The world of online advertising is at a turning point: from 2024, unless further extensions are approved, Google Chrome will no longer support third-party cookies.
Greater protection of user privacy, less data and tracking and profiling information for advertisers: the Mountain View giant has taken the path already beaten by Safari, Mozilla and Microsoft that have long chosen to prevent the unique identification of their users.
The news has been bouncing around the net since 2021, between official communications and extended deadlines, and even if the actual reasons for this continuous pushing forward of the deadline are not officially known, the apocalypse of third-party cookies is a sure thing.
The famous “Cookiegeddon,” as many have renamed it, is only postponed: a part of online advertising as we know it is set to fade forever.
The demise of third-party cookies: but why is it so impactful?
Google’s news concerning the end of third-party cookies literally shook the world of online advertising, given that according to research published by Statista in 2021, with over 65% of users, today Chrome is the most used browser in the world.
But why are third-party cookies so relevant?
Technically, third-party cookies are defined as those set and grafted by domains other than the one the user is browsing. They are thus used for cross-site profiling of users and allow a high level of personalization of advertisements with obvious positive implications on:
- remarketing campaigns
- programmatic advertising campaigns
- Definition of attribution models for evaluating returns on investment.
As can be easily guessed, the end of third-party cookies is forcing the online advertising world to rethink its models and the AD Tech world to find new solutions that can bypass cookie tracking, also with a view to greater protection of user privacy.
The path is set: the era of “pushier” targeting is coming to an end. Following the enactment of GDPR and the moves of big players such as Google, advanced profiling to support advertising campaigns will no longer be possible.
Third-party cookies and online advertising: is there a solution?
Protection of personal data, on the one hand, the need to deploy effective strategies for profiling and personalizing the customer experience, on the other: in the far west of the web, between ever more stringent regulations and increasingly personalized marketing campaigns, it seems almost impossible to find the right balance. But things are not as dim as they may appear.
If the third-party cookie apocalypse effectively spells the end of a more “blatant” use of user data, more ethical and GDPR compliant approaches are possible.
In this respect, research conducted by the Boston Consulting Group (Bcg) on behalf of Google and published in May 2020 (Responsible Marketing with First-Party Data), shows that an ‘ethical’ use of proprietary data and consumer information is possible and above all desirable, since it can lead to a considerable increase in revenues for companies.
Data and information on users are essential in order to implement customer-centric marketing strategies. Nevertheless, their collection and use must take place while establishing a real relationship between brand and user/customer, a relationship that requires a fair and transparent two-way exchange of value.
This is where First-Party Data and Zero-Party Data, the future of personalised marketing, come into play.
But what are they and how best to employ them? Let’s get some clarity.
First-Party Data and Zero-Party Data: what are they?
With the coming into force of first the GDPR, then the CCPA, not to mention the privacy-first technological turn of Mozilla, Apple and finally Google, digital marketing is undergoing a phase of intense repositioning marked precisely by the demise of cookies.
Precisely in this context, marketers’ and strategists’ attention is steadily shifting on First-Party Data and Zero-Party Data.
The term First-Party Data classifies all data and information directly collected and owned by a company. This data concerns purchasing and browsing behaviors and preferences, interactions with the company’s site or app, purchase history and personal information, including that collected through the use of CRM.
The category of Zero-Party Data includes data provided by users in a direct, conscious and proactive way, for example, by responding to forms, questionnaires or surveys.
While representing the latest frontier of data management and customer experience personalization, First-Party Data and Zero-Party Data are proving to be a crucial opportunity to gain valuable insights on a company’s audience and to personalize the customer experience of each individual user.
First-Party Data and Zero-Party Data: the future of marketing and advertising
Although marketers and strategists have a clear understanding of the value of first-party data and information, the research conducted by Boston Consulting on behalf of Google, cited above, in fact reveals that very few professionals know how to “activate” and use it correctly and profitably: if nine out of ten experts say that First-Party Data is important for marketing activities and strategies, less than a third of these actually know how to integrate and use it.
The gap identified in this case does not only concern the area of expertise, but is often due to companies’ failure to adopt sufficiently performing and complete technological solutions capable of collecting and normalizing data from multiple sources.
This is precisely the case with customer data platforms. Not just simple data collection platforms, but much more: high-performance technological solutions able to collect, normalize and manage data at the single customer view level, but above all to leverage this data, in other words to make it useful as a basis for profiling, segmentation, personalization, as well as predictive marketing strategies.
In principle, a customer data platform is a valuable ally for data-driven marketing strategies as it combines both the functionality related to data collection and normalization, as well as those related to leveraging the same data, in other words it allows the implementation of numerous on-site and off-site personalization activities.
