Remember how painful iOS 14 was for performance marketers? An even more seismic change is looming, and way too many marketers are still unprepared.
Yes, I’m talking about the impending death of third-party cookies. If you’re reading this article, this is probably the 1,000th time you’ve heard it mentioned.
And that might be part of the problem: “the death of cookies” could now be one of those familiar phrases you skim over without understanding the depth of its ramifications.
If you’re a little unclear on what kind of havoc “the death of cookies” is going to wreak in your campaigns, stay with me for a few minutes as I tackle:
First, let’s be clear: we’re talking about the death of third-party cookies, not first-party cookies. You own first-party cookies and the data they collect, which won’t be impacted by the Chrome update.
Third-party cookies, which pass data from your website to external parties (like ad platforms) to your site to paint a picture of the user and user behavior, are what’s disappearing.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because that’s exactly what happened with iOS 14.
In that update, Apple’s “App Tracking Transparency” introduction prevented companies from tracking user behavior across third-party apps. Advertising platforms (particularly Facebook) suddenly couldn’t help advertisers understand what users were doing after engaging with their ads.
Cookies, whether first-party or third-party, are snippets of code saved by the browser or app to the user’s device. They contain user and session identifiers, ad click IDs, timestamps and functions (e.g., whether you’re logged into an app).
In short, they are (or were until recently) the most common way to identify and track users, and they’re about to disappear from Chrome (which is following Firefox and Safari in doing so).
If you’re using pixels, UTM parameters outside of a first-party environment, GTAG (ask your analytics team), or other tracking based on – and stored in – browsers, you’re in for a world of transition.
What’s changing from a marketing perspectiveIt might be easier to list what isn’t changing, but here’s a quick list of the biggest hits:
Dig deeper: 7 paid media reporting tips when tracking is messy
Given all of that, you can hopefully now realize that the time to start planning was about a year ago – and if you’re behind the curve, you’d better keep reading.
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Business email address Subscribe Processing... 4 real preparation steps to take ASAPI break this down for my clients into four buckets:
At the very least, you should be able to reference your CRM data to understand your users’ point of entry and identify your most valuable users.
Make sure you have a plan to assess your data cleanliness, your reports, and your dashboards and you can get things in good enough shape to trust what your first-party data is telling you. Work to
2. Tune up your data collectionFirst-party data will become even more important as data from third-party sources erodes.
Make sure your ad campaigns, organic campaigns, owned properties, etc., are fully maximized to collect first-party data and have a plan to use it in your campaigns (email, SMS, retargeting, lookalikes, etc.).
3. Implement platform solutionsGet extremely comfortable with Google’s Enhanced Conversions, Meta and LinkedIn’s conversions APIs, and whatever monikers you’ll see other platforms use. They help ensure that ad algorithms can track valuable actions both online and offline, which is essential for future-proofing your tracking efforts.
(Bonus points if you combine platform solutions with first-party data to teach the platform algorithms to find your best users via offline conversion tracking.)
4. Go server-sideAnalytics and data stored in servers you control (as opposed to browsers that can change their rules at any time) are one big hedge against cookie erosion.
Implement initiatives like server-side GTM and start researching CDP (customer data platform) options like Segment and Tealium to take at least partial ownership of your data and analytics.
Winning strategies for a data-driven, privacy-first futureIf you need a little good news after reading all of that, I have a couple of tidbits for you.
Dig deeper: 3 ways search marketers can prepare for the big cookie crumble