Cookieless : we hear this word a lot these days. But what does that really mean? And how can you prepare for a world without cookies when you are an advertiser? As we will see, cookies are not destined to disappear all of them and other tactics are being deployed... or even already available.
As a reminder: the benefits of cookies
First-party cookies and third-party cookies allow you to: personalize the browsing experience of a person by offering relevant content that corresponds to their tastes.
And for you marketers or acquisition managers, Retarget in a targeted manner the users who have interacted with your site.
They also guarantee a good quality of navigation: maintaining baskets and preferences, pre-filling forms...
The difference between first-party cookies and third-party cookies
First-party cookies are cookies placed, stored and owned by the website that the user visits. They allow the domain owner to collect their own analytics data, remember user preferences, and provide personalized experiences for users.
This type of cookie is gaining in power today, where third-party cookies are destined to disappear. These are created and stored by actors other than the one the user is currently visiting.
If properly placed by the website in question, these cookies are generally owned by third-party organizations (hence their name) and used for cross-site advertising tracking, audience profiling and targeting, etc.
The latter are increasingly blocked by Chrome (Google), and already abandoned by default by Safari, Firefox or Brave.
And the cookieless?
To speak of “cookieless” is to describe a world not so far from us where marketers are less and less dependent on cookies. As the latter are increasingly depreciated in the name of privacy, new ways of looking at tracking and increasing consent rates must be found.
That being said, talking about the disappearance of cookies is erroneous, insofar as it is mainly third-party cookies that tend to disappear. While most browsers will soon no longer support them, first-party cookies can continue to be used by website managers.
The challenge now?
Focus on first-party data collected with user consent.
4 ways to start your transition
- Improve your first-party data collection. The objective of this point is to improve the existing collection process and their analysis, as well as to increase their volume. This will allow you to add a much more reliable extrapolation process!
- Implement a solid and reliable consent management solution (CMP), if you have not already done so (our article on this subject is available here). And don't forget to clearly communicate to your customers how you handle and protect their data: trust makes a difference!
3) Conduct tests with secondary data from market technology leaders. Google and Facebook, to name a few, allow access to aggregated (but granular) audience data collected on their respective platforms and networks.
4) Don't put quality third-party audiences aside
The disappearance of third-party cookies does not necessarily mean the disappearance of third-party audiences, which do not all rely on cookie technology.
From FLoC to Topics: turning to Google for targeted acquisition?
Google has announced the abandonment of its alternative method to the third-party cookie, FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts).
However, a new initiative is emerging: Topics.
Topics works by combining a website with a parent theme. Then the browser collects the most frequently viewed themes (3 to 5) based on the websites visited by the user, before sharing them with the domains visited to help advertisers display more relevant ads... without needing to know the specific browsing history.
The tests will be launched this year. Stick around!
