Consulting Insights

Why We Embrace the Cookie Apocalypse

Last week, Google announced that they plan to stop selling ads based on unique browsing history by next year. This news, in addition to other recent statements that Google will phase out third-party cookies, has fueled heated conversations throughout the industry. Read Ovative’s point of view on how marketers should plan for these changes. 

We’ve been actively monitoring news about the forthcoming death of the cookie and its ramifications on the digital marketing industry. While the changes ahead can feel scary, we’re excited for what they mean for our industry and society. Here are three reasons we’re ready to embrace the ‘cookie apocalypse’, and what we think it means for marketing and measurement going forward.

Reason 1: Evolving Marketers From Sycophants to Substantive Brand Builders

As the industry prioritizes privacy considerations, brands can refocus on the value they have to offer consumers. The reduced ability to tell each individual consumer specifically what they want to hear will prompt smart organizations to reexamine their identity and underlying values to show the marketplace exactly who they are and what they stand for.

Reason 2: Aligning Measurement and Targeting Capabilities with Reality

Historically, marketers wanted measurement to provide valuable data at individual-level granularity, but marketing tools couldn’t guarantee the ability to deliver at that level. This sent analytics teams on a wild goose chase for “perfect” measurement, and set up evaluations that weren’t rooted in the reality of what activation was possible. Even in channels like email where clients can segment really accurately, it’s challenging for marketers to create messages that are perfectly customized and timed to the client. These changes can liberate marketers and measurement experts from the pursuit of perfect and allow them to refocus on the useful and possible.

Reason 3: Empowering Consumers To Engage The Way They Want To

Personalization has been the goal for so long that many marketers have forgotten to consider the risks of consumer burnout and skepticism towards advertising. Hyper-targeting drives increased effectiveness, but consumers have shifted to an attitude of cynicism. How many times have you heard someone suggest that their phone is listening to them? The lack of perceived authenticity and the increased awareness from consumers about the use of their data to influence them can cause irreparable harm to our profession. Once consumers have more control of their information and the ability to engage with brands on their own terms, we believe there is a future where effectiveness need not drop as precision targeting regresses.

What Actions Should Marketers Take?

For Digital Marketers: These shifts all have an impact on advertising effectiveness, squeezing returns and therefore budgets and investment. Marketers can compensate for these effectiveness declines with these tips:

  • Get Back to Basics
    • Understand your brand identity, purpose and value to the consumer and positively communicate that to the market that inspires authentic engagement
  • Display and Paid Social
    1. Ensure you are talking directly to publishers, whether IO-based or private programmatic channels given the focus on first-party data.
    2. Assess (and reassess) tools to enable content-first targeting. It will be critical to be able to target content contextually and measure alignment of target audiences on specific media partners and portfolios.
  • Paid Search
    1. Leverage first-party data, similar audience segments to first-party data, and Google audiences to activate against.
    2. Measure performance of different audience segments and invest in improving audience data sets.

For Measurement: It’s exciting to envision a perfectly trackable consumer and the attribution of their purchase behavior back to specific channels, but that world has never existed and now, probably, never will. Measurement needs to align with budgeting and planning processes to ensure that investment is happening in the right places and at the right time. That means several things:

  • Use top-down planning tools (like MMM) to provide holistic planning guidance, rather than pursuing a bottom-up planning Nirvana.
  • Build an understanding of upper funnel and brand-building investment returns, especially as brand identity grows in importance.
  • Focus on reach as well as engagement.
  • Evaluate the quality of advertising itself, not just the quality of the plan.

The advertising industry existed long before cookies ever came around, so it’s not that we don’t know what to. Marketers just need to figure out how to marry historical philosophies with a new age of capabilities and consumer engagement. That challenge is a big one, but also immensely exciting.

Sources:
1 | Google Ads & Commerce, Charting a course towards a more privacy-first web, March 2021

Lillian Smith

Senior Analyst, Paid Social

About the Author

Lillian is a Senior Analyst on the Paid Social team at Ovative.

Dale Nitschke

Dale Nitschke

CEO & Founder

About the Author

Dale is the Founder and CEO of Ovative. After years of operating a large omni-channel business and leading a customer data initiative, Dale knew there was an opportunity to create a marketing firm that helped clients become more customer centric and drove better performance outcomes. A gap existed between business consultancies and advertising agencies that modern marketing approaches demand. He also believed that a strong, healthy culture could attract and develop smart, talented team members. In 2009, he formed Ovative to bring media, measurement, and consulting together under one roof to enable an enterprise approach that drives more revenue and grows clients’ customer base.

Prior to founding Ovative in 2009, Dale spent 23 years at Target Corporation where he served as President of Target.com and grew the ecommerce business from start-up stage to a $1 billion+ business and established the foundation of Target’s Guest database capabilities. Previously he served as SVP Merchandising at the Department Store Division of Dayton Hudson. Dale has advised retailers and brands globally on business, growth, marketing, and measurement transformation strategies.

Outside of Ovative, Dale is a leader on topics including business strategy, change management, and team leadership. He serves on the board of Allergy Amulet and on the Dean’s Advisory Board of the Wisconsin School of Business at UW-Madison.  He enjoys spending time with his family, up north in northern Wisconsin, playing golf, and cheering on Wisconsin sport teams.

Seth Brand

Senior Manager, Consulting

About the Author

Seth is a Senior Manager on the Consulting team at Ovative.

Amanda McCann

Senior Manager, Consulting

About the Author

Amanda is a Senior Manager on the Consulting team at Ovative, specializing in Retail Media Networks.

Jenny Reinke

Senior Analyst, Measurement Solutions

About the Author

Jenny is a Senior Analyst on the Measurement Solutions team at Ovative.

Annie Zipfel

Executive Vice President, Media

About the Author

Annie is the Executive Vice President of Media at Ovative. She oversees delivery and growth across paid and owned media (digital, traditional, and retail media) and creative services.

Annie has more than 30 years of experience in media, brand management, insights/analytics, marketing, and product. She has also developed large, high-performing teams and built new measurement capabilities. Annie led the marketing team at Andersen Windows & Doors, leading the digital, social, content, customer insights, and creative functions. Prior to that, Annie served in multiple marketing leadership roles at Starbucks, REI, Target, and General Mills, with a keen focus on brand, media, insights, analytics, and measurement.

Annie is an industry leader in brand management, customer insights, e-commerce, social media, and analytics. She enjoys hiking, traveling, cooking, fishing, and spending time with her sweet dog and two sons.

Bonnie Gross

Executive Vice President, Talent Services

About the Author

Bonnie is the Executive Vice President of Talent Services at Ovative. She is responsible for attracting and retaining top talent and creating a culture in which our team thrives personally and professionally. Under Bonnie’s leadership, Ovative has defined an industry leading leadership and development program and transformed our approach to talent recruitment with a focus on diversity, equality and inclusion. Prior to her current role, Bonnie led Ovative’s Client and Business Development team overseeing client satisfaction and new growth opportunities.

Before joining Ovative in 2014, Bonnie spent 13 years at Target Corporate as the VP of digital and Digital Marketing where she led the launch of Cartwheel, an industry-leading social shopping application. Bonnie was the VP of Marketing for Fingerhut for 15 years prior to joining Target.

Leander Cohen

Analyst, Consulting

About the Author

Leander Cohen is an Analyst on the Consulting team at Ovative.

Will Silva

Analyst, Measurement Solutions

About the Author

Will is an Analyst on the Measurement Solutions team at Ovative.

Sarah Chang

Sarah Chang

Analyst, Consulting

About the Author

Sarah Chang is an Analyst on the Consulting team at Ovative.

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