When Google announced in late April that the depreciation of third-party cookie across its Chrome browser and platforms, which had already been postponed twice, was being pushed further back (to 2025 as of now), reactions ranged from the smug--as exemplified by one international publication noting that in other news, water is still wet -- to the weary to relief.
As covered previously by exchange4media, despite all the industry buzz around the demise of the cookies, many marketers, advertisers, and platforms said that they were still not prepared for it, given that the cookies system has existed and been the default data source for the digital space for decades.
Digital advertising experts as well as digital marketers told us that this delay gave them time to fine-tune alternate strategies and technology stacks for data in an increasingly regulated consumer privacy environment, and it seems to be no different for publishers.
As noted by Lakshmana Gnanapragasam, SVP – Analytics, Epsilon, while a lot of attention is being focused on how brands can survive the third-party cookie deprecation for their digital marketing efforts, we often lose sight of the other side of the digital marketing ecosystem we call digital publishers and how they can survive this impending scenario.
“Digital publishers play a very crucial role by harvesting and supplying the audiences to meet the demand for the same generated by the brands. So, it’s crucial that they execute on the plans to survive the deprecation of third-party cookies.”
And according to Dhaval Gupta, Managing Director, CyberMedia, these plans are far from complete. “We have to acknowledge the fact that the Indian media publishing industry is still not as mature as more developed markets like US, Europe, Canada and others, when it comes to effectively monetizing their data. The depreciation of the third-party cookies made them finally look at their data, the way it is collected, and the way it can be used, as they look for new tech stacks and collection tools.”
Gupta, and others say, this delay in fact gives publishers, not to mention other industry stakeholders, the much-needed time to get their houses in order, and find and firm up on the technologies they are going to be using as we move further towards first-party data and consumer privacy protocols.
Some of these data solutions include contextual targeting, working with unified identity solutions, and using AI and ML to train tools that can effectively (and lawfully) track consumer behavior and patterns and glean insights useful to brands that advertise, the marketers that help them do it, and the platforms on which they do so.
On the other hand, Lathish Nair, Chief Digital Officer – EssenceMediacom, observes that, “Publishers with higher focus on digital revenue and margins will always be ahead in adoption to various solutions in a post-cookie era. The reason being it will impact their revenue and they will need to have solutions in place before the deprecation happens.”
“This is an ongoing experimentation within the publisher ecosystem to test the right identity solutions whether probabilistic or deterministic. They will have to decide on the right identity solutions based on their priorities, which offers effectiveness and scalability to the marketer,” notes Nair, adding that publishers will keep the momentum on, and this delay will give them more time to test various Identify solutions in a post cookie era and will prepare them for the future.
Ishan Chaki, Senior Media Buyer, Adbuffs, points out that when iOS 14 updates were rolled out, the industry faced similar challenges. “While it was not as grand as removal of third-party cookies from Google Chrome, it impacted the ads performance significantly. It took a good amount of time for advertisers and advertising platforms to adapt and flourish in the post-iOS 14 era. So, we are not surprised that Google is extremely careful about removing third party cookies.”
“While we are ready for a world without third party cookies, if Google wants to take time, we should wait as well. Removal of third-party cookies can create unforeseen challenges for marketers. Hastening it without a tested and proven alternative solution can be fatal for marketers and businesses,” says Chaki.
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