Three quarters (73%) of UK marketers say they are not well prepared for the deprecation of third-party cookies, despite 92% believing that Google will stick to its 2024 deadline, finds new study by data enablement platform, LiveRamp, in collaboration with research company, Censuswide.
In a bid to find out how brands intend to reach addressable audiences beyond the walled gardens once cookies deprecate, 250 brand-side senior marketers* were surveyed, half of whom (51%) said they are concerned about identity/addressability post-cookies. Marketers also flagged other concerns on their minds: 60% are troubled about reaching audiences at scale; 56% about frequency capping; and 50% about measurement.
Despite Google’s withdrawal of cookies being announced nearly three years ago, 60% of marketers are still developing their first-party strategies and 8% have no first-party data strategy. This is despite 45% of marketers looking to first-party authenticated data to combat the loss of third-party cookies.
“Delivering targeted advertising to individuals at scale on the open web, without the need for legacy identifiers, is the ambition of all marketers right now,” said Travis Clinger, SVP of Activations and Addressability at LiveRamp. “Yet, many brands are still delaying testing and adopting strategies, despite these being key to enable them to effectively target consumers in a privacy-safe way post cookies. Marketers may be intimidated by the complexity of the process, and should seek the support of reliable partners rather than trying to manage it internally – what they’ll find is that people-based marketing helps address many of their concerns, including frequency capping and measurement, as well. Most importantly, marketers should know that these solutions work today and can have an immediate impact on the reach and ROAS of their Q4 and Q1 campaigns.”
It’s critical that marketers grow more comfortable on the open web, with large amounts of marketing budget being allocated here: 26% of respondents said open web comprised 31-40% of their budget, 20% said 20% and 15% said 50-60%. Furthermore, open web marketing continues to increase in importance, as a sizable majority of surveyed marketers (72.4%) stated that they anticipate spending more there moving forward.
“At LiveRamp, we believe the cookieless future lies in addressable, people-based identity solutions, which allow brands to connect data and reach audiences across all channels,” said Clinger. “Key to ensuring a smooth transition post cookie is taking action to integrate with appropriate partners to test and learn, so that come 2024, marketers are fully prepared and confident in their advertising approach. Most importantly, the time to start is now – authenticated identity is the gold standard and will give marketers better results today.”
‘Future-proofed marketing: how brands intend to reach addressable audiences beyond the walled gardens’ explores in-depth the readiness of marketers for life without cookies and examines the methods being implemented to target, serve and measure advertising campaigns without the use of intrusive cookies or personal identifiers. Download the report here.
Liveramp is a client of Bluestripe Communications, part of The Bluestripe Group, publishers of NDA
