Securing the cookieless world of first-party data

Going cookieless is the next major phase of digital disruption. Today, nearly all paid and targeted marketing campaigns rely upon third-party cookies and tracking pixels—technologies of the past that are very soon to vanish. In fact, Google has committed to banning them by 2023. So, what can organizations do to retain control over their marketing strategies?

They must develop an arsenal of first-party data. Organizations can no longer rely upon the bounty of third-party data marketplaces. Instead, they need to start building their own archives of information that are consent-positive and privacy-centric.

What to do when cookies go away

The impending demise of cookies has spurred many brands to explore new technologies and marketing strategies. One such strategy is going “cookieless”—a term used to describe the use of technologies that don’t rely upon third-party cookies for data collection.

Cookies have been a staple of the online advertising industry for over two decades, but their days are numbered. In March of 2018, the European Union’s Court of Justice issued a ruling that declared cookies to be in violation of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Since then, nearly every website has been modified to include GDPR protection. But it’s been tough on the average user, who now needs to agree to a ToS every time they load a website.

Apple and Google have both taken steps to eliminate cookies from their mobile devices. In June of 2018, Apple announced that it would begin blocking cookies from third-party ad networks and analytics providers. A few months later, Google announced that it would begin doing the same for its Chrome browser. These measures have already had a significant impact on the advertising industry.

That doesn’t mean that digital ads are entirely ineffective. Digital ads that are query-based or keyword-based are still effective. But now, digital marketers can’t try to target consumers based on the other websites that they’ve read or the products that they’ve searched for. And that will lead, in turn, to a proliferation of first-party data.

The role of first-party data in a cookieless world

A cookieless world doesn’t mean that there isn’t any data. It merely means that there isn’t any third-party data being used without consent.

You can’t ask Google where your visitor has been. But you can track that information on your own. You can track user behavior on your sites. And you can invest in social media sites, which inherently track user behavior and demographics. If you have information, you can act on it; you can even re-target products that your customers have purchased from you in the past. But you need to be able to identify and track your customers on your own.

First-party data is the key to success in a cookieless world. In order to thrive, organizations need to start collecting and analyzing their own data. They need to develop an understanding of what their customers want and need. And they need to create experiences that cater to those desires. To that end, new software solutions have been developed to help create a complete archive of an organization’s customer interactions.

Large organizations are already overhauling their marketing strategies as early as possible to prepare for the coming changes. In a cookieless world, marketing is all about creating connections with customers. It’s no longer about bombarding them with ads. Instead, it’s about developing relationships and providing value. But it’s also about having as much data as possible.

Any organization that relies heavily on PPC advertising campaigns or targeted advertising campaigns will be disrupted as third-party cookies go away. While they’ll still be able to promote ads based on keyword sets, they won’t know anything about the customer unless they collect their data themselves.

Securing first-party data in the cookieless future

Naturally, creating this type of data well also comes with some cautions and some challenges. Organizations are going to be holding large volumes of personally identifiable information. If they aren’t using SaaS solutions, they may quickly find data security and privacy a challenge, to say nothing of regulatory compliance.

For most organizations, using a SaaS solution with managed services and managed security may be the only way to ensure data privacy. For consumers, it may become a morass of trying to ensure that only the services that you trust are able to invoke your data. The more data each individual application and organization holds, the more data privacy concerns will build.

Today, quite a lot of this information is held within the data centers of one of the largest organizations in the world—Google. Google is able to invest billions in securing its systems. The average application server will not be able to invest in that much security. Thus, a cookieless world will create some very real data privacy challenges.

The bottom line is that the impending death of cookies is going to have a major impact on the way businesses operate online. In turn, this is going to change how we look at and work with first-party data. As organizations start collecting and analyzing first-party data, they must also ask themselves how they will secure this data.

To learn how to activate first-party customer data for more effective, and fully secure, engagement initiatives, get in touch or try Lytics Decision Engine free for 30 days.