A new set of realities is forcing marketers to rethink their data strategies

Google announced last week that it will no longer deprecate third-party cookies from its Chrome web browser and will instead opt for a model that “elevates user choice.” The news quickly made the rounds, in an industry still reeling from when Google executives first shared their cookie-deprecation intentions in 2019. Agencies spent countless hours consulting on a path forward, marketers made accelerated tech investments and numerous ad tech businesses closed their doors — all sparked by the initial announcement.

But here’s the thing: While the decision can be reversed, the work cannot be undone. We’ve already changed. Advertisers, buyers, and suppliers have put in time and effort to mature, leading to a reformation of the industry.

While Google has not yet shared guidance on the new user-choice experience, we can look at the adoption rate of similar functionality in other ecosystems and estimate that as much as 80% of third-party cookies will be lost in time. Whatever that looks like, marketers must accept a new set of realities that will continue to disrupt the value chain of digital marketing and require us to rethink data strategies.

More data, less access

We’ve got more data than ever, but less access than ever. Privacy regulations are certainly a factor, but beyond that, five global platforms — which control 70% of all ad spend — are limiting access to data and setting the rules of consumer engagement. While there is an argument to be made about the height of the walls around that data and to whose benefit they’re raised, there’s no debate that consumer awareness and expectations around how their data is being used are leading them to take action to restrict access to that data.

The fragmentation of identity

Identity doesn’t have a common currency anymore. Even without the deprecation of the third-party cookie in the Chrome web browser, the erosion of digital identifiers (e.g., mobile ad IDs, hashed emails and third-party cookies in Safari and Firefox, all broadly designed around a common principle across access points) will bring an end to the current era of digital advertising and ad tech as we know it. Innovation is promising, but the rules of the game have changed, as have the technologies to advance data-driven marketing. As a result, the scalability of first-party data, and specifically personally-identifiable-information-based (PII-based) connectivity, will continue to erode, albeit at a slower pace and differentially across cohorts of the population. You won’t know everyone, everywhere, all the time.

The evolution of the open web

The open web is a vibrant and necessary part of the ecosystem, but it’s currently at risk, only capturing 48% of ad dollars, despite consumers spending 59% of their online time there. This is partly due to gaps in addressability for marketers. Publishers with scaled and unique data will be tempted to take a page out of the platform playbook and move more premium, data-targeted inventory behind new walls, fencing off owned-and-operated solutions. This is the inconvenient truth that marketers and the industry can’t ignore, and only increases the urgency of testing and coalescing around scaled solutions that enable impacted targeting and measurement use cases — and in doing so, energizing the value of the open web. Understanding how consumers behave in and respond to media shouldn’t be a fractured, platform-by-platform proposition.

Widening the data aperture

There’s a common misconception that the value of data is measured only in its deterministic qualities. We should decide the value of data by the action it informs — and importantly, by its ability to inform actions more confidently, faster, at lower costs and higher returns. Some forecasts suggest that over 50% of all ad spend is coming from advertisers who may never have first-party data at scale. So why is the singular answer to the forces of change above often to amass as many consumer records as possible and leverage PII-based keys to transit that signal around the web? The economics of collecting, managing and activating millions of consumer records don’t work for all brands.

Rethinking data strategy means understanding how to harness every data signal available to you to add value. With wider data and the evolution of data federation, machine learning, and Generative AI, privacy and “personalization” are no longer at odds. Combined, these technologies can be used to create increasingly relevant experiences over time, often in more cost-effective ways, to deliver on the promise of personalization in a privacy-forward manner. In short, the future-fit solution lies in a flexible approach, embracing a new set of requirements.

This op-ed represents the views and opinions of the author and not of The Current, a division of The Trade Desk, or The Trade Desk. The appearance of the op-ed on The Current does not constitute an endorsement by The Current or The Trade Desk.