Cookie Sunset x User Value
It's fascinating to witness the pervasive anxiety surrounding the impending cookie-sunset across brands, marketing (tech) agencies, e-commerce and all other affected parties.
Yet, amidst this concern, there appears to be a disproportionate focus on the potential catastrophic consequences rather than proactive brainstorming for inventive, future-proof solutions and innovative approaches. A general sense of fatalistic paralysis seems to prevail, with many finding it difficult to envision a marketing landscape beyond the cookie.
The writing has been on the wall for years, but Google finally started turning off third-party cookies to 1 percent of Chrome browsers in January - but delays the total cookie demise yet again, without outlining a specific timetable beyond hoping for 2025.
Until then, marketers are prioritising first-party data, either mining it to make up for the signal loss or peddling it as the rise of retail media continues.
Some foresee a shift towards brands operating more as walled-garden ecosystems, reclaiming control from the dominant Google and Meta duopoly through the use of first-party data from their own ecosystems. This anticipated transformation is accelerated by changing data and privacy laws, coupled with advancements in AI augmentation.
Many agency executives view the exponential growth of retail media as an existential threat, potentially leading to a more fragmented marketplace and the emergence of new first-party data monopolies.
Google and Meta’s dominance in the digital ad marketplace ‘made it affordable for advertisers to come in and use their walled gardens and rent their audiences’ - that might no longer be a one-stop shop.
Ad Tech Explained (https://adtechexplained.com/the-pyramid-of-user-value/) recently published an interesting article, connected to this within a wider context of ‘user value based on availability of deterministic identity’:
‘When I think about the next era of ad tech, I see a stage of innovation defined by existing and new solutions that create groups of users of varying value. The availability of deterministic identity, emerging privacy-enhancing technologies, and contextual signals will determine a user's value for publishers and advertisers. I created the below diagram to help you visualise this value.’
