1st Party

Utilize first-party data and consent management platforms to collect and store user information in a compliant, transparent manner.

Contextual

Contextual advertising leverages context clues from web content to deliver targeted ads, enhancing engagement.

Cohorts

The third-party cookie ban will limit your ability to target specific audience members. However, you can use first-party data and other digital insights to target entire audience segments.

Customer-Centric

Embrace a customer-centric and value-driven approach to marketing that focuses on building trust and loyalty with users, rather than relying on intrusive and irrelevant ads.

Google signed-in user views your ad

The user converts on your website

The conversion tag captures a field you specify (eg. email address), hashes the data (unless already hashed) and securely sends it to Google

The conversion tag captures a field you specify (eg. email address), hashes the data (unless already hashed) and securely sends it to Google

We match this against Google’s hashed user data and a conversion is reported in your account.

LOOKING FORWARD

Contextual Advertising

APPLICATION

Contextual advertising involves placing ads on a webpage based on its content. For instance, contextual advertising is performed by segmenting and targeting ad space based on website topic, keyword, or similar parameters.

When you target context, you choose where to display your ads based on the consumer’s browsing environment. The topic and keyword targeting focuses on the webpage and its content, not the user’s browsing activity.

LIMITATIONS

The downside to contextual advertising is that it isn’t as precise as behavioral targeting. On the bright side, it also doesn’t require third-party cookies, which makes it a viable replacement in the cookieless future of digital marketing.

LOOKING FORWARD

Cohort Advertising

APPLICATION

The third-party cookie ban will limit your ability to target specific audience members. However, you can use first-party data and other digital insights to target entire audience segments. A cohort is a set of users who have been grouped together based on a shared attribute or identifier.

You can create cohorts based on virtually any criteria — including users’ geographic locations and when they last made a purchase.

Once you’ve divided users into cohorts, you can target them with marketing content and get a holistic view of which actions are yielding desirable results and which channels are delivering a strong return on investment.

LIMITATIONS

Since the cohort-based approach to user behavior tracking is less precise than third-party cookie methods, mastering this technique will require some trial and error. However, it can help fill the void in your analytics strategy and provide actionable insights about consumers.

ACRONYM POV

Key Take-Aways

IT’S NOT ALL GOOGLE’S FAULT

Though it’s normal to feel frustrated with Google constantly moving the goal posts, we must recognize that Google (and others) need to contend with constantly changing laws that dictate user privacy, and ensure its replacement for 3rd party cookies is in-line with these regulations.

BE PREPARED

We don’t want to sound like a broken record, however, as in the beginning of the cookieless-scare, Brands need to be prepared for the eventual demise of the 3rd party cookie. If anything, now you have more time to stock up on data that might not be available in the future.

1ST PARTY DATA IS KING

As always, investing in your own first-party data remains crucial to the long-term success of your brand, advertising, and targeting capabilities.

The post Google 3rd Party Cookie Deprecation Gets Delayed Again appeared first on acronym.

The European Region is a specific list of countries including:

• The European Union (EU)
• Non-EU Members, but in EEA-Only/EFTA or Customs Union
• Non-EU members, but part of European Outermost Regions (OMR)
• United Kingdom (UK)

The expected changes and updates for people in the European Region starting July, 2021 include:

• Cookie consent prompts for people in the European Region who are logged in to Facebook, Messenger or Instagram, including two controls:
  • Cookies On Other Apps and Websites will enable people in the European Region to control whether Facebook can record web and third-party app data received about them through its business tools.
  • Cookies from Other Companies will enable people in the European Region to control whether other companies can set or read cookies from their devices when using a Facebook product.

Facebook will provide people with the ability to revisit their cookie consent choices in Settings.

Why This is Important:

Businesses should anticipate an impact on campaigns that are being served in the European region. There is a possibility that advertisers will see a decrease in ad performance and can expect performance fluctuations over the next several months. As Acronym’s EVP & GM, International, Farah Sadiq explains:

“As long as you’re marketing to EU citizens, it’s imperative for businesses to ensure they are compliant. Concerns about privacy and use of important information is only going to increase, leading to ever-evolving and more stringent regulations that will span beyond EU borders. It’s definitely time for businesses to review all performance marketing strategies and focus on building first party data that is important for driving better results. This means prioritizing data collection that would influence the way businesses engage and connect with their customers. Forward-thinking marketers are already creating and managing first party data in a  comprehensible and usable manner across various communication channels.”

