What Marketers Should Look For When Evaluating Targeting Options In A Cookieless Era

Although third-party cookie deprecation on Google Chrome is slowly rolling out, cookieless environments, like Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox, have existed for some time now. However, cookieless solutions remain largely unexplored. As a result, marketers are scrambling to figure out how to reach these unaddressable audiences best. Now is the time to test and learn so you are ready by the time all cookies are gone (most already are). In this post, we cover the shift to cookieless targeting, some of the major challenges marketers face in cookieless, and how they can evaluate different cookieless targeting methods.

The Shift to Cookieless Targeting

Cookieless targeting is a misnomer in that only third-party cookies are leaving the digital ad scene, but more on that later. Several reasons drive the deprecation of third-party cookies, but consumer privacy concerns are a major force.  

Furthermore, regulatory changes like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU and the California Consumers Privacy Act in the US are dictating how organizations handle consumer data. 

Challenges in Cookieless

Cookieless environments present 3 major challenges for marketers. 

1. Targeting
2. Frequency Capping
3. Measurement

Targeting becomes a challenge in cookieless environments because of extended privacy protections in place. Finding and reaching qualified audiences, in most cases, now requires first-party data and contextual solutions. 

Frequency Capping is also a challenge in cookieless environments because it's more difficult to determine if a user has already been exposed to an ad.

Measurement is another challenge that marketers face in cookieless environments because it’s harder to track whether a user viewed an ad and made further steps to engage with the messaging. For example, if a user sees an ad for a product sale, they may not click the ad but visit the site directly. Without third-party cookies, it’s harder to tell whether that user viewed the ad or not.

Evaluating Cookieless Targeting

Traditionally, marketers relied on first-party data, third-party data and contextual targeting to reach their audiences. However, with third-party cookies going away, marketers have to rely on their first-party data, and contextual solutions. Marketers can also leverage partners like SSPs, who have their own valuable first-party data and partnerships with premium publishers to expand more first-party data. The question now becomes, how can marketers activate their data?

There are a handful of ways for marketers to activate their data while remaining privacy compliant in a cookieless future. They are: 

• Clean Rooms
• Retargeting
• Contextual and Interest Targeting

It’s important to note that with any of these targeting options, marketers should test and learn with their partners about their ability to scale and meet performance requirements in a cost-effective and compliant way.

Clean Rooms

Clean Rooms are cloud platforms where publishers, apps, DSPs and SSPs can turn their user-level data into aggregate audience data. Marketers can upload their own first-party data and match it with the data provided. Marketers are then able to use that matched data to activate campaigns, measure performance, and optimize their ad spend. 

What makes Clean Rooms unique is that there are greater controls over how, what, and when data can be shared. Most often, Personal Identifiable Information (PII) such as emails, phone numbers, etc., is turned into Universal IDs (UIDs) , and not directly shared with SSP and DSP partners.

When evaluating Clean Rooms, marketers should look to their SSP and DSP partners to verify whether they use the same Clean Room. Using the same Clean Room, marketers can avoid any potential data or signal loss.

Retargeting

Although targeting can initially be a challenge for marketers, retargeting is still possible. If a user was previously targeted by and engaged with an ad, UIDs would make it possible for marketers to retarget them. If a user did not engage with an ad, creating lookalike audience segments can help with retargeting in cookieless environments, most notably in Safari and Firefox. 

However, on Google Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox, the Protected Audience API (PAAPI,) enables advertisers to create custom audiences from users they’ve seen before. When evaluating retargeting options, marketers should look to their DSPs if they have PAAPI-compliant supply. SSPs often provide this supply that the DSP is connected to.

Contextual and Interest Targeting

For marketers who lack first-party data, contextual and interest targeting are still very viable options in cookieless environments. With contextual targeting, marketers have a plethora of signals to work with. Page level and site level targeting are some of the most common options, for example, targeting a sports page on news sites vs news on sports. 

There are other signals like location, weather, time of day and more that marketers can combine to become more granular. For example, marketers that want to promote a new TV series can target locations such as metropolitan areas, and local weather conditions like rain, any time after 5 pm. As consumers are less inclined to go out when it’s raining, watching a new show could be the alternative.

Furthermore, as AI and machine learning continue to mature and improve in their capabilities, so can contextual targeting. This allows AI to better evaluate brand-safe environments than allowed or blocked keyword lists. For example, the word “shoots” could be blocked as it relates to violence, but it’s a regular term in basketball (“shoots for the three-pointer.”) That could potentially disregard a large number of basketball fans.

Additionally, interest targeting is useful for reaching users who show interest in certain topics. For example, for automotive makers that want to target automotive fans, interest-based targeting can help reach these audiences throughout the open web without requiring prior data on the automotive fans.

The Future is Cookieless

Cookieless environments can seem daunting for marketers due to their targeting challenges and government regulations calling for increased consumer privacy.  However, Clean Rooms, retargeting, contextual and interest-based targeting are picking up the pieces that third-party cookies left behind. Although cookieless solutions can work in different ways, marketers should evaluate them based on how well they can utilize their existing first-party data.  Investing in these cookieless alternatives will help marketers perform better in today’s cookieless environments, and be more prepared for an increasingly cookieless future.

‍Contact us to learn more about how to leverage your first-party data and maximize the performance of cookieless targeting solutions with Sharethrough.