Cookieless advertising is a problem for the future right? Wrong! Learn why you should already have cookieless ad process in place, or risk losing 51% of retargeting opportunities.

WHY YOU SHOULD STILL BE PREPARED FOR COOKIELESS ADVERTISING

We’ve spoken a lot about the Cookieless future over the past few months. We’ve covered walled gardens, the role of trust in getting first party data, and what the elimination of cookies means for advertisers.

With Google now announcing they won’t be eliminating third party cookies on Chrome until 2023, you’d be forgiven for thinking this is a topic to park and revisit later on, but by not adjusting your ad tech stack to accommodate cookieless tracking now, you’re already missing out on remarketing to users on other major browsers.

What internet browsers are used in the UK?

With Google’s Chrome browser holding a 65% share of the global browser market, you can comfortably say that you’re only missing out on up to 35% of your audience. However, when we dig into the detail and see that Chrome only has a 49% share of the UK market, we realise that, without an effective tech set up, we’re potentially missing out on remarketing to more than half our audience.

Instead of splitting users by browser usage, we should be looking at users on browsers supporting third party cookies compared to users on browsers with a ban already in place. With Chrome being the only major browser still using third party cookies, suddenly they’re out on their own, leaving their users to become the minority.

Who are you targeting, and what browsers are they using?

Though Millennials and Gen z are almost a dead cert to be using Chrome (on desktop at least), if you are targeting an older demographic, you’ll have already lost the ability to accurately track much of your audience.

While Chrome is the default browser for Chromebooks and Android phones, older users are less likely to download Chrome to use where it’s not the default. Strangely, internet browser usage by age isn’t an area there is much research on online, but what we can look at is a historical study done by Google’s Elie Bursztein in 2012 and use our own knowledge of how our partners audience’s behave online to bring this more up to date.

In Bursztein’s study, he found that half of users over 45 were still using Internet Explorer. Since his survey, Microsoft have been pushing users more towards their Edge browser, with it now being the default on most windows computers, and we can assume that this will have taken IE’s place with users aged 55 and over.

If you’re advertising to a younger demographic, your risk from not implementing Cookieless tracking is lower. However, if you’re focused on capturing interest from the 55+ age group, your chances of success are severely diminished without using data from third party cookies.

How are your users shopping?

With £33.3bn being spent online from mobile devices, being able to influence and include mobile users in your ad campaigns is essential. So, whether people are browsing on mobile or on desktop makes a big difference in the browsers they’re using, ensuring your tech stack is cookieless friendly makes this a possibility.

While Chrome is the default browser for Android phones, 51% of the UK population uses an iPhone. Though some of this population will use Chrome on desktop, if their primary browsing habits happen on iOS’s default of Safari, you won’t be able to reach (or track) them as easily.

Being mindful of, not only the age of your demographic, but their browsing and purchase habits when it comes to desktop versus mobile, enables you to weigh up whether your retargeting campaigns can reach the users who’ll identify with your messaging. If you’re advertising a product or service that people are likely to feel comfortable with buying on mobile, this could be a key area you’re already missing out in.

What can You do?

Advertising without third party cookies is a topic we’ve covered extensively and are poised to help our partners move into cookieless advertising solutions immediately. Investing your time into preparing first party data solutions is the best possible way to approach cookieless marketing as you are taking ownership of the valuable data you need.

Another significant way to tackle advertising without the use of third-party cookies is to develop your advertising tech stack to include solutions that allow you to own your data and accurately report on how audiences are interacting with your ads.

Cookieless advertising is a technical topic that can be intimidating to those unfamiliar with the ad processes that can mitigate the effects. Our own cookieless ad services, including our deep dive into how prepared you are for cookieless advertising, are designed to help users feel more comfortable with approaching this significant change.

To find out more about how you can approach cookieless advertising, get in touch.