New marketing alternatives without third-party cookies
Since the beginning of Internet advertising, cookies have been one of the most important sources of data for web developers, web designers and digital marketers, so the banning of cookies in browsers sounds like an apocalyptic scenario. However, this change does not mean the end of advertising, and today we want to show you how marketers are preparing for a world without cookies.
If you have studied marketing and especially new trends, you know how important data about your audience or customers is. Thanks to cookies, we get most of this data, that’s why the possibility of a future without cookies sets off alarm bells for many companies and marketers. However, there are some alternatives that can help you face this new challenge.
What are cookies?
Cookies are small text files that a website sends to the browser, in these files are collected important data such as login data, language preferences or settings.
Cookies by themselves are not bad or dangerous, they help you to access pages more easily and in a way that is more useful to you, for example thanks to them, you can keep your favorite items in the shopping cart, or enter the English version of a website.
The problem with cookies appears when they collect personal data for the sole purpose of advertising, there is also a problem when the information collected by them is sold to third parties. These types of practices are commonly used by third-party cookies.
For some time now, Google has announced the phasing out of third-party cookies in its browser by 2023. While, browsers such as Mozilla or Safari have blocked them definitively; this means nothing more than the end of the cookie era and a new challenge for marketers, who will have to create new strategies that do not rely on the information generated by these cookies.
First-party cookies
First-party cookies are all those generated by the website itself, they can have many functions, however most of them are used to improve the user experience.
A clear example of this type of cookies are those used by a website to remember your username, or to remember your login preferences or configuration of a page, so when you enter a website will remember content data such as the selected language. These cookies are usually temporary.
Third-party cookies
Third-party cookies are those generated by external services to the page you are visiting. They can be very varied, but are generally used for statistical purposes, as they retrieve data such as usage data or user tastes. When you enter a website, it regularly asks you if you want third-party cookies, when you click “accept”, you are agreeing to install data tracking cookies.
Social networks such as Facebook or Instagram often use third-party cookies. For example, by clicking the share button on a post or liking a post you would be generating a third party cookie.
Other third-party cookies are used to obtain information to help segment the audience and deliver personalized advertising.
The problems of third-party cookies
There are certainly two clear disadvantages of third-party cookies, the first and most obvious being personal data privacy. Many cookies record important data such as age, gender, name and location, and then use it for advertising, just because you have filled out an online application or form.
Since the enactment of laws that protect personal data, third party cookies have been affected, in fact as we explained at the beginning of the post, browsers are choosing to disappear them to protect security and prevent misuse of this type of data.
The other disadvantage is that although third-party cookies are everywhere, each website has its own and can collect different data from each other, this can cause a customer profile to not be achieved correctly.
Alternatives to the disappearance of third-party cookies
Losing the information that cookies gave you is not the end of the world, and here we show you some alternatives, with which you can create marketing campaigns.
Conversion API (CAPI)
Conversion API is Facebook’s solution to protect privacy while still delivering personalized ads to users. It is a new interface that allows advertisers to send events from their servers directly to Facebook’s servers, thus ensuring that data privacy is maintained.
Federated Learning of Cohorts
Google knew the impact of the disappearance of cookies, that is why it launched Privacy Sandbox, a series of measures to measure operational parameters for Internet advertising.
Within these measures Google has launched Federated Learned of Cohort, whose objective, like cookies, is to measure the consumption and browsing habits of users, with the big difference of first grouping users into large cohorts with similar consumption habits. This ensures that an individual’s privacy is hidden in large crowds.
Server side tracking
For many, the alternative is clear: to stop relying on third-party cookies, it will be necessary to build our own tracking server that connects directly to analytics tools such as Facebook Manager and Google Analytics. Although this procedure seems complicated and somewhat costly, it can unify the user’s data journey and combine events from multiple touchpoints, plus it will improve the speed of your site, as there are no analytics pixels slowing it down.
People power
B2B marketing is all about having a person-to-person interaction, leaving cookies out of the equation, and the best part is that it has proven to have better results. On other occasions we have already talked about employing strategies that bring you closer to your customers, such as the Customer Journey Map that will help you gather more accurate data about your customers, through more personal means such as opinions on social networks or interviews.
In the end, if your team focuses on gathering data with the customers themselves, you will have more valuable and accurate information, since they are the ones who decide whether to make a purchase.
Open new channels
A successful marketing strategy is willing to open new channels, although digital marketing and cookies make the task easier, there are still traditional channels that can help you to know and segment your audience.
Be transparent
No doubt you will need to continue collecting data from your consumers, whether by one means or another, what you must be clear about is that your consumers have changed, most are now more interested in how you use their data, than they were a few years ago. So, be transparent about what kind of data you are collecting and what it will be used for, this is not only a legal obligation, but also a way to gain the trust of your users.
Creates a privacy policy
Creating a privacy policy for your company that is visible and accessible to your website visitors at all times is already a legal obligation. However, this obligation helps to give your visitors the power to decide whether to participate in data collection.
Digital marketers are clear that they must adapt to a world without cookies, and so must your company. However, this change does not mean the end of advertising, if you want to adapt you will have to think about data collection and marketing strategies that respect users’ privacy. Tell us, what do you think is the main challenge for marketing in a world without cookies?