It’s been an ongoing debate for the last 5 years – should tech giants be allowed to learn so much about us, through the use of cookies? Google is the last of the tech giants to announce its big move away from third-party cookies, but with its hold on the market, this is likely to have the biggest effect yet.
Whilst privacy-conscious consumers will often fall on the ‘right’ side of the debate, those who work in marketing and advertising can appreciate how much this will disrupt the industry. So, as a marketer, how can we safeguard against this huge change, due to hit our digital worlds at the end of 2023?
Allow us to answer a few of the most common questions we’ve been faced with…
What is a cookie? Are there different types?
We all know the ‘pop-up’, the one that appears when you visit a new website and says, “We use cookies! Do you accept?”. But what are they?
Cookies are little pieces of information that a website places on your computer. Essentially, the cookies are there collecting information about what you’re doing on that site, with the aim of building a picture of who you are and what you like. These ‘cookies’ can then be accessed by you (the user), the website itself, or by a third party.
On those little popups, you might have noticed you can now choose what cookies you’re happy to allow – that’s right, there are different types! Different types of cookies do different things and collect different information, here’s a useful breakdown:
- HTTP cookies: A collective term for cookies which are used on modern web browsers. Almost every cookie on this list falls within this category.
- First-party cookies: This means the information collected by the cookie is restricted for use by the same website entity, whose website you’re visiting.
- Third-party cookies: Unlike the above, this type of cookie means that third parties will have access to the information collected.
- Session cookies: This type of cookie only collects information about you while you’re on that one given website.
- Persistent cookies: These cookies keep on tracking for some time after you leave the website. How long they track for is set by the provider of the website.
- Secure cookies: These can come in the form of first or third-party cookies, but they’re only sent in an encrypted environment.
- Zombie cookies: An oddly terrifying term – this type gets sneakily stored somewhere on your computer, away from your web browser. Making them notoriously difficult to delete, even if you think you’ve deleted it through your browser.
- Flash cookies: The only type on this list that’s not an HTTP cookies – this type worked with Adobe Flash, as opposed to your browser. Since Flash isn’t used so widely anymore, neither are this type of cookie.
What’s the difference between cookies and caches?
In many ways, cookies and caches are similar – they both store data from the user’s website visit to ‘improve’ that user’s experience. But there’s only one that the privacy-conscious see as invasive…
If you visit a website which displays lots of rich content; images, videos, text; website caches will store versions of these files on your computer for a while, so that the next time you visit it, the pages will load a lot faster. Caches are only stored on the browser itself, not on a server, and they will only delete if you forcibly do it.
Cookies are a little different. They also store information about a user’s website visit, but it’s more detailed. Cookies store your previous activity on the website, your preferences, how long you were there, and what you put in your basket – so it ends up with a far more detailed picture of who you are as a user. This information is stored on the browser, but also on a server, so that the next time you visit, the website can pull on this information to tailor your next experience.
Why are we talking about cookies?
Remember we mentioned those ‘third parties’ earlier? Well for a long time, advertisers have been one-third party using the data collected by cookies to serve more targeted digital ads to us. The technology got so smart, that many consumers started seeing the practice as too invasive and wanted the option to opt out.
Many of the browsers listened and some of them started moving away from cookies as early as 2017. But Google (the mammoth browser that has almost 65% of the market) has now pushed back the removal of its cookies system to the end of 2023.
At the beginning of 2021 Google said they would remove support for cookies by early 2022, stating the delay was to give publishers and advertisers “more time” to figure out how they’d monitor campaign performance, without using the ‘invasive’ technology. A few months later, Google then stated that the digital advertising industry needed more time and that the timescales were pushed back again, this time to the end of 2023.
Is my cookie data influenced by which device I use?
In short – yes.
Apple has tried to position itself in recent years as a protector of consumers and a defender of personal privacy. So, on IOS devices and Apple’s browser, Safari, all third-party cookies are blocked, without exception. Queue Apple’s famous 2020 campaign that stated, “What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone”.
This obviously still allows the likes of first-party cookies but given that these are used by the publishers themselves, as opposed to third parties, they don’t seem to have the same contention surrounding them as the prior.
What will replace cookies?
Initial announcements made by Google suggested that FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) was the new system to replace cookies but now that’s been scrapped for Google’s newest proposed system – Topics.
Topics is Google’s latest solution to protect user data. In this system – the browser is key. Your browser is the entity that learns about your interests as you browse the web and use various websites. The browser can then use this data to determine what you see in future.
The name ‘Topics’ comes from the 350 categories that Google currently has in place to categorise a user’s interests (we expect this will grow and diversify to include a whole range of niche topics in future). So, when you visit a new website, that website’s closest ‘topic’ is tracked against you as a user.
Your ‘topics’ are then collated weekly, and Google will provide a few of these topics per week, to third-party advertisers – meaning the information being provided is going to be less detailed than the existing cookie system.
