As of 2022, all Chromium based network browsers will prohibit the use of third-party cookies. These changes are set to take an adverse effect on traditional marketing strategies as we know them, and could even rupture the effectiveness of monetisation methods or worse, render them unresponsive.
What Are Third-Party Cookies?
Third-party cookies collect information from a user based on their browsing sessions and are typically set by a website other than the one you are on, hence the term ‘third-party’. For example, if you have a like button on your site this will add a cookie to a visitor that presses the button. That cookie can then be accessed by Facebook to retrieve browsing data on that individual.
What’s Happening to Third-Party Cookies?
Cookies have been a digital marketing tool for a long time; so it comes as quite a surprise that they are being shown the back door. Third-party cookies have been used to track website visitors, improve user experience and collect data to target ads to the correct audience.
The cancellation of these data collectors comes as a result of growing distrust between users and third-party cookies. It has emerged that users aren’t able to control where their personally identifiable information is going and, as a result, users want their privacy protected.
It’s worth mentioning that not all cookies will be discontinued in 2022. First-party cookies will remain enact, their purpose is to facilitate interaction with the user: remember passwords, search preferences, purchase history, recommendations and items saved in the cart, which are all suited to user convenience.
Without Third-Party Cookies, How Will it Affect Digital Marketing?
Once all major browsing services stop supporting the use of third-party cookies, the following changes will begin to take effect.
Firstly, it will become impossible to set up audience targeting and frequency capping for nearly all user traffic. As well as that, cross-site audience targeting will no longer be optimal. This could mean that non-personalised ads and pop-up ads will take over web domains; leading to a decrease in advertising success.
The new data restrictions lead experts to believe that web publishers could lose up to $10 million in ad revenue. This will be a consequence of their personalised ad options shrinking.
It is also estimated that most publishers could lose 50-70% of their revenue if they don’t reconfigure their approach to ad and data management by 2022.
Conclusion
With under a year to go until these new data restrictions are put in place; the time for reconfiguration is now. The mission now is to estimate the consequences for your business and find a solution. One that will let you maintain digital marketing efficiency after the cookie alterations.
If your business requires support with any of the issues covered in this article then head over to Humana.ltd. We pride ourselves on supporting online businesses with their digital marketing requirements. You can get in touch with us by visiting our contact page.