Cookie-less Future: The Great Digital Reset!

While the industry was still trying to brace itself for the cookie-less future, something new seems to be emerging alongside. The fight for the ‘’Metaverse’’ is here. The term ‘’Metaverse’’ was first coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash. It referred to the blending of digital and physical existence. Almost three decades later, that definition is taking shape before our eyes.

The race for companies to stake a claim on their corner of the metaverse has already begun. A price tag of $9,500 may seem exorbitant for a dress that doesn’t exist in the physical world, but consumers are assigning a high value to digital possessions.

Brands have already started experiencing this. As per Fast Company, in February 2021, NFT marketplace RTFKT sold 600 pairs of digital sneakers in just a few minutes, generating $3.1 million in sales. In June 2021, a digital-only Gucci bag sold on Roblox for over $4,000—which is more than the physical bag costs. On Aglet, a mobile shopping game where users can buy rare sneakers from brands including Chanel, Nike, and Balenciaga, one user has spent $15,000 on virtual shoes, Fast Company reported

But let me now just focus on ‘’Cookie-less’’ which seems to be a precursor to the kind of world we are entering. It suddenly seems a smaller problem to solve than deciphering the complex ‘Metaverse’’ and getting adept at the rules of the game. We will talk about it a little later :)

The postponement of the cookie deprecation as announced by Google in June 2021 seems to have brought in some sense of joy in the industry. 2023 is not far away and this sense of joy and relief is only ephemeral. The clock hasn’t stopped ticking and agencies, advertisers, publishers, Ad-tech and Mar-tech players will need to put their thinking caps to address the immediate cookie-less and a bit distant Device ID-less future.

Do Not Procrastinate and Do Not Underestimate

‘’The best way to deal with procrastination is to postpone it’’- Tony Robbins

All players in the ecosystem should stand up and take notice of this and treat this deadline extension as a blessing in disguise.

Let’s not underestimate the enormity of the challenge either. The challenge is colossal until a very credible solution comes into being. The cookie was invented in 1994 and the digital industry, over the last two decades, has been shaped and built on ‘’COOKIES’’ with respect to targeting, retargeting, measurement and attribution. All that is going to change. 2023 will mark the beginning of a new digital era built on completely new solutions that respect Consumer Privacy with ‘’Customer Centricity’’ as the cynosure of all marketing activities.

Become Action Oriented

Being ‘’aware’’ of the problem sets you ahead of others, in the first place, itself. There are few actions that marketers should take towards addressing the challenge during the ‘’preparatory’’ leave as some of them will require you to relook, rejig, restructure, and reassess the approach that you have taken so far and realign the resources ( and maybe overhaul, for some) to successfully and seamlessly transition into the new cookie-less world.

Customers will prefer intimate experiences with brands. They want to make sure the brands know who they are, and the brands can actually react to them. Marketers will be challenged to collect information to create those experiences only after getting the right permissions from consumers. 

Let’s not forget the Latin proverb “Fortis Fortuns Adiuat”.I would also like to add; it also favors the best prepared!

Take Steps

As William Halsey had said that all problems become smaller when you confront them instead of dodging them.

1.          Build Zero Party Data ( ZPD)

‘’Know Your Customers’’ (KYC)

Yes, I put this ahead of our clichéd First-Party Data because this refers to all the information (desires, preferences, likes, dislikes, etc) that your own customers are willing to share explicitly with you in exchange for some value. This value can be monetary or non-monetary in nature. ZPD enriches consumer insight and even informs product/service development. The world we will be entering into will be driven by Consumer Privacy and Consumer Consent. The scale and relevancy of your personalization will depend on the amount and quality of consented data that resides with you and the manner in which you have been able to handle them.

Start charting out ‘’Value Exchange Programs’’ right away. One should start building ‘’Value Exchange Programs’’ very much like an Annual Content Calendar across brands and investments should be earmarked for them.

2.          Build First-Party Data

“Avoid Competency Trap’’

I am surprised that it took this development to make the industry stand up and take notice of their own customer Data which was overshadowed by the presence and easy availability of a less precise and less transparent ‘’Third-Party Data’’ so far. The reason, I kept this in the second number is that you can still collect First-party Data of consumers even if they are not coming through ‘Value Exchange Programs’’ like collecting consented PII data,1st Party Cookie ID, Device IDs, and other behavioral data through their engagement on your sites/apps.

