Online Marketing Without Cookies: Impact on Advertising Formats
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2024 10:48 am
In the first part of our series on the transition to a world without cookies , we look at the potential impact on advertising formats in online marketing. What will the technical changes look like, and which forms of advertising will disappear or have difficulties?
You can read more about the future without cookies in the article: Cookieless Marketing – Preparing companies for the end of cookies
Customers
Cookies for recognizing people
For many years, the use of cookies has been a simple and convenient way to recognize users on the web, for example to show them personalized advertising or to adapt the content of websites to their needs.
The technology behind cookies is extremely simple. A small file is sent from the server to the user's browser and stored there. This file can be used to recognize the user when they visit the website later. Cookies are divided into so-called first-party cookies and third-party cookies. While first-party cookies are set by the website you are currently visiting, third-party cookies come from third-party providers such as Facebook, advertising networks or tracking systems.
While third-party cookies will soon no longer be able to be set, Apple allows a maximum cookie lifespan of 7 days for first-party cookies that are set with JavaScript. Far too short a time to use tools like Hubspot to identify visitors who have already been to the website.
First-party cookies may be necessary for a website to function. However, the use of third-party cookies is particularly problematic for data protection reasons, as they allow users to be recognized on their journey through the web. This is used, for example, to display advertisements on various websites that match their interests.
restriction
Browser manufacturers restrict cookies: various forms of advertising affected
Back in 2020, Google announced that it would no longer support third-party cookies in the Chrome browser. The transition period will soon expire and the cookies will be blocked starting next year. Third-party cookies are already largely blocked in Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari.
All this shows that personalized advertising that relies on cookies will have a hard time in the future. This affects various forms of online advertising, such as:
remarketing
Programmatic advertising and targeting using data from third-party cookies
Exclusion of certain user groups who should not see the ads.
remarketing
remarketing
Remarketing or retargeting is a form of online marketing in which users are shown tailored advertising based on websites they have previously visited or previous actions on the web. For example, if a user has searched for a specific television in an online shop, they may be shown advertisements for this or similar televisions at a later time when they visit different websites.
Without the use of cookies, it will be difficult to display this type of advertising, which will significantly limit the possibilities and reach of retargeting.
Data
Programmatic advertising and targeting using third-party cookies
Brands that rely heavily on programmatic advertising and have collected too little data about their own customers and prospects will be at a competitive disadvantage. Online marketplaces that trade user data for marketing purposes rely on the use of third-party cookies, as these cookies are used to collect the data. National and international advertising networks use such data to display advertising on the websites associated with them.
This type of user data utilization will also be severely restricted or even impossible due to the future elimination of third-party cookies.
Direct cooperation with websites that appeal to your target group will become more important in the future.
User
Email openings are no longer recognized
In addition to the fight against cookies, Apple has also stopped tracking the opening of emails since September 2021. Most companies that measure the opening rate of emails for their newsletters or with tools like Hubspot have seen a sharp increase in the opening rate of their emails since then. This is not because they are read more often, but because an Apple update simply reports an opening to all recipients of the email.
Many tools have stopped including Apple users in their email opening rate statistics. Even though so far “only” the 35 percent of email recipients who use Apple are affected, other browsers are likely to follow suit and the measurability of online marketing measures will become even more difficult.
User
exclusion of certain user groups
One advantage of cookies is that you can not only show users targeted Austria Phone Number Resource advertising, but you can also exclude them from certain types of advertising.
So far, for example, you can exclude users if they have already bought a certain product. This type of advertising will be difficult.
In order to be able to control the display of ads accordingly, it is necessary to be able to recognize people, which is why cookies are needed.
Personalized approach
Will personalized online advertising no longer be possible in the future?
Does all this mean that advertisers in online marketing will have to do without personalized advertising in the future? That is not the case. However, alternative personalization systems will prevail, replacing cookies. What they have in common is that they abstract from individual people and instead form small groups of people with similar needs, whereby the people in the groups remain anonymous.
In the next part of our series, we will look at alternative forms of personalized online advertising that do not require cookies and consider the approaches taken by the three biggest players, Google, Facebook and Amazon: A future without cookies: Approaches from Google, Facebook & Amazon . In the final part, we will summarize what you can do: Customer journey and performance without cookies: Alternatives and solutions .
