Personalization of the customer experience from an omnichannel perspective and in cookieless contexts: are we really ready to win the challenge?
Let’s start from this question to focus our attention again on the concept of identity resolution: after an initial theoretical excursus on definition, process and advantages, the time has come to fully understand its scope and relevance in light of an increasingly approaching deadline for the deprecation of third-party cookies.
But let’s first start with the context in which we are moving.
- Identity Resolution: Winning the Challenge of Personalization
- From Third-Party Cookies to Identity Resolution: Advertising Changes Face
- Blendee’s Identity Graph: the heart of the Identity Resolution process
- Blendee ID: the solution to cookie deprecation
Identity Resolution: Winning the Challenge of Personalization
Consumers’ expectations for increasingly personalized shopping experiences and interactions with brands have reached unprecedented levels. This is evidenced by the data released by Salesforce in the latest edition of the “State of the Connected Customer Report“, according to which as many as 80% of customers in the sample believe that the experience offered by a brand is as relevant as its product and service proposition and as many as 73% of these say they are ready to receive better personalization as technology advances.
These data and trends are also confirmed by a study conducted by “Think with Google” according to which personalization plays an increasingly important role among the competitive advantages of companies.
A competitive advantage, the one linked to the personalization of the customer experience, as clear to implement as it is often difficult to pursue in an increasingly omnichannel and cross-device context.
Faced with a consumer who moves with increasing fluidity between the online and offline worlds, the touchpoints and devices through which he interacts with the brand are multiplying.
There are numerous data and information that are released in each of them, but it is increasingly complex to trace them back to a single individual, especially in an increasingly cookieless and privacy-compliant context. It is precisely in such a fragmented context that identity resolution shows all its value and offers brands, publishers and advertisers a valid alternative to the deprecation of third-party cookies.
From Third-Party Cookies to Identity Resolution: Advertising Changes Face
To fully understand the importance of marketing strategies based on identity resolution , it is perhaps appropriate to take a step back.
The deprecation of third-party cookies has been repeatedly referred to as an epochal turning point in the advertising world: third-party cookies have been the backbone of digital advertising for decades, an element of great importance for creating effective and personalized campaigns by coordinating content, delivery methods and frequency with user preferences.
In particular, what for years has been the basis of the success of this advertising model has been the ID Cookie Matching , which allows (or perhaps better said) the creation of conversion maps between the Cookie IDs of a brand’s properties with the Cookie IDs of the AdTech platforms on which the campaign was delivered.
If we think about it, this is precisely the case of retargeting campaigns which, together with the aspect related to the optimization of ad frequency and the measurement of campaign results, represents the most difficult challenge terrain where the world of digital advertising will be put to the test.
Blendee’s Identity Graph: the heart of the Identity Resolution process
As we have seen, the Identity Resolution process is based on the possibility of merging, but above all, resolving the different IDs attributed to the user in the different interactions with various devices, into a single ID. The goal of an Identity Resolution process is therefore to create a complete and up-to-date 360-degree customer view , which is essential for customer experience personalization activities.
The crucial phase of an identity resolution process thus concerns the construction of an Identity Graph, which we could think of for ease as a large database, where the different IDs are collected and related to each other.
Going back to the graph model, the different IDs will make up the nodes of the graph, and the relationships that are created will define the edges.
But what identifiers are we talking about?
Let’s imagine a user who navigates from multiple devices (PCs, smartphones, smart-TVs) and uses more digital content: every time he connects, he is identified, after giving consent, through a code provided by the device or by the application environment.
In particular, the identity graph collects:
- Device-generated IDs (MAID, TVID);
- IDs generated by the application context (PPID, WEBID based on first- and third-party data);
- Strong IDs (email, phone number) that are issued by the user when registering and authenticating;
In the identity graph, the various IDs collected are related as information on connections is also acquired, so we are able to define associations between identifiers of people and devices, when the user logs in, association of devices of the AdTec h platform(ID Matching), association between devices taking into account contextual attributes such as connection, geographical location that provide interesting data for profiling (Let’s imagine how the information relating to the Wi-Fi connection shared in a home between PCs, smartphones and smart TVs, allows us to infer data on the interests and age of the members of the household).
The identifiers thus organized within a graph allow me to identify both a single person and the devices associated with him (Device IDs associated with strong ID), and a group of people, allowing them to collect information or send personalized communications.
Blendee ID: the solution to cookie deprecation
After this excursus on the relevance of identity resolution and how the identity graph works, let’s go back to the opening question of our article:
“Personalization of the customer experience from an omnichannel perspective and in cookieless contexts: are we really ready to win the challenge?”
The answer is certainly positive.
Although cookie deprecation is an important aspect related to cross-domain user recognition with repercussions on the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, Blendee’s Marketing Operating System offers marketers, publishers and avertisers a unique solution that allows them effective customer experience personalization strategies.
In particular:
- provides its customers with a data collaboration engine that allows them to acquire and combine data to improve the accuracy of targeting in a privacy-compliant environment;
- allows interaction with other identification systems through data clean rooms;
- allows the use of strong IDs such as emails for retargeting users on closed ecosystems such as Amazon, Google, Meta;
- makes it possible to use privacy-enhanced technologies (such as Google’s Privacy Sandbox, profiling and measurement by cohorts) that are presented on the market as the solution to third-party cookies.
While the benefits of adopting an Identity Resolution process are substantial and important, marketers, publishers and advertisers face the biggest challenge of creating effective data-driven strategies and this cannot be separated from the adoption of the right technology stack.