Topics will also hold user data for a shorter period of time – three weeks to be exact. Then the information will be disposed of. It’ll also give control back to the user, with users being able to login to their Chrome account and determine what ‘interests’ they want advertisers to see – if any at all!
So, how will we capture data for Digital Marketing?
Well, the first reason not to panic, is that Google has dubbed Topics as a balanced approach between protecting consumer privacy and satisfying marketers’ needs – meaning they’re still taking the need for user data into consideration.
Whilst the data coming through will be largely interest-based and less detailed, the eradication of third-party cookies is likely to shift the power into the hands of advertisers.
Development of a multi-platform, multi-browser, all-encompassing digital tracking system, a new improved “cookie” seems imminent, albeit one which is more sympathetic to user’s privacy worries.
Unified ID is such a system, and it has already been adopted by large publishers worldwide. This system will use anonymised versions of someone’s email address to track data any time they use that email to log in to a website or app. All while giving the user up front, simple details on how they can benefit from the data being collected (tailored content, more relevant advertising etc). Users will also be able to choose how their data is used.
Cookies were obviously an industry standard, and the hope is that something like Unified ID would become widely adopted – and they are making progress!
What do the changes mean for my marketing activity?
In short – marketers are going to have to get smart.
The first thing we can do is start maximising our own first-party data – and to collect more data, we’re going to have to offer real value to consumers in exchange for that precious info. The benefits for us, once we have this data, is that the data itself is more relevant to our own marketing efforts and more predictive of our consumer’s behaviours. And what does that mean? Better conversion rates!
Is there anything I can do now to prepare?
A few things that we’ll certainly be doing and recommending to our clients, particularly those who rely on third-party data for campaigns…
- Research Google’s disposal of third-party cookies – Stay on top of it. Read regularly and keep yourself informed of the latest developments. We’re still not certain what Topics will look like or what data will be available from it, but as testing continues, we’ll start to get a better picture of what data for marketers is going to look like!
- Strategise collection of first-party data – First-party data is the golden ticket here. It’s more useful, more relevant, and usually gives better conversions. So, you need to strategise how to collate it and maximise it.
- Assess whether contextual advertising could work for you. Contextual advertising targets PPC ads by placing them on websites that rank for similar keywords to your website, as opposed to targeting a user profile built from third-party data. It’s an older strategy, but one which works well for some businesses. Could it work for you? You need to decide.
- Go back to basics – Advertising to third-party data is just one string to a marketer’s bow. Go back to basics and look at all the potential channels and strategies to diversify your marketing activity, particularly if you’ve ended up reliant on third-party ad campaigns to generate traffic or enquiries. Not only is this good practice for any marketer, it will also safeguard your business from future changes in tech or governance!
Some insight from our team…
Jena Wilson, Head of Digital said…
“Whilst 2024 might seem like a lifetime away, in the world of digital marketing, it really isn’t. It’s important as a marketer/business owner to start planning now for a cookie-less world. Whilst my analytical brain might be mourning the loss of data and insight, the optimistic side of me is trying to view this as an opportunity to rebuild consumer trust and transparency.
My advice would be to focus your attention on building out your owned data now. Go back to basics and get to know your customer. By understanding them in a qualitative way you can really start to put yourself in their shoes. There will most likely be more speed bumps to come, but ultimately this shift should hopefully push companies to better understand their customer’s journey. So, continue to experiment, measure and improve- and let’s see what happens.”
Amanda Burns, Head of Business Development said…
“It’s hard to know exactly how worried we should be about the looming cookie changes. On one hand, as a consumer, I am surprisingly fond of targeted ads that are based on my activity and hyper-relevant, and as a marketer, I also enjoy watching the approach brands take to serve me remarketing.
On the other hand, I have to admit there’s a part of me that is excited about a move away from advertising that is so heavily based on data – I really like the idea of us marketers engaging our brains and stepping deeper into the target audience’s shoes rather than listening to what the big dogs tell us to do (Meta, Google, Apple…). I guess maybe I’m a bit of an odd mix as I’m always keen to adopt new technologies and have always been a paid digital nut but I also have a lot of respect for a good old pen portrait, messaging matrix and content strategy based on an understanding of human thoughts, feelings and behaviours.
Time will tell, after all, we have until 2024 in which time, I am sure new technologies will emerge and will soon have us forgetting the old ways – just like we have so many times before. When I first started working in the industry, we could still see the keywords in Google Analytics – we all freaked out about that change and survived.
My advice would be, get to know your customer beyond the quantitative data, and start to build a qualitative picture of who they are, what they want, like, dislike, value, and how your business meets their needs. Once you’ve done that have a think about what it means in relation to your business’s marketing activity. Plotting each core customer segment against the promotion mix or the seven P’s of marketing (remember those!?) can be a super engaging task that forces you to step inside the customer’s mind and identify opportunities to not only solve their problems but delight them!”
