Publishing

Affiliate Marketing Is a Safe Haven for Publishers in a Cookieless Future

There’s a troubling common thread through these new targeting solutions—they're being built at content owners' expense

publisher-cookieless-future-2022 — Affiliate marketing is the best available strategy that compensates publishers for their value.Photo Illustration: Adweek; Getty Images

Brandweek will feature live discussions with marketing pros at ULTA Beauty, Converse, UPS and more. Meet us in Miami Sept. 11–14 to boost your business and elevate your brand.

Publishers are in a unique position of power as the demise of the third-party cookie threatens advertising industry norms. Solutions to the cookie challenge from large ad tech companies (primarily Google) continue to miss the point: A simple workaround solution isn’t going to cut it for an ad industry that’s evolved to prioritize data privacy.

First, Google introduced Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), which was met with criticism for relying on assumptions about cohorts of individuals based on their online activity.