rd party cookies. These work by identifying groups of user-based behaviours online and banding them together without targeting an individual. Once the user is deemed relevant to a group, they are banded in with other users based on their behaviour over the previous seven days.
This approach (although new for Google) is something that has been in play through many media owners for some time. In fact, business foundations have been built from this approach of identifying users. Semantic context targeting has been around for the last 10 years and has often been used as an additional tactic in programmatic strategy. In future, this will form a fundamental pillar of the approach and learnings surrounding search terms and page context will be paramount. Other solutions that are independent of cookies, such as mobile ID-based targeting solutions, work
by connecting location and offline behaviours to the individual’s unique mobile identifier (which does not change throughout the lifetime of that device). These solutions circumnavigate cookies and, although not directly impacted by cookies, IOS14.5 updates will have an impact to a degree. Partners and media owners impacted by these changes are not dissimilar to cookies and we will see a real shift in capabilities and solutions to target.
The collation of verified and approved 1st party data has been a real focus for many businesses, and this will be a powerful weapon in their artillery. There is no better validated data than that directly verified by consumers and, if brands and companies alike can harness this in a safe and responsible fashion, then the ability to connect with audiences will be enhanced. At Generation Media we are urging our client base to collate this data sooner rather than later and place a pressing importance on this. With the demise of cookies and the lack of being able to identify a user individually, verified individual consumer data is a hot currency in the digital world.
The importance of the loss of cookies cannot be understated. Many tech solutions rely on this to function and those who cannot adapt will be forced out the market. At Generation Media we are already focused on reaching children and parents in a safe and contextually relevant way so our targeting methods rarely rely too heavily on cookies in our media planning which should make for a smooth transition.
The 3 most important things for toy industry advertisers to keep front of mind as the cookie crumbles are:
• 1st party data: we suggest harnessing as much of this as possible as this will be unique to your brands and will ensure robust targeting. We endorse leveraging your owned channels to reach their audiences as well as amplifying reach as an advisable complimentary route to paid activity.
• Relevancy: the IAB are focusing on relevancy as a key topic for 2021 and a recent study by IAS found that 80% of consumers want the ad they see to match the environment that they are in. Therefore, paying close attention to this when forming overall digital strategy is vital.
• Content is king: as the majority of buying routes will be contextual going forward aligning the right creative with the campaign in the right environment is paramount to resonate with your audiences and drive sales.
Please get in touch to learn more about the best digital strategy for your brand.
