As a Digital Marketer, you have probably heard through the grapevine that Google announced they were phasing out third-party cookies in its Chrome browser – but what does that really mean?
There is a lot of information out there, and it can be overwhelming, but we found a great article written by Owen Ray at Invoca (so shoutout to you).
Cookies are vital because they allow you as a digital marketer to gain analytics into user activity on your site, which in turn provides a user with a better experience because marketers can learn what works and what does not work. In addition, marketers become aware of your behaviors and can start to serve you tailored ads that are highly personalized.
So, the question on everyone’s mind is what we do as marketers and advertisers without these third-party cookies?
Well, remember that saying we used to hear back a few years ago, “Content is key” – well she is back and is more true than ever. The next best option as Owen explains in his blog is that "contextual advertising and content advertising is the new cookie".
So what that means is users will be served ads that are relevant to the other content on their screen – in other words, it is a far less “creepy” form of advertising. Years ago, marketers moved away from this keyword or keyword based contextual advertising, and even looked down on it in a sense. They put more of an emphasis on data, but now ironically, we are moving back towards good old keywords (which honestly, is music to my ears because if you have read my past blogs, I LOVE KEYWORDS). This will also mean markerters will be taking a move back towards focusing on producing and distributing relevant content so there is going to need to be more “alignment between advertisers and publishers to make it work at scale.”
Being able to understand what types of content people want is just as vital as the old tracking information marketers were gaining so do not fret - it is going to be different, but does not necessarily mean it is going to be a bad different.
Now what does this mean from a user perspective? I know we are all marketers, but first and foremost, you are also regular human beings that use these tools in our personal life. Basically, you will feel like you are no longer being “stalked” on the internet as you may have felt in the past. You will begin to only be seeing content relevant to the content you are currently consuming aka a little less creepy if you will.
I could go on and on about this topic but instead of doing that, I will stop here. If you want to read the full article, again written by Owen Ray over at Invoca - click here. He did an amazing job summarizing a very big topic.