Editorial
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Google Chrome, the most widely used desktop browser, recently announced that it is delaying its plan to phase out third-party cookies until 2023.  This is a full year later than originally planned. Meanwhile, other browsers like Safari and Firefox have already blocked third-party cookie tracking.

More Time for Alternatives

The delay gives publishers and advertisers more time to find suitable alternatives. And, many industry experts believe this will give Google more time to work with regulators to avoid antitrust investigations and privacy concerns. As Google pumps the brakes, Apple continues to implement privacy changes with its opt-in app transparency, email tracking options and its new Privacy Dashboard. These began with IOS14, with plans for expansion with IOS 15. While all these moves are designed to protect the privacy of consumers, it presents challenges to marketers who rely on media that’s activated on browser-based channels.

An Optimistic View

All of us at the Allant Group are optimistic that the additional time will allow for suitable alternatives to be found: There’s already a drive to establish new transactable IDs—either by the browsers themselves or by entities using first-party relationships and hash-based email identifiers.

The Trade Desk’s Unified ID 2.0, for example, is one attempt to create a digital ID based on hashed email and browser IDs. The key to its success will be adoption by the Industry, which is still unknown but looks promising.

LiveRamp continues to work on developing a cookie-less ID and building a consortium of users across the digital ecosystem. Known as the Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS), it allows a two-way value exchange between brands and publishers, enabling publisher first-party authenticated identity across the open internet, providing addressability without third-party cookies.

As long as Google and top social media platforms refuse to share valuable media insights (walled gardens) with advertisers, none of the new identifiers will solve this issue. Many marketers will likely wait and see how the industry adapts and evolves before choosing one or more of the new solutions.

We expect the large programmatic media activation platforms to work with large data providers and publishers, where Allant and its digital partners would be the go-between for data and activation platforms for large parts of the open advertising ecosystem.

We believe that measurement will turn out to be less challenging in the new landscape because any identifiers collected in real-time with an impression, click, or conversion event can be tied to other identifiers for a more accurate representation of media attribution. There will likely be challenges posed within intraday media optimization use cases, but they will probably be handled like the activation use case mentioned above.

More to Come

As things evolve over the next two years, we will be sure to update you with the latest developments. For now, please know that Allant is working hard to ensure that marketers continue to target the right individuals and to help them grow/gain value from their digital advertising.

Are you an existing or new Salesforce user curious to find out how data strategies can help fuel your growth strategies? Connect with us to learn more. 

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About Allant Group

Allant Group is a marketing services provider focused on supporting mid-market and emerging brands through a holistic set of offerings in support of marketers’ customer engagement needs, including data integration and management, martech system integration, analytics and other application-layer integrations.  Allant's expertise and market knowledge enables delivery through faster customer and 3rd party data integration, improved analytical insights, easy to understand data visualizations, and effective campaign management execution to enable targeted and personalized communication by marketers to acquire, retain and win back customers. Allant is a privately held company headquartered in the Chicago area.  For more information, call 800.367.7311 or visit allantgroup.com.

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