What the post-cookie era means for programmatic marketing

In the wake of Google's third-party cookie phase-out, how do brands maintain coherent planning, activation, and measurement across their programmatic advertising campaigns?

From the death of cookies to the ‘Privacy Sandbox’, Southeast Asian advertisers are gearing up for some major changes from Google in 2024. After four years of chatter, the global technology giant is finally ready to sunset third-party cookies within months. Dubbed the ‘cookie apocalypse’, the user privacy-led shift has left many in the marketing and publishing communities understandably worried about the future of their programmatic campaigns and their ability to effectively plan, target and measure.

Driving without fuel

Third-party cookies is a unique code that tracks users’ browsing habits, and has underpinned digital advertising since the early 2000s. In the past two decades, the cookie has been instrumental in enabling advertisers and publishers to build highly targeted and personalised digital campaigns using programmatic buying.

Programmatic advertising’s growth and value cannot be underestimated. In Asia Pacific in 2021, the spend on programmatic stood at US$147.5 billion. This is expected to increase to US$262.13 billion by 2026. As one of the fastest-growing ad types, programmatic has become a staple in any marketer’s toolbox.

Third-party cookies provide the data that allow marketers to not only target audiences but also to attribute and determine whether those audiences made an action on a website such as a product purchase. So, running a programmatic campaign without this data may initially appear to be like trying to drive a car without GPS.

But this is not a new challenge. Privacy regulations such as GDPR requiring explicit consent, and changes to operating systems like the Apple iOS introducing ITP in 2017 have meant that third-party cookies have long since been redundant across nearly half of all internet usage. Working with an agnostic programmatic partner can help marketers run cookieless campaigns with confidence, navigating the challenge to ensure performance is achieved regardless of what happens in the future, with or without cookies. At Crimtan, we’re not only following Google’s Privacy Sandbox, we’re also working to ensure that our approach works alongside identity technologies such as LiveRamp and advances in AI to afford more real-time signals to effectively plan, measure, and target in-market audiences.

And, although not all these initiatives have been welcomed by the advertising industry (the Privacy Sandbox’s current state clearly leaves room for scepticism), APAC marketers have reason to be optimistic. The United States and the United Kingdom have already witnessed a pullback in the use of cookies to track and identify customers as a result of legislation and big tech firm initiatives Indeed, around 28 per cent of US mobile browsers and 20 per cent of UK mobile browsers are now cookieless. A Yahoo study meanwhile revealed that over 90 per cent of the same reach can be achieved without cookies.?

As such, there is reason to hope for cookieless programmatic advertising campaigns that are accurate and still generate a high return on investment. Here’s how to achieve this.

Wider reach with consent?

The first key to a successful post-cookie campaign is to switch up the data. Marketers may no longer have the same access to third-party data, but they have treasure troves of their own – known as first-party data.

Marketers will need to get their data in order: document it, assess its value and ensure it complies with the relevant privacy regulations. Once this is in place, they should work with multiple technology partners to analyse their first-party data, segment it, use models like machine learning and AI to create similar audiences, personalise content and then use this data to target audiences online. Testing and analysing first-party data will enable marketers to customise advertising strategies and reach customers most efficiently.

Using cookieless connected platforms can help marketers identify high-value customers, find similar audiences on multiple channels and group them into target segments. Platforms such as Crimtan’s ArchiTECH help marketers connect with online audiences across multiple channels in a relevant way. Using personalised messaging through dynamic creative optimisation (DCO), adds an element of relevancy allowing advertisers to leverage a single template to curate many different, highly relevant variations of an ad to connect with different audience segments throughout the customer lifecycle journey.

This was seen through Crimtan’s partnership with JTB Communication Design (JCD) which operates Joshitabi, an entertainment news, lifestyle and travel information site targeting Japanese women, boasting over 3.4 million users. The partnership combined Crimtan’s programmatic solutions with Joshitabi's first-party data, enabling targeted advertising across the entire travel journey – without the aid of cookies. Through this collaboration, advertisers could gain exclusive access to real-time traveller intent signals from Joshitabi's audience, providing a new opportunity for brands to expand beyond their current reach, revolutionising advertising for Japanese domestic and outbound travel and enhancing overall marketing performance.

Having an agnostic solution that can pick the best option without relying on third-party cookies is crucial for effectively targeting customers. Crimtan’s cookieless connected platform underpinned by its agnostic ActiveID, combines deterministic data with probabilistic and signal data to produce a robust option to more effectively plan, target and measure your marketing campaigns. This translates to achieving a wide reach of your target audience with consent.

The end of cookies does not mean the end of successful programmatic advertising. Taking an agnostic approach will help marketers navigate whatever changes lay ahead, while by using well-managed first-party data and technology, they can still enjoy the rewards of precise, compliant and high-return programmatic campaigns.

This article first appeared on e27.com