Everything You Need to Know About Going Cookieless
With the rise of user privacy concerns, new tech giants such as Apple, Google, and Facebook are implementing new data restrictions and by the second half of 2024, third-party cookies will be completely phased out.
Browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari have already gotten rid of them. You may be wondering how these restrictions will affect your digital marketing efforts for your business. Don’t worry! Pink Dog Digital is here to help your marketing survive in a cookieless world.
Understanding Cookie Types and User Privacy
Cookies are bits of data that contain personal consumer identifiers. Whether you’re downloading a new app or just perusing the web, you’re leaving some crumbs of data with every click. Some of the types of this data include:
- 1st party data: This is the kind of data directly placed by the website you’re visiting. It contains sensitive information such as card details, user preferences, and sign-in information. This type of cookie will not be blocked as they’re vital for website functioning and understanding user behavior.
- 2nd party data: This is 1st party data that companies share with non-competitive partners. For instance, when companies collaborate to share customers’ contact lists for distribution.
- 3rd party data: This is data created by a domain other than the one the user is visiting. 3rd party cookies are used for retargeting, monitoring user behavior on different sites, and showing ads to specific users.
How will Going Cookieless Impact Businesses?
Going cookieless will affect online businesses in the following ways:
Digital Identity
Cookies help businesses keep tabs on user activity, which is vital in e-commerce. Without cookies, it’ll be difficult to analyze impressions and distinguish new customers from returning customers. This can lead to reduced sales as it becomes challenging to measure basic metrics.
Ad Targeting
Without 3rd party cookies, marketers will lose a lot of data they currently have access to. This will impact the targeted Ads and will make it hard for brands to identify effective strategies. Due to increased security and privacy control, consumers will start getting less personalized Ads.
Attribution
Attributing data helps online businesses to evaluate the effectiveness of online marketing strategies. The use of third-party cookies is a sure way of tracking customer behavior, and with them gone, the challenges will increase, especially for businesses that rely on contacting customers to improve marketing performance.
How to Prepare for a Cookieless World
With cookies phasing out, businesses need to look for more consumer-centric and authentic ways to fuel the same objective. Here are some of the most effective ways to prepare yourself for a cookieless future:
- Improve your first-party data collection. First-party data is more reliable than third-party data, which is collected by external sources. You can use surveys, customer loyalty programs, customer interactions, and website data to collect data that you can use to create customer profiles.
- Leverage second-party data options. For example, you can ask a company that uses first-party data to track consumer behavior to share the information with your business. This data sharing is more ethical since users have allowed their data to be collected.
- Invest in a customer relationship management (CRM) platform. This will help you unify the first-party data into a single source of truth. You can use this data to create a more personalized experience for your customers.
- Use alternative tracking methods. You can use alternative technologies such as fingerprinting and device ID tracking to replace cookies.
- Invest in marketing automation software. Besides automating your emails, SMS, and campaigns, marketing automation software will also help you collect customer data after every interaction.
Pink Dog Digital Marketing Approach Is Ideal in a Cookieless World
There’s no time to waste getting ready for the new digital marketing world. With some industry giants already eradicating third-party cookies, technically the cookieless future is already here. Pink Dog Digital can help your marketing survive in a cookieless world.
Whether you need help navigating how to incorporate cookieless digital marketing into your strategy or you need help producing quality content for your website or blog, we can help! For more information, email us at pinkdogdigital@gmail.com, call us at 410-696-3305 or contact us via our website.