What Digital Marketing Will Look Like Once The Cookie Is Dead

For one week back in January, the biggest marketing story of the year was Google’s decision to give third-party cookies the boot: By 2022, the company announced, it would join Safari and Firefox and block third-party cookies in Chrome. The Association for National Advertisers (ANA) and 4A’s were quick to sound the alarm and declare that this decision would “choke off the economic oxygen” needed for digital advertising to exist.

As Prince might say, “Two thousand two two, party over — oops, out of time.”

Then the pandemic reached U.S. shores, and marketing departments around the country shifted their focus to their brands’ short-term survival. After all, 2022 was still a couple of years away, so perhaps there would be a chance to find common ground with Google and others between now and then.

Half a year went by, and Apple announced that starting early next year, marketers won’t be able to use the identifier for advertisers (IDFA) to track mobile users who haven’t expressly opted in. This throws another $80 billion into disarray.

What’s going on with digital marketing?

The pressure is coming from consumer rights activists and privacy regulators around the world. For the past 20 years, thanks to cookies on the web and mobile IDs like Apple’s IDFA on smartphones, marketers have capitalized on user-level behavioral data to personalize their interactions with customers. That has made digital advertising more relevant and generally more effective: I watch a lot of great outdoor-type videos and get ads for camping gear everywhere I go. Perfect!

But targeting (and retargeting) isn’t always on point. Even when it is, it often tries people’s patience. Frequency capping (subscription required) is difficult to achieve across channels, so we often end up seeing the same ad more times than we have the appetite for. As a result, most internet users (76%) are uncomfortable with what tech companies are doing with their personal data, and more than a quarter are estimated to be using ad blockers.

Read more : forbes