We seemed to have got very competent with ‘’Third-Party Data’’ and the ways it needs to be harnessed but this competency will yield nothing post-2023. If you have been good all this while does not guarantee that you will rule even after 2023. With Third-Party Data going away, all focus falls on primarily First-Party Data (FPD) collection largely. The rules of the game will change. Marketers who already have a big collection of the same should retool the way they are being collected and those who lack, need to rejig their marketing spend and start allocating a portion of it on this so that post-2023 they will be able to launch 1:1 personalization at scale by resolving their identity across their multiple devices and identifiers, thus enabling targeting effectively across your various marketing channels.1:1 retargeting outside the walled gardens will be severely impacted. Also, many organizations already have their FPD sitting in silos across different functions and all such data (POS/POP, Customer preferences on Sites/Apps, surveys, trials, etc) need to be brought together, cleaned, and organized. This is definitely not an overnight job.

3.          Audit ‘’CONSENT’’

This is an important area, often overlooked and even unexplored but is the most important constituent of the Privacy world we are entering into. As I mentioned above, the fact that some marketers might be sitting on a huge First-Party Data does not mean that all of them have been collected through the right process of ‘Consent’’ over the last so many years. This needs to be reassessed. Audit your Consent Capture Process. Customers can give consent across channels and devices and all these preferences need to be mapped, unified (From diff sources), and deployed across different marketing activities. Marketers will require a single view of consent as part of every single customer profile.

One might require a Data Protection Officer (DPO) to ensure that there is no oversight in the way data is getting collected and executed across campaigns.

Marketers have to start looking into ‘’Consent Management Platforms’’ CMP or deploying CDPs, some of which, already have this inbuilt. After all, marketers would not like a situation where a bulk of the First Party Data collected is found wanting of consent and hence made unusable. Ignore consent management at your own risk. GDPR fines have skyrocketed. GDPR fines can reach £20 million or 4% of the annual global turnover of a company for certain infractions.

4.          A Customer Data Platform

A CDP with a CMP forms a basic requirement of the era we are entering into. Marketers need to set up the right infrastructure to make use of the data being collected. Some marketers have started on the First Party Data collection exercise without having the tools and platforms which can help them make sense of the entire exercise and help ingest data from multiple sources, enrich it and even activate on the channels of your choice. This is a necessary tool to have and one can start evaluating the best ones in the market during this period and get them onboarded. You should know which CDP suits your requirements and plan accordingly (or even build in-house).

5.          Cookie-less Solutions

While you set your house in order, it is also important to keep a tab on various cookie-less solutions being worked upon so that you can take an informed decision about using some of them or even testing them along the way.

These solutions largely fall under:

1.          Walled Garden Solutions :

a.          Cohort Based Solutions: The FLoC and FLEDGE from Google attempts to target people with similar browsing habits (in theory protecting their anonymity while providing advertisers with accuracy)

b.          Meta (erstwhile FB): FB is working on Facebook Advanced Analytics

c.          Other Walled Gardens are perfecting their own solutions

2.          Solutions in the Open Internet :

a.          ID Solutions

i.           Epsilon CORE ID/Digital Marketing Solutions (DMS)

ii.          UID 2.0

iii.         Liveramp ATS

iv.         Zeotap ID+

v.          ID5

3.          Contextual Targeting: Old is Gold. Marketers should start exploring the players here as there has been a massive improvement in the way contextual targeting is happening these days as compared to yesteryears. Publisher tie-ups to tap into their authenticated 2nd party data would also form a big portion going ahead along with other partnerships having deterministic data consented to by the customers.

There is enough and more work to be done and one should utilize the time constructively. Marketers should also be aware of the different channels like CTV, OTTs, and DOOH where there will be hardly any impact, and how they need to look at the overall mix while reaching consumers with personalized messages.

"The heights by great men reached and kept, were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night."-- Henry Wordsworth Longfellow.

Cookiepocolypse - We see this as a New Beginning. Fewer cookies would mean more ‘Creativity’’. Fewer cookies would also mean ‘’Responsible Marketing’’. And all the above would mean better ‘’Customer Centricity’’ through enhanced ‘’Brand Experiences’’.

Looking forward to the ‘’GREAT DIGITAL RESET’’ giving rise to the ‘’Metaverse’’. The metaverse is offering a chance to create a world that is inclusive, ethical, and based on meaningful connections. People want to reflect their real-life ethics and values in the metaverse, and there’s potential for them to do better. Brands will need to be a part of the digital third spaces that are pulling people’s time and attention because people aren’t just socializing in digital spaces—they’re working, shopping, and discovering products there, too. Habits, beliefs, and interests from customers' physical lives are now perfectly extending into the digital realm and also becoming more significant. In a survey,  88% of global consumers say their online self should reflect their real-life ethics and values. Capturing the attention of people wanting to do good online is becoming increasingly important. Digital Identities are assuming more importance than physical ones. It seems it will do good for brands to start deciphering the digital avatars of their customers/consumers instead as that will reveal more about them.

Look Inward to Look Beyond! Ask Questions! Prepare! Reset!

Anil Pandit  

(The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the company he is employed in.)