Cookies and commerce media: what happens now?
Following Google's latest announcement that they're scrapping plans to block 3rd party cookies, our CEO - Gavin Stirrat shares his thoughts on the news and what this means for commerce media.
It’s been just over a week since Google did their u-turn on deprecating 3rd party cookies, and whilst the industry has been quick to react to the news, I wanted to share my own thoughts on this decision both generally, and in the context of commerce and retail media.
The reality is, that we don’t really know yet how this move is going to affect the broader ad-tech industry. Despite cookies and the companies that still rely on them being granted a reprieve, there’s a very real risk that we could see the ‘Apple’ effect take hold across Chrome. When Apple launched their ‘allow apps to track’ message across their iOS systems they were met with very high opt-out rates (as high as 90% in the US). With some estimates suggesting that up to 40% of Chrome users have already disabled 3rd party cookies, all eyes will be on Google and the language they opt to use in their consent messaging moving forward. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that ‘supporting your favorite sites’ type messaging may be more successful when it comes to reducing opt-out rates.
Four years of work down the drain?
Over the last 4 years, the industry has been working on privacy-compliant solutions in a panic. But this reversal by Google doesn’t necessarily mean we need to put that work in the bin. With opt-in rates uncertain, moving away from a reliance on 3rd party cookies is only going to put those brands at an advantage. Having said that though, there’s been a lot of industry chatter from those running tests on Privacy Sandbox - highlighting issues around performance and a lot of uncertainty.
Luckily, where brands have been planning for a world without cookies, they have also simultaneously been investing in commerce media. Although this area isn’t directly tied to privacy changes, many players across the advertising ecosystem stand to benefit from the privacy-by-default nature of Commerce Media.
Wherever you look, brands, retailers, and publishers are sitting on a treasure trove of 1st party data that can be used to drive huge efficiencies from brand budgets, whilst leveraging reams of contextual data and inventory:
Brands themselves sit on a lot of top / mid-funnel data, the vast majority of which will have been collected in first-party environments and interactions with their customers
Retailers have full-funnel data, plus large pools of advertising inventory, again the vast majority having been collected or existing within first-party environments/interactions.
Publishers have both significant amounts of top / mid-funnel data and huge pools of inventory with insights into contextual relevance and therefore offer the opportunity to scale up campaigns online in a way that’s not possible with retailers alone
When you combine these, it drives better outcomes for all - and even goes a way to fixing some of the challenges many still face with attribution modeling today.
In the context of Adimo, Google’s latest announcement doesn’t change anything for us or our clients. Although we work with players from right across the ecosystem, our primary customers first and foremost are brands who deploy our technology across their 1st party properties, or in 3rd party environments like programmatic display. Because our solutions aren’t reliant on 3rd party cookies, it means that even now, when faced with the prospect of more users opting out on Google, we would be largely unaffected anyway.
Brands, agencies, and ad tech partners will still be able to:
Capture vital behaviour data about their audiences like which retailers they shop at, price and offer sensitivity and SKUs most engaged with
Report key conversion metrics at a very granular level including - which channels, mediums and ad creatives drive the highest conversion rates and ROI
Optimise campaigns inflight with real-time reporting and take learnings for future campaign planning
If you’re looking for more privacy-centric commerce media solutions, get in touch with our team today.