Cookie-Free Marketing: How to Tailor Your Marketing Mix

For years, marketers have relied on cookies, or small data files containing personal identifiers, for user targeting and marketing measurement.

Rising consumer demand for privacy and data protection makes many traditional digital marketing strategies unnecessary. Fortunately, you have a little more time to adapt your strategy mix to cookieless marketing since Google pushed back the phasing out of third-party (3P) cookies until mid-2023.

However, if you don't act quickly, you'll face measurement breakdown or the inability to gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns, making it nearly impossible to prove marketing's contribution to revenue.

But take heart. Once you learn how to market effectively in a cookie-free world, you'll find that many of the alternatives available to you are just as effective as the third-party cookie-based approaches you relied on.

So let's talk about preparing your mix for a cookie-free future. But first, let's do a quick review of 3P cookies.

What is a third-party cookie?

Third-party cookies are set by third-party AdTech and publisher platforms, for example, via code placed on the web domain by the domain owner. Any website that loads third-party server code can access cookie data, including users' browsing history and personal data such as age, location, gender, etc.

Marketers and advertisers use this information to serve ads that are relevant to the user. An example is a timely Facebook ad for a product you searched for during browsing sessions.

Cookie-free refers to a marketing approach that relies less on third-party cookies and uses other, more transparent, privacy-focused tactics to target customers instead.

What is the impact of cookieless on user experience?

Every time you visit a website, it stores at least one first-party cookie on your browser to remember your basic activity. This will not change unless you explicitly opt out of all cookies on your first visit.

Third-party cookies follow you around the web for retargeting purposes, helping brands attract you to their sites to make a purchase. For example, if you visit a travel site that contains ads from multiple hotels and attractions, each may create their own third-party cookies. The platforms behind these advertisements may track your web activities and ensure that their advertisements appear on other sites you visit.

While retargeting ads like a timely and hyper-relevant Facebook ad might be disconcerting, you might like the personalization and that extra reminder to make a purchase. But once cookieless digital marketing becomes the norm, you won't have the personalized and timely user experience you're used to. Instead, your experience will depend entirely on how the site owner has adapted to a cookie-free world.

How do data-driven marketers thrive without cookies?

Some statistics and assumptions about what to expect from publishers who have relied on 3P cookies are concerning. For example, Google conducted an experiment predicting that average publisher revenue would drop by 52%.

That doesn't necessarily mean trouble for everyone; it presents an opportunity to explore tactics that do not rely on third-party cookies.

Those who succeed in a post-cookie world will prioritize first-party data collection and management while promoting transparency in consent-based marketing.

In other words, marketers will go back to basics as message and creative take center stage once again. They will get to know their audience through the information they collect themselves and optimize the channels with the greatest appeal.

What happens if you don't adopt cookieless marketing?

It's understandable that you've relied on third-party data to explain consumer behavior across the various channels and elements that make up your marketing strategy: 83% of marketers still do.

But if you don't embrace cookieless marketing, you'll be left in the dark when third-party cookies are disabled. You won't know what your potential customers want or what they'll respond to, and you'll be forced to serve the same content to everyone, no matter where they are in the customer...