Cookies are crumbling, but it’s not the data apocalypse—far from it. Targeting and measurement aren’t going anywhere, though the mechanics will have to change. Data and digital advertising will always go hand-in-hand, providing better ad experiences for both brands and audiences.
Look at Google’s move to eliminate third-party cookies as the end of an era that many consumers found kind of creepy. Now is the time to find positive, ethical and more symbiotic ways to source and use data for better campaigns and consumer interaction.
Trust, respect and consent
Brands need to build a relationship with the consumer, uncover how they want to interact and respect those choices. This is how advertisers will begin to build a scaled first-party data set that will be the base of their future targeting and measurement strategy.
Scale will be important, but having identity, first-party data and consent for every user will be impossible and unnecessary as the industry transitions to a new era in digital advertising. To maintain that trusted relationship with consumers, brands will also need to partner with publishers who practice the same philosophy with their users.
Short-term alternatives to cookies
For many advertisers, new approaches to targeting and measurement will evolve gradually. In the short term, there is still scaled inventory with cookies, and traditional approaches to targeting and measurement will exist in tandem with more future-proof solutions. This moment is a golden opportunity for advertisers to test new targeting and measurement options while they can be compared directly to tried-and-true tactics and metrics.
Using this time wisely will put buyers on their front foot in knowing the value of their spend in a changing world, which is perhaps only a year away. Many publishers and measurement providers are bringing new solutions to market right now. So, now is the time to test, test, test.
Mid-term solutions
Relying solely on deterministic matches between data sets for most consumers isn’t a long-term strategy. Users will continue to become savvier and more protective of their personal data and the percent of users who consent to have their data shared for targeting and measurement with both advertisers and publishers will continue to degrade.
In measurement, a resurgence in media mix modeling and multi-touch attribution solutions that use representative sample data as a part of their methodology will be where the trends are heading. Ideally, digital will continue to differentiate itself from “old school measurement” by providing larger samples and deeper levels of information on a subset of users.
In targeting, new solutions are being introduced regularly, and some of these will rise up and demonstrate the same or improved performance for buyers.
Long-term, take a cue from digital audio
For streaming audio and podcasts, cookies have never been a major source of consumer information. However, changes to mobile identifiers and consumer demands for privacy have equal impact. Because SiriusXM Media never relied exclusively on MAIDs for passing data, the audio company is ahead of the curve with strong, resilient identity and first-party data in its DNA. Look at its approach to audience targeting.
SiriusXM Media recently introduced a new set of first-party and contextual audience offerings for streaming audio. They’re built using traditional deterministic audience identity matching to create a seed audience. These audiences are examined to scale out to a much larger audience using probabilistic methodologies.
This moment is a golden opportunity for advertisers to test new targeting and measurement options while they can be compared directly to tried-and-true tactics and metrics.
In streaming, SiriusXM Media takes two lists of identifiers from consented users, finds the overlap and builds a seed audience. Then its data scientists do a deep dive into the first-party data on the audience (e.g., what devices they listen on, what time of day, what content, etc.). From there, they create a look-alike audience using only those first-party data attributes, delete the seed segment and offer a new first-party audience for targeting on streaming inventory. Then the audiences are tested using a proprietary Soundboard panel to ensure a reasonable level of accuracy. SiriusXM Media expects this will be a resilient solution as the ecosystem changes.
Similarly, with podcasting, SiriusXM Media works with Comscore, which provides a similar seed audience. Comscore builds out a detailed map of the content that resonates with these audiences using keywords and surrounding context. From there, SiriusXM uses transcription technology to understand how specific episodes of podcasts will over-index with desired audience attributes to target podcast episodes instead of users—a true contextual solution.
Long-term solutions like these will continue to develop. Whether it is clean rooms that allow advertisers, publishers and third-party data providers to securely match audiences or new solutions to pass audience attributes safely in the bidstream like UID2, advertisers can expect safer, easier ways to share data with one another.
Data-driven digital advertising isn’t going anywhere—so it’s up to media companies and advertisers to keep up with where it’s headed.