This cookie consent and privacy update will affect any advertiser on Facebook and Instagram. In fact, there may be a decrease in reported off-site conversions in Ads Manager, Ad Reporting, and the Ads Insights API. Reporting for onsite events will not be impacted (impressions, link, clicks, etc.)

Acronym’s Director of Paid Social Media, Gellena Lukats explains the impetus behind these updates:

“The Social Media Industry is pivoting, toward privacy-first thinking. This EU cookie prompt, along with GDPR compliance and iOS changes are pushing toward audience first media. This industry push means we, as marketers, need to be more robust with first and third-party audiences – creating profiles and LTV models based on contextual marketing, while, of course, being privacy compliant.”

Although these updates mainly impact brands in the EU, individual States in the U.S. are also passing privacy laws, including those listed here.

If you would like more information on how to prepare for these changes, please contact our experts in Europe, Singapore or North America today.

The post How Updates to Facebook’s Cookies Consent Prompt & Privacy Controls in Europe May Affect Your Ads & Reporting appeared first on acronym.

Chrome’s Engineering Director Vinay Goel said in a blog post:

“We need to move at a responsible pace, allowing sufficient time for public discussion on the right solutions and for publishers and the advertising industry to migrate their services. This is important to avoid jeopardizing the business models of many web publishers which support freely available content.”

One part of Google’s rationale for pushing back its plan is centered around concerns that blocking cookies now might encourage tracking companies to use more controversial tactics like fingerprinting to gather browser configuration details.

Meanwhile, the company has faced backlash around both its use of cookies across the web and its plans to block them. In fact, earlier this week, the European Union said it is investigating Google’s plan to remove cookies as part of a wide-ranging inquiry into allegations that Google has abused its prominent role in advertising technology.

And, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google has separately pledged to give the U.K.’s competition watchdog at least 60 days’ notice before removing cookies to review and potentially impose changes to its plan, as part of an offer to settle a similar investigation. That probe stemmed from complaints that Chrome’s removal of cookies would give an advantage to ads on Google’s own products, like YouTube or Search, where Google will still be able to do individual-level targeting.

In the U.S., Google’s cookie-replacement plan was raised in a December antitrust lawsuit against the company brought by Texas and nine other U.S. states.

Google has been testing several new tools to replace various functions of third-party cookies, as part of what it calls a privacy sandbox. The first such replacement technology, dubbed federated learning of cohorts, or Floc, is intended to allow advertisers to target cohorts of users with similar interests, rather than individuals, in order to protect their privacy.

Acronym’s SVP of Performance Media, Gregg Manias reacted to the news:

“I’m not really shocked by this, we have seen over time that privacy search engines like Duck Duck Go blocked it, then we saw large publishers like New York times block it, then we saw competitor browsers like Firefox block it, I think the death of this plan by Google was last week when Amazon blocked FlOC right before prime day.”

Google, of course, plays a central role in the online advertising ecosystem as the company owns the dominant tools used to broker the sale of ads across the web. Cookies, small bits of code stored in web browsers to track users across the web, are widely used in the industry, including in Google’s Chrome browser, which has 65% of the market globally.

Acronym’s EVP of Analytics, Stephanie Hart added:

“Google needs a way to provide advertisers with the ability to target users and it doesn’t seem that the current version of FLOC is it. Google is having a difficult time balancing the demand from regulators and users for privacy against the need for revenue. The market will continue to evolve as Google develops solutions to this dilemma.”

Meanwhile, as the Search giant seeks to find a resolution, Acronym’s SVP of SEO, Winston Burton recently shared some of the other ways marketers can capture customer information through permission-based tactics, including content which, when done right, captures users’ interest at every stage of the funnel.

Google said it expects to complete testing of all of its new cookie-replacement technologies, and integrate them into Chrome before late 2022. Then the advertising industry will have a nine-month period to migrate their services, during which time Google will monitor adoption and feedback. The final phaseout of cookies will happen over three months in late 2023, the company said, adding that it will publish a more detailed timeline.

In the meantime, if you need assistance planning for these changes, please contact us. Our experts can help you navigate these ever-changing waters so you deliver the personalized experiences your customers expect in a way that still respects their right to privacy.

The post Google Delays Chrome’s Cookie-Blocking for 2 Years appeared first on acronym.