Interviews, insight & analysis on digital media & marketing

MediaLad: Let’s build a new industry for the cookieless world

By  MediaLad

So the final death knoll has been sounded for the third-party cookie. In the second part of this week’s column, I take a further look at what you can actually do to get ready for this new world.

Stop panicking, start acting.

Publishers will struggle in this world but those that have been smart and have been collecting data on their audience up until this point – attributed to an ID or email, using a sign in service of sorts or their own technology – hats off to you for playing the long game. I hope you can now monetise it.

Just as buyers will be relearning what’s important and what to activate against, publishers need to prepare for the ID world and be able to show their value in terms of audience or environment differentiation.

Another tactic…

You can still be clever with your executions in the new cookieless world, and maybe this means rich media, or integrated formats with publishers to ensure you’re really capturing attention in environments that really does get audiences on site that will take an action.

Creative is still so important and always a consideration for buyers as to why a campaign isn’t performing. Think about that and the brand you’re buying for. Do you need more MPUs or do you need to get attention amongst the masses a different way?

With buyers becoming increasingly responsible and careful with their media budgets, taking time to really assess the options is crucial. This means not going for an easy fix, buying time with higher CPMs and lower impressions to make sure that they’re really driving the value that advertisers need.

It’s time to shake up perceptions and undo some of that “spray and pray” mentality.

Connect that with publishers and supply sources able to facilitate ID solutions, and collaboratively we can be a stronger medium, ultimately building trust and delivering value at the same time.

I mentioned levels or layers in the first half of this column and you can see the complexity of this entire ecosystem through my ramblings. What you need to do is focus your energy on your specific area of responsibility. The entire space is too intimidating for us all to solve but within your world you affect so much already.

Think about your brand, say why and what is important to it to be successful based on fact, and keep standing by this. If it’s ignored, you just need to persevere and display the results, building a case over time as to why your approach would see better results through careful research and informative planning.

Sneaky Suspicion…

If my gut tells me anything it’s that there is a reason and a solution already in place from Google that means it’s well ahead of the curve.

Much like Quantcast stole a march on publishers with its consent management tool, this offers an opportunity to technology players to really harness their position in market with ID or sign-on tools that offer not only a publisher solution but a way of them identifying those users across the web.

Who’s best placed to do that other than Google.

So to all my media colleagues, good luck and don’t be scared.

You’ve got this.

Read part one of this column here.