While our online world is constantly changing, we have to stop for a bit, and reflect on ….
Data and Information – the holy grail of everything, the source of decision-making and evolution. It influences people’s everyday lives and multiple industries, such as digital advertising. In this article, I try to summarise what data and 3rd party cookie depreciation could mean to our industry and how I see all the recent changes from my point of it.
Data and its governance have a significant impact on our everyday lives beyond digital advertising. I see it as a piece of information or a collection of information which is valued by the market players.They would like to reach and use it for different and legitimate purposes. When we zoom in on the digital world, I see it as an essential part of online trading, and we must talk about actionable data and its potential for us as digital professionals.
Programmatic was built on data and automatisationand it has been a data-driven, standardised trading technology since day one. Without linking the right information and working on standardisation, programmatic could captivate this huge part of digital media trading techniques.
I believe data means power. Power to achieve different goals in life, data means information, more information means knowledge, but only actionable data means value, and this is why we constantlycollect, learn, and use different tools to interpret and distinguish valuable data from others.
Data has become a new currency that we can trade with, and once we get used to it, all other elements of advertising will fall into place.
In digital all parties have their place in the data flow, so let’s talk about the 5 important pillars with their simplified roles:
The enforcement of GDPR and other privacy-related regulations have a fundamental role in governing, influencing, and protecting the data collection - categorisation – usage and storage.
Below, I focus on the open web-provided opportunities and don’t take into consideration the walled gardens, for now.
A couple of years ago a new and impactful initiative came out and shook the already fragile market climate.
Google announced the Chrome 3rd party cookie depreciation which meant another uncertainty for the web-heavy publishers and advertisers who relied on this targeting of decades.
If you investigate the order of these industry-wide steps makes perfect sense.
Privacy Policy took into effect and then Google wants to deprecate the 3rd party cookies that we already knew were not the perfect information carrier in the light of privacy and data security.
Why is it, one of the most evolving, long-lasting topics, beyond the right and fair use of the user’sdata?
Because this means that around 60% + of the digital advertising budget and targeting capabilities became in danger, therefore the whole industry had to start looking into some other alternatives.
Programmatic open marketplace and private deals are well-known for the robust use of 3rd party cookies in Chrome. I see how our industry is resilient, innovative, and agile I saw the overall benefit and how we can positively turn our current perception and shape our much-trusted programmatic future.
We can use our knowledge, tools, and strategical thinking to build a new way of data usage, through strong, well-considered and understood data strategy.
We can clear our data warehouse and collect – store – categorise and use data for specific purposes. Giving back the right to control the data to its owner could help us establish a multi-trusted digital market between its players.
Moreover, if I see the whole picture this could have a more positive and equal open web media spend between the native app and web property owners.
Why is this? Now, let’s look into the world of apps.
Besides many other technical limitations, we all know this inventory type is already cookieless and if we need to compare it to the web environment it is fair to say that the app environment is much more data-poor than the web, hence many trading activities from the programmatic demand side have been happening on the web. App owners have been also facing different ID deprecations and more user-controlled data flow for years already, seeking more opportunities to enrich their cohesiveness when it comes to media planning.
In another article, we can talk more about apps and the web. Why does our mindset need to change in the upcoming world of cookieless targeting on the web,and adapt completely new attribution modelling?
As an app publisher, I can see a more balanced app vs web open web setup with similar targeting and data capabilities. We will see an equal chance to test and optimise all activities and have the full potential of these two spaces in combination with other digital channels. The Omnichannel approach with new data and targeting capabilities opens new horizons and bring a more relevant, rewarding media activity to all of us.
The performances of new targeting technologies and IDs are still being tested, and through collaboration and partnerships, we can explore, measure, and improve on many aspects of our industry.
New standards will come into force and old ones will disappear. Our main role is to get ready for these changes, minimise the risk of losing the 3rd party cookie on Chrome and work with privacy-compliant, trusted partners.
By: Sophie T.