You can read more about the future without cookies in the article: Cookieless Marketing – Preparing companies for the end of cookies
Customers
Cookies for recognizing people
For many years, the use of cookies has been a simple and convenient way to recognize users on the web, for example to show them personalized advertising or to adapt the content of websites to their needs.
The technology behind cookies is extremely simple. A small file is sent from the server to the user's browser and stored there. This file can be used to recognize the user when they visit the website later. Cookies are divided into so-called first-party cookies and third-party cookies. While first-party cookies are set by the website you are currently visiting, third-party cookies come from third-party providers such as Facebook, advertising networks or tracking systems.
While third-party cookies will soon no longer be able to be set, Apple allows a maximum cookie lifespan of 7 days for first-party cookies that are set with JavaScript. Far too short a time to use tools like Hubspot to identify visitors who have already been to the website.
First-party cookies may be necessary for a website to function. However, the use of third-party cookies is particularly problematic for data protection reasons, as they allow users to be recognized on their journey through the web. This is used, for example, to display advertisements on various websites that match their interests.
restriction
Browser manufacturers restrict cookies: various forms of advertising affected
Back in 2020, Google announced that it would no longer support third-party cookies in the Chrome browser. The transition period will soon expire and the cookies will be blocked starting next year. Third-party cookies are already largely blocked in Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari.
All this shows that personalized advertising that relies on cookies will have a hard time in the future. This affects various forms of online advertising, such as:
remarketing
Programmatic advertising and targeting using data from third-party cookies
Exclusion of certain user groups who should not see the ads.
remarketing
remarketing
Remarketing or retargeting is a form of online marketing in which users are shown tailored advertising based on websites they have previously visited or previous actions on the web. For example, if a user has searched for a specific television in an online shop, they may be shown advertisements for this or similar televisions at a later time when they visit different websites.
Without the use of cookies, it will be difficult to display this type of advertising, which will significantly limit the possibilities and reach of retargeting.
Data
Programmatic advertising and targeting using third-party cookies
Brands that rely heavily on programmatic advertising and have collected too little data about their own customers and prospects will be at a competitive disadvantage. Online marketplaces that trade user data for marketing purposes rely on the use of third-party cookies, as these cookies are used to collect the data. National and international advertising networks use such data to display advertising on the websites associated with them.
This type of user data utilization will also be severely restricted or even impossible due to the future elimination of third-party cookies.
Direct cooperation with websites that appeal to your target group will become more important in the future.
User
Email openings are no longer recognized
In addition to the fight against cookies, Apple has also stopped tracking the opening of emails since September 2021. Most companies that measure the opening rate of emails for their newsletters or with tools like Hubspot have seen a sharp increase in the opening rate of their emails since then. This is not because they are read more often, but because an Apple update simply reports an opening to all recipients of the email.
Many tools have stopped including Apple users in their email opening rate statistics. Even though so far “only” the 35 percent of email recipients who use Apple are affected, other browsers are likely to follow suit and the measurability of online marketing measures will become even more difficult.
User
exclusion of certain user groups
One advantage of cookies is that you can not only show users targeted Austria Phone Number Resource advertising, but you can also exclude them from certain types of advertising.
So far, for example, you can exclude users if they have already bought a certain product. This type of advertising will be difficult.
In order to be able to control the display of ads accordingly, it is necessary to be able to recognize people, which is why cookies are needed.
Personalized approach
Will personalized online advertising no longer be possible in the future?
Does all this mean that advertisers in online marketing will have to do without personalized advertising in the future? That is not the case. However, alternative personalization systems will prevail, replacing cookies. What they have in common is that they abstract from individual people and instead form small groups of people with similar needs, whereby the people in the groups remain anonymous.
In the next part of our series, we will look at alternative forms of personalized online advertising that do not require cookies and consider the approaches taken by the three biggest players, Google, Facebook and Amazon: A future without cookies: Approaches from Google, Facebook & Amazon . In the final part, we will summarize what you can do: Customer journey and performance without cookies: Alternatives and solutions .