Cookies have given companies and advertisers a view into the world of consumers and their habits for more than 20 years. Cookies, those insignificant bits of information used to track website visitors, are no longer used in Firefox and are expected to disappear entirely from Google Chrome by 2023. Hello, cookieless marketing.
In terms of marketing, it will be a loss of terrible proportions because the ability to trace a potential customer's online purchasing journey offers valuable intelligence for subsequent advertising efforts. Cookies mimicked the essential practice of real-life shops keeping track of the kind of visitors and potential clients they had when they first appeared on the market in 1994.
Why are cookies disappearing?
A Google Chrome Director of Engineering claims that privacy concerns are mostly to blame for the forced retirement of cookies. Users want more control and transparency over how their data is collected and used. The "cookie law," also known as the ePrivacy directive, was implemented to keep an eye on the assurance of secrecy and permission in electronic interactions.
Cookieless advertising: what are you losing out on?
Targeted audience insights will be harder to come by in a world without cookies. Advertisers won't be able to quickly access the known preferences and habits of the consumers they wish to know about. A survey conducted in 2021 by Boston Consulting Group and LinkedIn revealed that 39% of marketers agreed that data losses have already started to damage their marketing performance and that 56% of respondents expected this impact to increase. Marketers who fail to develop new methods for ad targeting will feel this loss very keenly. But there is no justification for marketing in total ignorance.
Key Takeaways
Advertisers won't be able to quickly access the known interests and behaviours of the customers they want to know about after cookies are gone.
Users still have the option to "opt in" and permit cookies if they so choose. The data will eventually become unusable for any worthwhile media buying activity due to shrinking audience sizes, which will most certainly result in low conversion rates.
Scaling content is the secret to cookieless advertising, which opens up a world of opportunities for testing ad performance.
This makes it easier to switch from anonymous targeting to targeting that is more based on the outcomes of these tests.