If there’s one thing we know about here at B&T, it’s hangovers. Here, Joyce Seah, head of client success APAC for Quantcast explains that it isn’t just a long night at North Sydney’s Rag and Famish Hotel that will have marketers reaching for the Hydralite and the MyMacca’s app—third-party cookie deprecation will, too.
The cookie hangover has landed.
Google’s repeated delays in phasing out third-party cookies were expected, as the company struggled to find a replacement. However, the advertising landscape has already evolved, with some ad tech providers leading the way in creating a ‘cookieless future’. What does this mean? A better and more accurate way to measure campaign success outside of the walled gardens.
Some ad tech providers use multiple data sources and technologies for efficient measurement, automation, and striking a balance between precision and cost, aligning with consumer demand for privacy-centric solutions.
Let’s face it, advertisers can operate effectively online without third-party cookies by leveraging first-party data, contextual insights, privacy-compliant identity solutions, data clean rooms, machine learning, and AI. However, there is no one-to-one replacement for third-party cookies.
While Google’s delay may provide temporary relief, marketers hoping for a direct replacement will be disappointed. The digital advertising ecosystem has already moved on, with many businesses adopting innovative solutions to mitigate the loss of cookies. And it’s time that marketers moved on too.
This moment in time gives marketers the ability to embrace both a more a privacy-centric and a more accurate digital advertising future – without cookies.
Third-party cookies were never ideal for advertising and are unreliable in a rapidly changing consumer landscape. A 2024 Adobe study among 2,841 marketers in key markets (US, Australia, France, Germany, India, Japan, and the UK) found that reliance on third-party cookies has dropped markedly from 75 per cent in 2022 to 49 per cent in 2024.
Similarly, studies by Quantcast show that more than 50 per cent of the open web is already cookieless, making this a significant audience marketers cannot ignore.
The problem may be that marketers are less prepared for the cookieless future. Adobe’s study revealed that 60 per cent of brands feel “mostly” or “very” prepared for the deprecation of third-party cookies, down from 78 per cent in 2022. This uncertainty stems from the industry’s prolonged wait-and-see approach to what major tech companies will do next. But the wait needs to end.
In addition, Google’s proposed new experience in Chrome, promising to “empower users to make informed and adjustable choices,” raises questions about how it will differ from the current user experience.
Measurement is crucial
To navigate a cookieless future, brands, marketers, and agencies must explore a range of approaches to fill the measurement gap left by third-party cookies. Effective measurement is essential for successful digital marketing campaigns. And, while focus groups still play a role in gathering qualitative data, a cookieless future, for the time being, demands a multifaceted approach.
Quantcast’s chief technology officer Dr. Peter Day sees these multiple data sources as “a new ingredient in the advertising recipe” – helping to provide greater insights and using patterns in web traffic to identify such things as purchase intent and buyers’ purchasing power.
The anticipated end of cookies has left many advertisers and media agencies scrambling for solutions. However, innovation often emerges in times of risk and uncertainty. Although the path forward may not be entirely clear, brands should view cookieless marketing as an opportunity to embrace a privacy-centric future.
Less reliance third-party cookies in advertising will encourage more experimentation with available data sources and this can be a good thing. By adopting a test-and-learn approach, ad tech providers can produce insights that highlight the results of advertising without third-party cookies.
Marketers can harness a range of options such as contextual data and cohorts, first party data, probabilistic models, user panels and the like, which can provide a very comprehensive picture of campaign effectiveness. By combining probabilistic models with statistical analysis to estimate campaign impact, brands can build a comprehensive understanding of advertising effectiveness. This data-driven approach lays the foundation for intelligent optimisation and precision targeting, ultimately driving significant ROI. And while this means that ad tech providers much shoulder more of the data ingest and insights for brands, automation can streamline and optimise for marketers.
In the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, companies like Havas, Singapore Airlines, and Singtel have already begun this transition, gaining valuable insights that have improved their media strategies.
The shift away from third-party cookies presents an opportunity to innovate and improve digital advertising. The key is to look for effective measurement, using automation and striking the right balance between precision targeting and cost. Brands that embrace this change and invest in cookieless strategies will be better positioned for a privacy-centric future. The time to start was yesterday.
