James Schad, co-founder of start-up focused digital marketing agency We Grow Startups, led a discussion on future advertising effectiveness given the potential implications of Google’s decision to disable all third party cookies on Chrome in 2024.
Here, we note the key highlights from this session, which focused on why cookies are important, what is happening to them, other means of achieving similar results, the privacy implications of alternative strategies, and how digital advertisers can continue to ensure their campaigns remain effective and measurable.
The world’s most popular browser is changing
Google recently confirmed that it will start disabling third party cookies from Google Chrome in 2024. Given that Google Chrome is by far the world’s most used browser (with around 2.65 billion users worldwide), the potential implications of this are huge.
What are cookies?
Cookies are essentially snippets of text (i.e. code) sent to your browser by a website that you have visited. The code helps that website remember information about your visit, which in turn can enable the website to tailor your experience if you visit again in the future.
Cookies can also be used to track users’ online behaviour and measure the results of digital advertising campaigns, which in turn can enable digital advertisers to ensure that adverts are effectively served to potentially relevant consumers.
Why is Google disabling cookies, and what comes next?
Google is getting rid of cookies over privacy-related concerns. In place of cookies, Google is launching what it is referring to as its “Privacy Sandbox”, which purports to offer a more privacy-conscious solution that ensures individuals’ data remains anonymised, yet still practically useful from a tracking / advertising effectiveness perspective. Essentially, this is achieved through grouping users into cohorts based on their interests and browsing patterns, then tracking these cohorts (as opposed to tracking individual users).
This follows Apple’s privacy-related decision in 2021 to allow users to block specific apps from tracking their online activity, which had a significant impact on the effectiveness of digital advertising through platforms such as Meta.
Why does this all matter to digital advertisers?
As the upcoming changes make it harder to track individual users’ online browsing behaviour, it will be more difficult for digital advertisers to precisely target users with relevant ads. The changes will also make it more difficult to specifically measure the impact and effectiveness of advertising campaigns.
How will digital advertisers get around these issues?
There are various strategies digital advertisers can pursue to mitigate the impact of the upcoming changes to Google Chrome’s cookies policy.
Implement server-side tracking
One potential workaround would involve tracking users via website servers instead of browser cookies. In this context, an organisation’s website server – rather than the browser used by an individual to access the website – would read a user’s details and track their interactions. The conditions for access to and use of that data (e.g. the conditions used to determine which elements of this data could be forwarded to third parties such as Meta and Google) would then be defined by the website owner at the server level (rather than the organisation that owns the browser software). Note that GDPR would still apply however, so granular, informed consent would need to be secured before the data is collected/shared.
Model user behaviours based on behaviours of those who have consented
Another option would be to use Google’s “Consent Mode” to model the behaviours of users who haven’t consented to tracking, based on the online browsing patterns and purchasing decisions of users who have consented to tracking.
Capture first-party data
For context, first-party data is data collected directly by an organisation; second-party data is data shared with an organisation by a trusted source; and third-party data is aggregated data from other sources.
Organisations could try to collect as much “first-party” data as possible, for example email addresses, then use this data to improve the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. To help with this, Google has announced that it is improving its first-party data capabilities in a way that will make it easier to target consumers using first-party data and measure the success of related advertising activities. Note that users must be made aware in advance that their data is being collected however, and must consent to it being used for marketing purposes.
Carry out market mix modelling
This is arguably the gold standard for measuring the effectiveness of advertising. It relies more on data relating to sales and advertising spend (which most organisations can access), rather than granular data relating to individual ad performance. This approach can give a solid understanding of, for example, whether advertising is contributing much, whether sales would have been made anyway, the impact of advertising spend on sales, and so on. However, often organisations need access to at least two years’ worth of weekly data, plus support from experts (e.g. econometrics analysts) to tease out helpful insights from the data.
Invest in contextual and premium advert placements
This is a more traditional approach, which involves placing adverts within websites and platforms that will likely be visited by the relevant target audience. For example, a sports brand might advertise on sport-centric websites, a finance brand might advertise on The FT’s website, and so on. To that end, YouTube has actually segmented its creators into verticals based on the nature of the content each creates, and gives advertisers the flexibility to decide which vertical(s) to target with adverts.
With this approach, the targeting doesn’t rely on personally identifiable information, so doesn’t require large amounts of data and individual consent. Despite this, it can arguably be a more effective form of advertising, as the adverts are reaching an audience who are most likely – in light of the content they are consuming – already thinking about the relevant category of product/service.
Check out this video for an insight into how We Grow Startups helps clients to analyse their dependency on cookies, and whether there are other strategies in place to mitigate the impact of Google’s upcoming changes.
We Grow Startups is a digital marketing agency for startups, scaleups and fast-growing brands, with a client base that has included Google DeepMind, SaveMyExams, Gandys, iwocaPay, New Skills Academy, and more.
If you need advice on advertising, cookies, privacy law or any other commercial matters, please contact Ignition Law via info@ignition.law. If you would like to attend one of our future sessions, please contact Tammy@ignition.law.
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