Privacy Changes and how it impacts marketing
Digital marketers have relied on cookie tracking over two decades to provide a robust user experience. These cookies played a pivotal role in serving targeted communication and advertisements like display advertising, retargeting and remarketing to the users. However this dependence has gone overboard with every marketing-technology company exploiting this wonderful technology and overselling this to the brand to monetize through ecommerce.
On the other hand digital consumers have become more conscious of cookie-tracking and associated risks on data privacy. Thus there were several initiatives being taken to restore user confidence on the internet through various regulations implemented both at geographical level through countries and regions. One such milestone initiative was the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by the European Union in the year 2016, which controls the storage, processing and sharing of personal data by the organizations by implementing the data protection principles.
Adding to this disruption was the announcement of Apple in March 2020 that with the launch of iOS 14 developers or app owners need to seek permission explicitly from the users to track them across apps and websites owned by other companies.Also Safari which is the browser of the apple iOS have toggled off “Cross-Website Tracking” by default. Thus it blocks all third-party cookies. The final nail on the coffin for the third-party cookie came in March 2021 when Google announced that before the end of 2022 Google will ban all the third party cookie tracking, which has a direct impact on all android apps and its browser Chrome.
Today Chrome whose market share is more than 3/4th and Safari at little less than 10% jointly owns close to 90% of market share of the internet browsers which means the third party cookie tracking has come to an end. Cookieless future is only a test, but the future is filled with new opportunities:
- Digital media mix optimization: Today Google Display Network (GDN) ads which includes display advertising and remarketing along with Facebook Ad network adds up to 90% of the total display ad market. And this has already reached its saturation. On the other hand, the emergence of OTT platforms has created opportunities for digital marketers to consider advertising.There are plenty of innovative opportunities to sell your brands through in-show displays and strategic partnerships as the creators are more keen in driving such opportunities.
- Own website/apps & First party cookies: The demise of the third party cookies gives fresh blood to the first party cookies, where the digital markets now should focus on their own website to capture the first party cookies from the visitors and build their own cookie pool. This will help the brand owners to create user profiles within their systems and help to create a single view of a customer thereby we can offer relevant content and ads to provide a better user experience to the website visitors. Though the quantity of the potential shoppers may not be as much as before, the quality of the users will be far better. As long as the website is powered by a robust Content Management, Customer Relationship, BI and Analytics Systems they will be able to handle it efficiently.
- Outbound strategies: While the efficiency of the email marketing is low, yet it is considered to be the cheapest form of advertisement to reach potential audiences. As discussed earlier it’s also important companies invest in their building first party cookies through websites and CRM systems. An effective automated marketing solution could potentially drive higher stickiness to the website and bring the user back to the site for effective conversions. Adding to that is the push-notification opportunities which can be better leveraged on the outbound communication front.
- Omnichannel marketing: With the emergence of digital marketing many marketers have forgotten the conventional media strategies in building brands. This current crisis drives marketers to look beyond digital advertising and look for some conventional media mixes such as TV, Print, Outdoor, radio and other on ground activations. Today the conventional media platforms are also offering technology based solutions which allows real-time tracking of efficiency of advertisements.
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