You might recall clicking on “I accept” when you visit a website, which is the only time we remember what cookies are. However, cookies also store our passwords and keep us logged into our email accounts and other social accounts, making our lives easier since we don’t have to enter the passwords to login. They have also helped the advertisers gain a lot. Let’s see how.
Cookies deliver marketers the users’ online traits and behaviors to provide tailored recommendations to their audience when they instantly click on it. For example, when you click on an ad while viewing a website and get redirected to a different web page, this could be a book advertisement. In your subsequent searches and the websites, you will see more book suggestions popping up.
Thus, Cookies keep a record of your views and anything that you search on the internet. It raises a significant question of privacy- What if third-party cookies track our data? It has become a top –priority concern for users. For years marketers have taken user’s privacy for granted and have applied techniques and strategies that have compromised their privacy. So, what has changed now?
Digital Advertising
According to their browser history, it wasn’t common before, but now with the advent of digital marketing, the choices have increased, so has the customization to an individual level. But the big question remains, will we become handicapped, and will the normal working be disturbed if we decide to go cookie-less?
The user will have to log in repeatedly, which is a waste of time in this fast-paced world. One evident change will be the end of any recommendations from the digital ads, which will protect the users’ privacy. Though most digital ads aren’t shown to such users, some of them still do. Some advertising platforms like VDO.AI help you abet your website by boosting its monetization by a good percentage and help you increase your revenue. Such platforms allow you to create targeted advertisements through the website where the advertisers only pay for the ads that have been clicked on.
It is time for businesses to adapt to targeted digital advertising. Recently, Google announced that the Chrome Browser would go cookieless soon by 2022. Even Mozilla Firefox pushed out third-party cookies last year. However, first-party cookies are still staying, which will be enough for the publishers to understand their customer’s behavior.
Advertising in a Cookieless environment
- Digital fingerprinting
It is a method through which a series of signals of a user is combined and assigned a hashed user ID. Things like IP address, time zone, operating system, and browsers help set up a digital fingerprint.
This technique is used to target the audience with adverts and remove the idea of cookie-based advertising. Many organizations opt for digital fingerprinting over a cookie-based advertisement for targeting the audience as it is efficient. As the third-party cookies breach users’ data privacy, many companies avoid using that for their customers. Advertisers will get a lower revenue in a cookieless environment since the ads will not be so accurately targeted. It is where futuristic companies like VDO.AI come into the picture. The advertisers are promised higher revenues by being displayed on premium advertising spaces. Since they attract premium advertisements, leading to better conversion rates, both the brand and the publisher remain with lower costs and higher revenues.
- Contextual Advertising
Relevant keywords and ads on the same webpage benefit both the website creators and the advertisers. Ads are mostly photo or video content. Most companies give their customers a wide range of exclusively made attractive formats and templates in the right context.
One of the best examples of contextual advertising would be the ads played during IPL- Indian Premier League cricket matches. The user is shown a certain advertisement when a batsman is declared out and another specific ad when the bowler is hit for a six out of the park. It helps the users correlate better with the brands.
- White List
The white list focuses on a list of relevant apps, domains, and channels, making the user see relevant ads popping when they visit a site. A periodical optimization of the website can bring higher conversion rates.
- Universal ID
Information like email IDs, device IDs can help advertisers to understand and study their target audience. Digital marketing tools like email marketing, video marketing, and social media marketing can help them advertise the product to their target audience.
- Brand Safety
Business strategies keep changing. While some might be like by the audience, some might also be loathed by the audience. Such advertising spaces become a liability for the advertiser to publish its brand advertisement. Brand safety, in such cases, becomes a concern. A handful of companies that provide such services have algorithms working in the background that ensure that brands remain clear of any negative topics or assets
- Artificial Intelligence
It is a terrific substitute for cookieless advertising. Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa have made it easy for users to search just by their voice. Google’s machine learning algorithm was created to get more relevant search results according to their user.
Cookieless advertising is a challenge for advertisers because their ultimate power of knowing their customer behavior is gone. Compared to first-party cookies, third-party cookies are easier to track and are used for advertising purposes. However, now the companies have to rely on other data formats and digital footprints to understand customer behavior.
- Video advertising platforms that focus on targeted ads
With the lack of cookies, there will be several changes in how they gain their knowledge regarding the audience. Companies need to work on their first-party data strategies to acquire the information they need, and targeted advertising is one way to earn revenue from digital ads. Today, only a handful of companies can provide services that can help publishers and help eliminate or minimize intermediaries. VDO.AI is a company that provides unique solutions to web publishers through programmatic video advertising. The advertisers and marketers are yet to realize that data privacy is far more vital than providing customized products and services.
By 2022, Cookieless advertising will take up the entire market by storm, and that’s when brands will need to step up their marketing and advertising strategies. Until now, the marketers applied strategies that disregarded the user’s privacy. However, with cookieless advertising, the marketers and publishers will have to adapt to privacy-friendly tech and user-focused processes.
Authored article by Amitt Sharma- CEO & Founder VDO. AI.
