The reality without 3rd party cookies is getting closer. Even though marketers received some warnings over the years, the true change will happen when Google Chrome will stop supporting cookies in 2024. The browser will join many others, including Firefox, Safari, and Edge, which have already cut ties with the use of 3rd party cookies. However, Google has over 60% of the browser market share, so it will make the biggest difference. What will the cookieless future look like? And will you be able to advertise your products and/or services?
Why are 3rd party cookies so important to ads creation?
What’s the big deal with 3rd party cookies in the first place? Why does the cookieless future scare so many marketers? Cookies are small text files stored by each website. They gather data about the user’s behavior and use it to personalize the website to their preferences (including those regarding ads). That makes browsing the same websites much more pleasurable to the users and they tend to come back. Of course, cookies can serve marketers too, and allow them to create ads that are suited to each user’s interests and preferences. This, of course, leads to boosted effectiveness of marketing campaigns. After all, 3rd party cookies are the base of one of the most efficient ways of advertising, called retargeting. It can track users across many different domains and display to them ads from your website.
Cookieless future with 1st party data
Saying farewell to 3rd party cookies doesn’t mean that marketers will be left with nothing to go on. After all, we have 1st party data as well. Similarly to 3rd party cookies, it gathers information about how each user interacts with a particular website. But there’s a big difference between the two types of cookies. 1st party data works only on a single website or app. It collects information regarding language settings, searched products, types of content a person interacts with, or even whether shopping carts are filled with items. 1st party data tracks the users within one domain but can’t follow the users when they visit other websites.
How to use 1st party cookies in advertising?
Cookieless future doesn’t need to be cookieless if you learn to use 1st party data the right way. Luckily for you, there are some approaches that will help you with that. One of the most promising ones is a method endorsed by most browsers (Google Chrome and Edge included). It introduces privacy-preserving marketing APIs that let you follow through with advertising campaigns but help to keep the privacy of internet users. This technique allows you to create groups of similar users and with the help of FLEDGE mechanism, target them even across different domains. For example, users who viewed laptops online will be placed in a group interested in them, and you’ll be able to display to them ads with these products.
