Strategies for a Cookieless Advertising

News of the latest iOS update has rocked the digital advertising industry in recent weeks, possibly leaving many businesses on edge. The main novelty is that, with its version 14.5, iOS allows users not to share their data and block third-party cookies. This prevents certain applications such as Facebook from collecting your data, negatively impacting their ability to segment. In fact, early surveys suggest that up to 80% of users will not allow tracking cookies.

With significant restrictions in sight, it's time for brands to rethink their strategies for digital advertising. At Good Rebels, we bring you the keys to face the changes in the sector and continue to obtain results in the new world without cookies.

Cookie Con C

Cookies are small pieces of code that are added to a device when a user visits a website. Cookies can remember various interactions, from browsing history to accessing data, which is why they are instrumental in certain advertising processes for behavioral profiling or techniques such as retargeting.

There are two main types of cookies:

First-party cookies. Own or origin cookies are those that a website creates when it receives a visit from a user. They are used, above all, to keep the session logged in and to save the purchase data. This information is only shared with the website that we visit and will not be changed with the new update.

Third-party cookies. These types of cookies identify users on different websites, which is known as “cross-site tracking.” They are often used in programmatic advertising. Data is shared with multiple websites and the one being visited to create user profiles through interests and buying behavior, allowing advertisers to target the same user with ads on multiple sites. This is where restrictions come into play.

Lack of trust

Concern about how personal data is used, shared, and collected online is nothing new. Still, it has been increasing in recent years, resulting in the entry into force of new privacy laws such as the RGPD (2018), which provides a set of legal guidelines for the collection and processing of personal data.

The novelty comes from the hand of technological platforms, such as browsers and mobile operating systems, which are beginning to significantly change the way they manage and process third-party cookies. Browsers, for example, already block this type of cookie by default: Firefox has been doing it since 2019, Safari since 2020, and Google Chrome plans to implement it in 2022.

In addition, the latest update to iOS 14.5 blocks cross-app tracking, which means that, from now on, all apps must ask users for permission to track them and access their advertising identifier. According to this new Apple policy, if users do not give their permission (as the vast majority are expected to do), the application will not share their data with other companies for advertising purposes.

This puts many obstacles in the way of advertising methods that brands have relied on in recent years to identify, evaluate and reach their audiences:

The new limitations will affect how brands build audience lists and ad personalization and frequency capping. In addition, the decline in the attribution window of 28 to 7 days will hamper reporting and measurement of ad campaigns.

Time to rethink your advertising strategy

In a context of so much change, updating our online advertising strategy is crucial to continue growing in our digital channels. But where do you start? These are some of the actions that your brand should take into account in the new reality without cookies:

1. Start building a direct relationship with the consumer

In the world without cookies, where privacy will be the absolute priority, brands must bet on direct-to-consumer to continue growing, using the data collected in their own channels and their CRM.

To do this, it will be essential to consider the importance of loyalty and added value. If we ask a user to share their data with us, every time they visit our website or app, we must offer them something useful and valuable in return.

One of the main considerations for brands should be investing in a loyalty program to reward consumers who share their email or phone number with them through a website or an app. This reward could be made effective through discounts and offers or exclusive products and content.

Over time, as consumers interact more frequently, companies that have established these relationships will gain more detailed information about their customers and can ultimately offer them better and more personalized benefits.

2. Invest in improving your analytical skills

To avoid the source data being in silos, we must consider investing in a multiplatform analysis tool, which will help us have the most important data in one place, facilitating the analysis.

Solutions such as Google 360 are beneficial to analyze the source data that we have collected in our own channels and combine them with the data of tools and audiences of the advertising platforms. This data will help us, for example, to identify new audiences with traits similar to our source data.

Also, context targeting can help us target our campaigns when it is impossible to identify the audience's preferences due to the lack of third-party data. The data we obtain from consumers will allow us to analyze their purchasing patterns or the seasonality of identifying the best time to promote each product or content.

To Know More, Reach Us: sales@iganatech.com