Bye Bye, Third-Party Cookies
We’re projected to say goodbye to third-party cookies by the end of 2022, and this already has marketers thinking about other ways to track advertising — and a few players developing other solutions. On the surface, it appears that the “death” of third-party cookies could create new challenges for marketers. And while this is partly true, it’s also an opportunity for improvement.
Before you panic, it’s important to consider why we’re tracking ads in the first place. While the priority metrics might vary slightly, in general, we track ads to measure performance. As marketers, we know how critical performance measurement is to planning, budgeting and reporting, and it’s important to note that’s not going away — although how we get there will influence the specificity of our metrics.
By using cookies, a user’s specific online behavior can be tracked, including what they clicked on, search history, device details, shopping preferences, and so on. This allows a large degree of specificity in our analytics and, therefore, our campaign/advertising planning to really target consumers at an individual level.
The disappearance of third-party cookies doesn’t mean an end to measurement; it just means what and how we measure is going to change. And that’s okay. Let’s start toward the bottom of the funnel: We still own our own website audiences and we’ll still be able to capture them through our built-in capabilities. And from there, we can drive other actions — e-commerce, call center traffic, location visits, etc. Having access to our own audiences will help us make decisions further up the sales funnel without the use of cookies.
