Preparing for a Cookieless Future
Cookie 101
Cookies are a family of small text files that websites place on a consumer’s device during a browsing session.
Cookies are primarily used for a website to function properly — so users can navigate from page-to-page, add items to cart, etc. In addition, there are non-essential cookies that can store data about browsing patterns and behaviors across the web — enough to potentially identify a consumer.
Changes to the Data Privacy Landscape
In this new era of privacy, every brand is now a data company. Marketing strategies that rely heavily on third-party cookies are disappearing. Serving targeted ads and personalized content to prospects and customers is going to be challenging as huge swathes of audience visibility will be cloaked.
When personal data is harder to obtain, customer intelligence becomes more valuable. It’s important to develop digital transformation strategies that boost your ability to collect and utilize first-party data.
Preparing for a Cookieless Future
Forward-thinking brands are embracing the end of third-party cookies with new levels of transparency and authentic conversations. To succeed, every company must discover new, genuine ways to collect data and gain insights into their customers.
Know your audience. Without cookies, you need to know more about your audience than ever before. Do you truly know who your target audience is? Do you know their demographics, interests, wants and needs when it comes to engaging with your brand?
Use first-party cookies. First-party cookies aren’t going anywhere, which means now is the time to strategize using these cookies to improve your advertising. First-party cookies a new term? Read this CookiePro article to learn more.
The data you do have about your customers via first-party data should become the foundation of your advertising efforts moving forward. This means, growing your audience. Put strategies in place to increase your subscribers, email list, and followers. You can then serve these audiences with personalized content through other forms of advertising that don’t require in-depth data collection.
Create engaging content. You should’ve been doing this all along, but now is the time for it to take center stage. The need for eye-catching visuals and engaging messaging is greater than ever before.
Personalize your content using first-party data and other insights to learn about your audience (time/day of search, device, etc.). And be sure to A/B test different messaging and creative to identify which works best for your brand and resonates with your audience.
Strategize. While there will be challenges as you begin to navigate the cookieless future, you can get ahead of the game by strategizing your short-term and long-term approach to these changes.
Research and learn everything you can about advertising in a post-cookie world. The use of third-party cookies affects many different departments, so everyone should understand the changes and need for patience as a new way of tracking audiences and serving advertisements arises.
Once you’ve done your research, choose a few solutions to test and focus your efforts on which direction seems to be most beneficial for your business and clients.
A cookieless future is a significant change, but it’s happening — now is the time to prepare! Want to learn more about the cookieless future? Get in touch with our team and we’ll help you navigate the changes!