That’s the Way the Cookie Crumbles

Third-party cookies have been the center of attention for far too long. Yes, third-party cookies help scale campaigns and provide large data sets to analyze. But first-party data takes the cake. It’s way more valuable than third-party data because of its accuracy. Plus, it is unique to your company and you already own it.

Start Leveraging First-Party Data

It’s time to start testing new tactics and targeting solutions so that you are ahead of the game when 2023 rolls around.

Leverage Digital-Out-of-Home (DOOH)

The changes taking place with browser and app privacy requirements won’t have a huge impact on DOOH. In fact, it’s expected to reach a market size of US$11.326 billion by 2023. The popularity of DOOH will continue to increase as more advertisers look for other channels when cookies are removed in 2023.

First-party data can be combined with DOOH to create and target audiences in the real world. Incorporate customized content and personalized targeting to enhance your customer’s experience.

Embrace Lead Gen Ads

LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, and YouTube offer some form of lead gen ads. These ads allow your audience to fill out a lead form, without leaving the platform. The key to success is offering a lead magnet your audience is interested in.

Use your first-party data to pair these powerful ads with lookalike audiences for an effortless combination better than milk and cookies.

Audience Segmentation

Use first-party data segmentation to divide your audience based on specific actions or customer journeys. Create campaigns intended to push them towards more valuable actions. For example, you could create an audience of users who attended your webinar. Then create a campaign encouraging this audience to register for your free demo.

Rethink Retargeting

Retargeting uses both first-party data and third-party cookies. But new technology has emerged that allows us to create retargeting campaigns without cookies.

Google’s Remarketing Lists for Search Ads or RLSAs: RLSAs allow you to customize your campaigns for people who have previously viewed your site. The customer match feature allows you to integrate first-party audiences by uploading your lists. From there you can tailor your bids and ads to this audience when they’re searching on Google and partner sites.

The Trade Desk’s UID2: UID2 is a privacy-compliant identifier to power advanced data targeting. The ID framework is open source and is available to everyone for free.

Placement Targeting: Instead of using third-party cookies to determine your ad placements, these campaigns use a list of placements you choose to target your desired audience. A placement can be a website or a specific page on a site, a mobile app, video content, or even an individual ad unit.

Building a list of placements can be very challenging, there are literally billions of websites that you could target. Make your life easier and use third-party cookies to help you build out our placement list. Pay close attention to the placements that provide the best ROI in your current remarketing campaigns and use those insights to build out your placement list.

Embrace Change

There will soon be no more (third-party) cookies in the cookie jar, whether we love it or not. Use this time to develop a competitive advantage and stay ahead of the curve. Look for opportunities to increase first-party data collection, start leveraging the data you already have, and use third-party cookies to gain insights while you still can.

And, most importantly, keep an open mind.

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